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HELP! I’M A FEMINIST BUT MY DAUGHTER IS A “PRINCESS FANATIC”! 
DISNEY’S TRANSFORMATION OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GIRLS1 

ALISA CLAPP-ITNYRE

As I began this paper, my then four-year-old daughter, Annetta, sat singing “Part 
of Your World” from Disney’s Little Mermaid, playing with her Pocahontas Barbie 
doll, wearing her Cinderella dress, and planning to watch Disney’s Snow White 
for the umpteenth time that night ... and I wondered where I had gone wrong. 
From dolls to lamps, bikes and bathing suits, underpants and toothpaste, the 
“Princess theme” is everywhere. Disney is cleverly pulling together all its heroines 
from earlier film classics — Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty — and 
adding the latest versions — Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, now even Tiana — to create 
a whole world populated by women whose only desire is to marry a prince. 
Kids now attend “princess” ice shows in costume and throw “princess” birthday 
parties — while parents (like me) pay for all the souvenirs and party supplies. Is 
there anything that goes beyond consumerism and sexist fairy tales in the Disney 
formula? I am not the only scholar-parent asking this question and, drawing upon 
the published record as well as my own very “intimate” knowledge of Disney’s 
Princesses, I will consider in this paper the transformation of girls today into 
“sleeping beauties,” “material girls,” and potentially even “radical feminists” after 
having been “touched” by the Disney spell. 

Ironically, the Princess phenomenon started with a Disney ice show which 
Disney Consumer Products president Andy Mooney attended in 2000 and there 
witnessed, as he says, “thousands of young girls dressed in costumes, Mulan and 
Snow White. It was like a rock concert for little princesses” (qtd. in Wloszczyna 
2003)). He was inspired to combine the “Princess” heroines together into one 
brand, a “pretty controversial” move, he says, given how these princesses had only 
ever existed “in their own mythological worlds. […] But young girls and mothers 
voted with their dollars. They believed in the unifying attributes of the Disney 
princesses” (qtd. in Wloszczyna 2003). Geared towards little girls, three to five, this 
line has created a financial explosion. Between 2002 and 2005 the Princess brand 
grew a whopping 300% (Business Wire), and has now overtaken both Disney’s 
Winnie-the-Pooh and Mickey Mouse himself as their most popular brand (Arkoff 
2009). Since its inception, Disney Princess merchandise has garnered $3.4 billion 
in profits (Arkoff 2009). Today it is the largest “global girls franchise” (Business 
Wire) with markets in ninety countries (Arkoff 2009) , including Russia, China, 
and India (Millard 2006). Three of the ten top-selling videos around the world are 
Princess films (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas; Artz 2004, 117); 
five of the top six Disney videos ever released have been Princess films (Arkoff 
2009).2 Raves entertainment editor for Sweet Sixteen magazine, Vicki Arkoff, “Moms 
embrace it because, in a time when little girls are maturing at a much faster pace, 
Disney Princess lets little girls remain children for a little longer time. Disney aims 
to empower girls with the wholesome stories about virtues of integrity, honor, 
discovery, friendship, and love” (2009).



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8

Scholarly opinion, on the other hand, has been more wary of the intense 
consumerism and social implications of Disney tales. The original “princess” tales 
(Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty) have especially come under intense 
scrutiny. From Frances Clarke Sayers in 1965, Kay Stone in 1975, Jill May in 1981, 
to Jack Zipes in 1995, all have regretted Disney’s distortions of folk literature.3 
As Jack Zipes has said, “There is something sad in the manner in which Disney 
‘violated’ the literary genre of the fairy tale and packaged his versions in his name 
through the merchandising of books, toys, clothing, and records” (1995, 40). 
Kay Stone, in her classic “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” further pointed 
out the feminist implications: “The only tests of most [Disney] heroines require 
nothing beyond what they are born with: a beautiful face, tiny feet, or a pleasing 
temperament. […] [Yet] to judge from the 186 heroines found in five major Angle-
American folktale collections, oral narrators do not confine themselves to passive 
princesses” (1975, 45).

I will divide my own examination into three sections, examining first the 
“Princess” movies under Walt Disney’s own direction (Snow White, Cinderella, 
Sleeping Beauty); the second “golden age” of Disney in the 1990s under Eisner 
and “Team Disney” which began with The Little Mermaid (1989) (I will not include 
Aladdin in this discussion since it is mainly Aladdin’s story, not Jasmine’s); and 
then the phase we are experiencing right now in the 21st century, when Disney is 
regurgitating its “masterpieces” through products and re-releases, while apparently 
also trying to inaugurate another decade of Princess films with The Princess and 
the Frog (2009) and Tangled (anticipated late 2010). Within each era, I will analyze 
1) the narratives, 2) the images, and 3) the songs that indoctrinate and influence 
successive generations. I do believe, along with many scholars, that Disney’s 
attempts in the 1990s to become more politically correct were fairly successful 
and can become a positive model for our young girls. The other eras, the 1930s 
through 50s, due to patriarchal bias, and now our own, due to crass consumerism, 
have been less golden. 

