Growing up watching Disney princess movies, I would look up at the screen and pretend that I was Aurora from Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella… from Cinderella. I would see a girl who looked like me having these magical experiences and wish for them to be my own.
However, that is not the case for everyone. For non-white kids growing up (in the US in particular), there was a huge disparity in the people they saw in the media and themselves.
It is a pretty well-known fact that the media we consume has an immense impact on how we come to see and treat others. This is especially true for kids. They are watching movies and TV at such a young age that they are forming these understandings of the world from the moment the credits start playing.
For example, a report by Dr. Dana Mastro and Dr. Michael B. Robb, for Common Sense, says that “despite being 18% of the population, Latinos only make up 5% of speaking film roles”. This representation matters because “63% of parents believe that media has an impact on the information children have about people of other races, ethnicities, religions, and cultures”. When they don’t see themselves on screens (or when they see a harmful stereotype), this can negatively affect the way they perceive the people around them.
Lack of representation can cause serious negative effects on a child’s perception of the world. We can see the true effects of this when there is adequate representation. In that same report from Common Sense, it states, “among Black elementary school girls, exposure to liked Black TV characters is associated with more positive feelings about their own status, appearance, and happiness”.
This is where we circle back around to my Disney princess obsession when I was younger. While I was staring at magical women that looked like me, my black peers were missing that same representation. However, this changed when, in 2009, Disney released The Princess and the Frog.
In The Princess and the Frog, Disney introduces the first black princess, Tiana. In the movie, we follow Tiana find her prince charming in the same way Disney movies follow any other princess. Finally, a young black woman could look up at the screen (just like I did), and see herself in a princess’s shoes. The movie provided much-needed racial diversity in Disney’s catalog and helped counteract the harmful stereotypes that are sometimes portrayed in children’s media.