“Someday My Prince Will Come”: Princesses of the ‘Walt Era’

Perhaps Disney’s princess theme seems so engrained within the imagination and 
corporation of Disney because its first full-length feature was a princess film: Snow 
White (1937). Marie Claire Simonelli feels that “Disney breathed new life into a 
genre that had long been forgotten” with his films Snow White and Cinderella 
(1999, 69). From Snow White, to Cinderella, to Sleeping Beauty, early “Princesses” 
were undeniably sweet, patient, and obedient girls whose only emotions ranged 
from extreme happiness to utter dejection.4 It is likely due to these fairly dull 
heroines that the narratives containing them so quickly move to other characters 
and stories: it is indeed a breath of fresh air when the dwarves and talking mice 
arrive on the scene. Artz even argues that Sleeping Beauty failed at the box office 
because it was the only Disney film “without an animal sidekick” (2004, 121). The 
plots involving the heroines are simplistic and standard fairy-tale narrative, with 
heroines portrayed as “helpless, passive victims who need protection” (Henke, 
Umble, and Smith 1996, 234); they receive this protection from princes, fairies, 



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

9

even male mice. As M. Thomas Inge 
sums up, “[Snow White] accurately 
reflected the general public attitude 
toward the place of women in 
society [of the 1930s] and continued 
a long tradition in Western culture of 
portraying women as passive vessels 
of innocence and virtue, although [he 
adds] Disney’s Snow White shows a 
good deal more spunk than most fairy 
tale princesses” (2004, 141).5 

In terms of image, early Princesses 
were, obviously, stereotypically slender, 
beautiful, and elegant, modeled after 
current stars and icons of the time. 
Snow White “was envisioned as a 
‘Janet Gaynor’ type” (Inge 141); “Under 
the peasant costume,” writes Rebecca 
Anne C. DoRozario, “Snow White is 
a 1920s/’30s starlet with a flapper’s 
haircut, rosebud mouth, and high-
pitched warble” (2004, 38), yet drawn 
to be about fourteen. Cinderella may 
look older, but, like Snow White, even 

she looks amazingly elegant even under the most impoverished of circumstances.6 
Finally there is Sleeping Beauty who, as DoRozario points out, is “a prototype 
Baby Boomer,” walking about barefoot, crushed when she misses her date with a 
boy. Like her Barbie doll image, which came out in 1959, too, she represents “the 
idealized American teen” of the 1960s (2004, 38). These are the images still being 
pushed and packaged as seen on the re-released VHS and DVD covers. 

My special interest is in the songs that accompany these firms, which carry 
ideological meaning more strongly than any dialogue because viewers still sing the 
songs well after they have stopped watching the films. Who does not know the 
song “Someday My Prince will Come” with or without watching Snow White, after 
all? My four-year-old daughter did and pointed out an error in one of scholarly 
articles I was reading to her which erroneously credited Sleeping Beauty with 
the song! Little girls are bombarded with “happily-ever-messages” even from the 
first moments of Snow White, which, in fact, opens with six songs in just the first 
thirty minutes. As Simonelli writes, “songs carried the central themes of the stories, 
conveyed the personality of the characters who sang them, and finally helped 
unify the whole works through musical themes” (1999, 65). The words exude 
romantic ideals now parodied and problematic by today’s standards: “Someday my 
prince will come … And away to his castle we’ll go. To be happy forever, I know 
… And the birds will sing and wedding bells will ring. Someday when dreams 
come true.” As journalist Jami Bernard described in 1993, at the film’s re-release, 
the song is “eminently hummable, ennobling the virtues of passivity and pre-

Figure 1. Annetta as Belle, age three. 
Photograph by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre.



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

10

determined happy endings. […] That 
song sets up little girls for a lifetime 
of feverish romantic expectations that 
don’t easily mix with the jungle out 
there that is the modern dating scene” 
(qtd. in Inge 2004, 141). These songs 
suggest more potent influence on little 
girls since it is their tunes and words 
which little girls remember long after 
viewing the film itself.

Cinderella is especially known for 
its songs and had Academy Award 
nominations for Best Musical Score 
and Best Song (Bibbidi-Bobbidy-Boo; 
O’Brien 168).7 “A Dream is a Wish 
Your Heart Makes” could be a complex 
statement about abject poverty and 
how to face it: “In dreams you will 
lose your heartaches. Whatever you 
wish for, you keep. Have faith in your 
dreams and someday, your rainbow 
will come smiling through. No matter 
how your heart is grieving, If you 
keep on believing The dream that you 
wish will come true.” Cinderella uses 
aesthetics to escape the reality of her 
life though, like Snow White, Cinderella 
lacks any motivation to change her and 

others’ poor circumstances: note that the only time she shows any kind of anger 
is in this song--to the clock for waking her up: “O that clock! Killjoy! I hear you! 
Come on, get up, you say. Time to start another day. Even he orders me around. 
Well, there’s one thing: they can’t stop me from dreaming.” It is interesting that this 
appears to be the only time Cinderella gets angry, yet she reverts to dreaming as 
escape. The male-identified clock further is significant; Cinderella is living under 
patriarchal rule. As Naomi Wood writes, “Cinderella’s challenge over the course of 
the movie is to hold on to her dreams … [but she learns that] all wishes have to be 
earned by obedience to the dream-fulfilling authorities who reward good behavior 
and innocent faith. […] Her acceptance and promotion of patriarchal values 
[…] provide the justification for the fulfillment of her dream” (1996, 37-8). Her 
relationship with the Prince is given very little film space, limited to just the Doris-
Day-like ballad “So this is Love,” a duet in which, significantly, the Prince only 
echoes Cinderella throughout. This, and a similar love duet from Sleeping Beauty 
based on the Tchaikovsky ballet score (“I know you! I walked with you once upon 
a dream”) are significant not only in that men share the songs with the women (a 
trend dropped in 1990s films) but also in reinforcing the concept of “dreaming,” 
taking young women’s minds away from realistic problems and relationships, and 
letting “fate” work its magic. 

Figure 2. Annetta as Snow White, 
age three, at a Disney ice show with 
“princess” friends: Andrea Pegg, 
Madelyn Brunton, and Natalie Pegg. 
Photograph by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre.



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

11

“I Want So Much More Than They’ve Got Planned”: Princesses by ‘Team 
Disney’

After Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the Walt Disney Company, led by family 
members who often lacked business savvy, began to flaunder (O’Brien 1996, 168). 
Churning out simplistic, “cutesy” films like The Fox and the Hound (1981), Disney 
began to lose money and viewers. By 1984, Disney stockholders brought in new 
leaders from other studios, with Michael Eisner from Paramount as chairman of the 
board (O’Brien 1996, 169). Termed “Team Disney,” this committee led by Eisner, 
determined to return to Disney’s very successful fairy-tale adaptations of earlier 
years.8 A number of recent critics are willing to praise “Team Disney’s” attempts 
to rectify gender and cultural biases of past films: “[L]ater films shift from simple 
stories of passive, young virgins in conflict with evil, mature women to more 
complex narratives about rebellion, exploration, and danger” according to Henke, 
Umble, and Smith (1996, 234). Two sociological studies of Disney films (Hoerrner; 
Towbin et al.) both find that, though not completely free of gender stereotyping, 
recent films show stronger women “with problem-solving abilities and actions on a 
more equal footing with their male peers” (Hoerrner 1996, 225). 

Not that The Little Mermaid (1989) was any immediate break-through; Regina 
Bendix, in “Seashell Bra and Happy End,” argues that “The Little Mermaid follows 
the same formula Disney created with his Snow White adaptation” (1993, 289). 
Admittedly, Ariel is now spunky and feisty but channels this towards obtaining 
a man, at great cost: as Henke, Umble, and Smith write, “Little wonder […] that 
alarms sound for feminists concerned with the psychological development of girls 
and women’s sense of self when Ariel literally sacrifices her voice” (1996, 237). 
Disney makes this condition more sexist than in Anderson; note Ursula’s quips 
such as “It’s she who holds her tongue who gets a man.” Leading a barrage of 
critics,9 Roberta Trites, in her 1991 article, concluded, “The movie depicts women 
as either self-effacing or evil, incapable of creating their own responsible power 
without either depending on men or stealing power from them. Thus, Disney’s 
interpretation of Anderson’s story perpetuates sexist values by teaching those 
values to a new generation” (152). 

Some critics found “Team Disney’s” next production, Beauty and the Beast 
(1991), to be “the same old story, a romance plot that robs female characters of 
self-determination and individuality,” to quote June Cummins (1995, 22). Others, 
myself included, found that the film really did break new ground in greatly 
submerging the fairy-tale-romance ending almost to an afterthought. Additionally, 
the agency accorded to Belle is ground-breaking: she “exercises more power 
on her own behalf than previous Disney heroines” (Henke, Umble, and Smith 
1996, 238) and claims literally twice as much screen time as any other character 
in the film (Thomas in Henke, Umble and Smith 1996, 238). Belle resists societal 
pressures by engaging in reading, dreaming beyond “provincial” norms, rejecting 
the town suitor, and even defying the Beast himself. As Henke, Umble, and Smith 
explain, “No victim, Belle sets the terms for the bargains she makes. In this sense, 
she exercises more power on her own behalf than previous Disney heroines. […] 
She preserves her own options […] [And] by freeing her father from the Beast’s 



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

12

prison, becoming a prisoner herself, and saving the Beast from the wolves, [s]
he holds their futures in her hands” (1996, 239). In stark contrast to those lightly-
glossed-over relationships of the early Princess films, “It offers to viewers a 
model for intimacy which presumes that both partners must seek wholeness 
of Self before either can find wholeness in relationship,” according to Susan Z. 
Swan (350), with Belle choosing a man “who wants the same things [books and 
intellect], [thus] symbolically [… ] marrying an aspect of herself” (Ross 2004, 63).

I am pleased to say that my daughter Annetta’s first Princess favorites were, 
in fact, Belle and Pocahontas. Acknowledging that there has been a large outcry 

especially from Native Americans and 
cultural critics against Pocahontas 
(1995),10 from a strictly feminist 
perspective, I still do appreciate “Team 
Disney” portraying a minority heroine 
who shows even greater personal 
risk in “saving her man” than even 
Ariel or Belle and who, in other ways, 
goes against the grain. Forget that we 
know from the historical record that 
Pocahontas in fact married someone 
else and migrated to England, or that 
race relations could not be mitigated by 
simply one strong person. It is enough, 
I think, that the last image we see on 
the screen is of a courageous woman 
standing alone without a husband but 
with a mighty purpose to undertake. 
As Henke, Umble, and Smith write, 
“Our reading of Pocahontas implies 
that she is clearly the most elaborate 
and complex character in this group of 
heroines. […] [She is] an adventurous 
female who […] chooses a destiny 
other than that of heterosexual 
romantic fulfillment” (1996, 240-1). 

“Team Disney”’s last “princess” 
movie, Mulan (1998), is possibly their 

best. Again I admit that cultural critics have much maligned the film in its huge 
deviations from traditional renderings of the Mulan legend, using clichéd images 
of the East, and using “streetwise black lingo” through the character of Eddy 
Murphy’s Mushu character (Ma 2003, 151).11 Nevertheless, there are important 
strides here in showing a strong, independent, brave woman whose story, for the 
most part, does not even rely on a romance plot but is one about martial bravery 
and quick-thinking as Mulan concocts strategies for defeating the Huns and 
rescuing the Emperor. In the first instance, she cleverly aims her gun not at one 
soldier but at a snow-covered to create an avalanche that subdues the entire Hun 

Figure 3. Annetta as Pocahantas, age 
two, trick-or-treating on Halloween. 
Photograph by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre.



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

13

army. She then creates a plan to save the Emperor when the Huns kidnap him 
and, knowing her resourcefulness by now, the men immediately follow her.

Many of the strides made in narrative strategy are backed by more politically 
acceptable physical images. Belle and Mulan, for instance, reveal fewer curves, 
and flaunt “untidy” hair which shows rebellion of society’s codes of neat 
femininity. In fact, Mulan is androgynous for most of the movie. Of course, the 
same could not be said for Ariel and Pocahontas. Ariel is barely clothed with 
small shells to cover her breasts while Pocahontas is leggy with hardly any waist, 
an off-the-shoulder look to show off her voluptuous breasts. DoRozario refers to 
their athleticism, “enact[ing] a shift from the ‘princesses’ of ballet to the ‘heroes’ of 
sport” (2004, 47) and describes them as moving with “the grace of sportswomen. 
Ariel performs underwater feats and rescues Eric from drowning in a storm. […] 
Pocahontas dives off waterfalls, sings a solo while shooting the rapids and duets 
while running cross-country” (46-7). However, as Bean notes, they are “male-
defined fantasies of female biological perfection. Drawn according to the same 
impossible dimensions as the Barbie doll — or any number of surgically altered 
Hollywood actresses — Disney’s heroines all feature tiny waists, large breasts, 
curvy hips, and sensuous hair” (2003, 55). Queries Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, “Would 
[Pocahontas], like Barbie, fall over if really given those dimensions?” The simple 
image of her body threatens to undermine any powerful feminist or ecological 
message she might promote, Kilpatrick writing, “She does sing to John about 
living naturally in tune with the Earth […] but does she have to do it in an off-the-
shoulder miniskirt?” (1995, 36-7)

But the 1990s Disney films would still probably have failed had they not been 
enhanced by incredibly promoted soundtracks. The Little Mermaid won an Oscar 
for “Under the Sea”12 while Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson’s pop version of “Tale 
as Old as Time” blared over all radio stations in 1991-2. The “Princess” songs 
from these films now appear in various sing-along and princess collection CD’s, 
dispersing their ideologies to more and more generations of kids. I find “Kiss 
the Girl” masking some dangerous sentiments (“You know she wants it”) with 
our increased attention to date rape in recent decades. But many of the others, 
including Ariel’s song, “Part of Your World,” Belle’s Song, Pocahontas’ “Just Around 
the River Bend,” and “Mulan’s “Reflection,” are all about a young woman’s sense 
of confinement under patriarchal laws; to quote Ariel, “Bright young women, sick 
of swimmin’, ready to stand.” Most speak about defying society and choosing 
their own course of action, as Belle sings: “I want adventure in the great, wide 
somewhere, I want it more than I can say … I want so much more than they’ve 
got planned.” “Mulan’s “Reflection,” though least known, probably best sums up 
this powerful trend in revealing women’s anger and rebellion in a patriarchal 
society: 

Now I see, that if I were truly to be myself, I would break my family’s  
 heart.  
… Somehow I cannot hide, Who I am, though I’ve tried.  
When will my reflection show who I am inside?



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

14

If there is a problem in these songs, it is the self-deprecating way that each 
woman begins her song, Ariel asking “Maybe there is something wrong with me,” 
for example. Pocahontas, in “Colors of the Wind” is made to blindly state, “You 
think I’m an ignorant savage, And you’ve been so many place, I guess it must be 
so” while even Mulan begins her reflection by admitting, “Look at me, I will never 
pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter.” Too, as I have just delineated, most 
of the songs’ feminist stances run counter to the ultimate romance plots; despite 
defying society’s marriage expectations, 
all women end up married or sought 
after by the end.13 I would argue that, 
taken independent of their opening 
recitatives and especially the ultimate 
outcomes in the films, though, these 
songs, sung on their own, are fairly 
liberating “hymns to her.” 

“Look at This Stuff, Isn’t It Neat?” 
21st Century Manifestations of the 
Disney Princesses

I end, then, with contemporary 
manifestations of the Disney Princesses. 
Indeed, the re-releases and sequels 
of these now classic films keep their 
images alive on the screen for each 
new generation. The Disney Company 
tries to redeem the historical record by 
having Pocahontas marry John Rolfe in 
England in Pocahontas II: Journey to 
a New World (1998); Ariel, ironically, 
succumbs to overly-protective 
motherhood herself in Little Mermaid 
II: Return to the Sea (2000) while we learn of her own mother’s tragic adventure in 
The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning (2008); and Mulan and her romantic interest 
Li Shang, in un-Asian fashion, try to prevent three arranged marriages in Mulan II 
(2004). 

In the midst of my revision of this article, Disney unveiled their first Princess 
movie in eighteen years, The Princess and the Frog (December 2009). Clearly, 
Disney was attempting to address earlier “sins:” Tiana is the first African-American 
princess and her dream is to own her own restaurant, not find a “prince;” in fact, 
her rich, white friend, Lotty, whose only aspiration is to find a prince becomes 
easy fodder in the “evil plot.” In the end, it is Tiana who gets the prince, and her 
dream becomes his, so she achieves that twentieth-first-century, feminist goal of 
having a man and a successful career, too. But Tiana’s desire to own her own 
restaurant is, in large part, an extension of her dead father’s dream, and much of 
the movie serves to point out her almost foolish one-tracked obsession with it, 

Figure 4. Annetta as Mulan, age six, 
and cousin Becca as Ariel, age five. 
Photograph by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre.



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

15

to the exclusion of “finding love.” Further, Disney playfully inverts the princess-
and-the-frog motif so that both Tiana and Prince Naveen spend most of their 
on-screen time as amphibians; this thus limits the amount of time Disney can 
devote to exploring human gender roles. Its release has not, ultimately, seemed to 
have made a huge impact. It made only $263 million worldwide at the box-office 
and $67 million on DVD sales (by comparison, the next big children’s film, Toy 
Story 3 [June 2010] grossed $984 million world-wide; the-numbers.com). Though 
nominated for Best Animated Feature Film of 2010 at the Academy Awards, it 
lost to Pixar’s Up; ticket sales, too, confirmed popular preference for Up (#4 in 
ticket sales for 2009) than Princess and the Frog (which was 38th). Even Disney 
seems to have pulled back in promoting the film: their official Princess Magazine 
highlighted Tiana in their October 2009 magazine in anticipation of the film, but 
subsequent issues have simply shown her as part of the princess line-up at the 
back, with no feature stories. Internet articles and blogs show viewers divided 
on Disney’s achievement, commending Tiana’s minority status while complaining 
that she follows the stereotype of a poor black in the segregated South, that 
she marries a “whiter” Prince, and that the use of voodoo is overwhelming and 
frightening. Maybe their next Princess movie, Tangled, set to be released in 
November 2010, with a feisty — albeit still blonde and sexy — Rapunzel, will 
bring back a flamboyant 1990s heroine. 

It may be no surprise, then, that Disney has continued to promote their other 
Princesses. For our twenty-first century computer-savvy little girls, Disney has 
its own Princess website at http://disney.go.com/princess where “happily ever 
after happens every day.” Ironically, much of the website is devoted to more 
consumerism: purchasing Princess products and videos, viewing Disney theme 
parks, etc. When girls are asked to participate, it is to paint, hear a story, decorate 
a room, or to help a Princess dress. Girls love this: the Princesses call the girls their 
“friends,” play their favorite songs in the background, and “you get to pick out 
their clothes and they’re all so pretty,” my eight-year-old tells me. Yet I respond 
that it is too bad she wasn’t asked to greet the guests, help rule the kingdom, or 
do other more meaningful work! As Meghan Sweeney recently pointed out, the 
covert messages are still conservative: Princesses look coy, are overly appreciative 
and sweet, while the little girls’ own agency — simply dressing and decorating — 
is severely limited.14 

Book publishers are also eager to share the Princess market. Random House 
uses Princesses in their Step Into Reading series. Redan Publishing, using Disney 
artwork by permission, publishes a Disney Princess Magazine targeting girls 3-8 
years old with crafts and stories. A plethora of Golden and other such books 
repeat the film’s versions of these fairy tales. Scholastic Books publishes a line of 
books through their Princess Book Club: The Disney Princess Collection. These 
books are aesthetically weak, using Disney Princesses to tote pedantic stories 
about being brave, paying attention, taking turns, and telling the truth. What is 
potentially useful about the books is that they enlarge the meaning of “princess” 
beyond those who are royal or rich, and clearly define it as a character trait — 
something any brave or clever girl could emulate — by giving a problem and then 
asking, “What would a princess do?” The books further disavow the princesses’ 



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

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royal and/or romantic status by setting books before they have married their 
prince, or quickly dismissing their princely-husband. In the first instance, we often 
find Cinderella back dealing with problems with her stepsisters and see Mulan 
back as a man among the troops. In the second instance, Princess Snow White 
will leave her prince to visit the dwarves, and when her prince is off visiting 
another kingdom, Princess Cinderella cavorts around the castle with the mice, 
often dressed very much like the servant Cinderella. In several Pocahontas books, 
Pocahontas actually plays with Capt. Radcliffe’s dog Percy, reminding readers that 
the context is post-Smith but not once mentioning him while Pocahontas carries 
on her daily routine with fellow villagers. This is fascinating to me because it 
suggests that, despite the “hype” over the Princess status — as romantic and royal 
— it is much more interesting to tell stories of their lives as single, poor women. It 
is not a bad reminder to make to girls.

And girls everywhere need to be reminded of this to offset the bombardment 
of images on everything from cereal boxes to pajamas. Combining the princesses 
erases any individuality among them: Belle is simply not Snow White if you have 
seen the movies. The most common combination of Princesses is the Caucasian 
Cinderella, Belle, and Sleeping Beauty, as we see on towels, clothes, and many 
other products. Pocahontas, Mulan, even Tiana are still shown much less often, 
defeating the cultural strides the films had made. Too, the Princesses are now 
usually shown in very regal and sexual ways, again disappointing given the 
statements of the actual movies: the book-worm Belle now has a cleavage, the 
modest Aurora looks alluring, and Jasmine often seems to be starting a strip-
tease.15

All of these points are manifested visibly at Walt Disney World itself where my 
daughter (in 2008, age six) and her four-year-old cousin stood in half-hour lines 
to be photographed with the royal Belle, Aurora, and Cinderella in the Magic 
Kingdom. Mulan, on the other hand, was showcased only briefly, and without 
wait, at the China exhibit in EPCOT — as if she were an exotic cultural icon like 
the Great Wall. Pocahontas is easy to miss in Animal Kingdom, appearing in her 
own small nature show completely dwarfed by the Lion King show next door … 
and was never available to be photographed with little girls. Both facts suggest 
Pocahontas as an “animal-other”, housed far from humans, used only to teach 
ecology lessons.16

And what songs are ringing in little girls’ ears these days? When not singing 
along to soundtracks and sing-along CDs — which encourage rote memory 
of potentially problematic lyrics just discussed — little girls may be singing 
adulterated versions of classic and folk songs; my daughter owns a Princess 
Fairy Tale Song book in which Irving Berlin’s classic “In my Easter Bonnet” 
is now perverted to “Smile and show your dimples”! When Disney tries to be 
original, with their much heralded 2004 release of a newly written song, the 
“princess anthem,” ‘If You Can Dream,’ on Walt Disney Record’s The Ultimate 
Song Collection, performed by many of the original soloists of Princess films (Judy 
Kuhn, Jodi Benson, Paige O’Hara, and Lea Salonga, etc.), a ridiculous hodge-
podge of clichés from all the princess songs are put together into unrealistic, 
romantic sentiments:



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

17

There is a world where hope and dreams can last for all time 
A wondrous place to go you’ll know it when your heart finds … 
Hearing our song as old as rhyme, Hold my hand, we’re gonna’ fly 
What a magic ride, and just a kiss away …

[Refrain]  
If you can dream, the wish we’re making on a star is coming true 
The colors of the wind will lead my heart right back to you 
‘Cause if you can dream, reflections in a diamond sky come shinin’ on  
 through 
Romance will always be so new and love will save the day.

I am especially disturbed to see the “colors of the wind” phrase torn from its 
environmental theme and appropriated into the romantic message. If this is as 
good as Disney can now do, I am turning off my CD player. 

Conclusion

And so we come to some conclusions as I ponder the eminent fate of my eight-
year-old daughter, now in her sixth year of “Princess fan-dom.” Bendix reminds us 
that “How children ultimately process their encounters with [Disney] […] remains 
a largely unexplored domain. […] It remains to be hoped that children around 
the world will be resilient enough to challenge the commodified fantasies that 
are coming their way” (1993, 290). Hastings warns that “Such moral simplification 
[of good/bad people; of all desires fulfilled] increases the likelihood that these 
children will become adults who find the causes of their own unhappiness in 
personalized, ‘evil’ antagonists — a sure formula for continued conflict” (1993, 
90). Yet O’Brien points out that children usually use the characters, not the plots, 
in their play so rebellious girls from the 1990s films still offer positive role models 
(1996, 178). In 2004, Alexander M. Bruce conducted a study of second- and third-
graders about the Disney princesses, concluding that “the girls did tend toward 
one general reaction: they want the life of the princess — just not necessarily 
the prince himself” (2005-2006, 7).17 Though reassured that girls may be shaking 
off some of Disney’s romantic notions and are becoming more independent 
(paralleled, in fact, by the phenomenon found in Scholastic’s book-series where 
the men actually disappear), I note the troubling extension of this: that to be a 
princess yet means “to have all the beautiful possessions they could hope for” 
with great significance placed on physical beauty (Bruce 2005-2006, 15). In my 
limited experience, I do find that Annetta has always been more fascinated by 
the characters themselves, not the storylines or romantic endings. She and her 
friends love waltzing into a room in full princess regalia or stealing around the 
backyard as Pocahontas and friends, creating their own stories. We talk about the 
physical beauty, tiny waists, jewelry, and moments of complete acquiescence not 
being necessary or even appropriate to being a “princess.” Indeed, Mia Adessa 
Towbin and others suggest using the films as a “springboard for family discussion. 
If parents watch the movies with their children and ask questions before, during, 



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

18

and after, parents can begin to increase their children’s media literacy” of how to 
read films (2003, 40). 

I cannot ignore the look of rapture whenever my daughter dons her Sleeping 
Beauty dress or meets Ariel at Walt Disney World. So I am going to continue to let 
Annetta enjoy her Princess dolls and dresses, but I am also going to be a continual 
presence in the reading, listening, and viewing of anything “Princess.” To enjoy, 
with an analytical eye; to share, while developing a critical world view: these can 
be the feminist attitudes I can pass on to my exuberant “Princess fanatic.” 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my sister, Amy Clapp, and friends Kristen Brunton and 
Beverly Pegg for reading and discussing portions of this paper, and for allowing 
me to showcase their daughters in the imbedded images: Rebecca Salmonson, 
Madelyn Brunton, and Andrea and Natalie Pegg, respectively. I would also like to 
thank Dr. Elizabeth Tucker, Editor of Children’s Folklore Review, for an incredibly 
enjoyable experience publishing this paper.  Finally, I thank my daughter, Annetta 
Itnyre, and husband, Ron Itnyre, who have been with me every step of the way 
with this project!

NOTES

1. This study originated as a conference paper given at the Annual Children’s 
Literature Association Conference, Manhattan Beach, California, 10 June 2006.

2. I am using internet articles and EBSCOhost database news-articles: Vicki 
Arkoff, “How Disney Princess Works,” HowStuffWorks. 2006-9. HowStuffWorks, 
Inc. May 31, 2009. <entertainment.howstuffworks.com>; Rosie Millard, “In five 
years, Disney Princess has bloomed into a hugely successful multinational brand,” 
in New Statesman (January 9, 2006); “Disney Princess proves she’s still the fairest 
of the land,” “Business Wire” (New York, June 21, 2005); and Susan Wloszczyna, 
“Disney princesses wear merchandising crown,” in USA Today (Sept. 17, 2003). See 
also Lee Artz, “The Righteousness of Self-Centered Royals: The World According 
to Disney Animation.” Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media 
Studies. 18. 1 (2004): 116-46.

3. Frances Clarke Sayers accused Disney of “sweeten[ing] a folk tale … [which] 
destroys the proportion and purpose of the story, the conflict and its resolution” 
(118). Jill May has regretted that “One of Disney’s greatest achievements in the 
realm of film was to replace the reader’s desire to pursue a book’s theme through 
the viewing pleasure of light-hearted American entertainment” (464). 

4. Their sweetness is amplified by consistently including older women — not 
their mothers — who are the antagonists of the films, from Snow White’s Evil 
Stepmother, to Lady Trumain, to Millicifent, those “femme fatales” ably discussed 
in Henke, Umble, and Smith; Bell; and DoRozario. The princess’s “weaknesses are 
contrasted with the awesome and awful power of the evil women with whom they 
struggle” (Hemke, Umble, and Smith 234).



CLAPP-ITNYRE  “PRINCESS FANATIC” 

19

5. See both of their articles for close analyses of what Disney changed from the 
original Grimm version.

6. Naomi Wood suggests the voyeurism of Cinderella, as when the Duke looks 
at her through his monocle which “serves to focus on and frame Cinderella, 
particularly her legs and feet, and places us as the audience in the same 
appreciative position” (32).

7. With Cinderella, Walt Disney used every star and advertising gimmick to sell 
the movie through its songs, with well-known singers such as Dinah Shore and 
Bing Crosby signed on to sing promotional versions of “Bibbidi-Bobidi-Boo” on 
radio and recordings (O’Brien 166). 

8. Noting the lack of fathers in these earlier films now often corrected in 
this new films, DoRozario writes that “Team Disney’s re-affirmation of a closer 
bond suggests the company’s own paternal attachment to the more challenging 
daughters of the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first, to whom Walt 
Disney himself is little more than a black and white photograph of a rather old-
fashioned looking man” (36). 

9. See Bendix; Hastings; O’Brien; Henke, Umble, and Smith; Finkelstein in 
Ayres; and Ross.

10. See Edgerton; Kilpatrick; Kiyomi; and Perekh. 
11. It is regrettable that Team Disney felt so unsure of their story that they 

had to add the sassy dragon voiced by Eddy Murphy whose jokes are not 
only culturally inappropriate but bordering on the disrespectful at times. Too, 
its ending, Mulan returning to her home with a suitor soon following, is a bit 
disappointing. 

12. Lyricist Howard Ashman, co-author of The Little Shop of Horrors, and 
composer Alan Menken came together to write the songs for The Little Mermaid; 
Eisner credits Ashman as being “the most important creative decision we made on” 
the film (qtd. in DoRozario 48).

 13. It is significant that Ashman and Menken wrote the songs to The Little 
Mermaid before the animation was started (Sells 183), because there is a sharp 
disconnect between the liberating lyrics here and the ultimate conclusion of her 
tale: as Ross puts it, “Yes, she gets her legs, she makes her stand, she marches — 
but only down the aisle, to marry some guy named Eric” (60).

 14. Meghan Sweeney, “We Have an Opening for a Princess: Disney Princess 
Culture on the Web,” 37th Annual International Conference of the Children’s 
Literature Association, Eastern Michigan University, 11June 2010.

15. See Bean for a discussion about the erotic portrayal of these princesses in 
the films and elsewhere. 

16. Kenneth B. Kidd problematizes the Animal Kingdom in other ways in 
“Disney of Orlando’s Animal Kingdom.” 

17. Bruce and his students asked useful, probing questions of their elementary 
students, such as “Do you think Cinderella was right to act as she did?” and 
“How do Belle (Beauty and the Beast) and Mulan differ from Aurora (Sleeping 
Beauty) and Snow White?” See Alexander M. Bruce, “Princesses without a Prince: 
A Consideration of Girls’ Reactions to Disney’s ‘Princess” Movies” in Children’s 
Folklore Review, 28 (2005-6): 7-21.



“PRINCESS FANATIC”  CLAPP-ITNYRE

20

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