Halle Bailey’s The Little Mermaid was a cultural phenomenon over the summer. Many people (including myself) were in awe of her performance as Ariel. Halle Bailey embodied her spirit and her voice throughout the movie. The movie proved that Halle Bailey IS Ariel and that’s an undeniable fact.
Her performance has recently sparked a trend of fancasts for a different Disney Princess, Rapunzel from Disney’s Tangled. Even though a Tangled live action adaptation has yet to be confirmed, people on TikTok and Twitter are bubbling up discussions of possibilities of who Rapunzel could be. However, like Halle Bailey’s Ariel, many people are envisioning Rapunzel as a woman of color in their dream casts.
The agreed sentiment seems to be that Rapunzel should specifically be a South Asian woman. Everytime a South Asian woman is noticed in the public eye, they are put in this imaginary running. Many contenders include Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever, Both Simone Ashley and Charithra Chandran from Bridgerton, and lately after the Mean Girls Musical Movie got released in January, Avantika Vandanapu.
Maitreyi herself has even stated that her dream role was Rapunzel in a CBS interview, with her fans also making artwork and edits to support her vision.
I fully agree with Maitreyi that a South Asian girl can and should play Rapunzel in a Tangled live action, with a few reasons why.
- Our Relationship with Hair
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South Asian women are known for our luscious and long black hair. We take great pride in it with our various hair-care routines. It is ingrained in our beauty standard. Indian hair-care products in particular such as Amla Oil are very popular with non-South Asians too! South Asian women also developed a tradition of oiling your hair to keep it healthy, with our mothers teaching us this in the first place to pass it on. Rapunzel’s hair is so important to her story and takes care of it with pride, just like a South Asian woman does too.
- Our Feelings with Being Trapped
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Like Rapunzel, many South Asians can relate with feeling trapped by our parents. Our cultures are heavily family and community orientated. Our lives are typically guided by our parents. We strive to make them proud by any means necessary. This backfires on us though as many of us have to fight for freedom to make our own choices. The stereotype that South Asians can’t leave the house without permission is true for a lot of us. Rapunzel has to fight to live out her dreams in the movie, and who can understand that better than a South Asian?
- Rapunzel’s Race Doesn’t Matter For The Story
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Rapunzel is one of those fairytales that can be reformatted to take place anywhere. In the Disney movie, she is in a vague European country. The country and culture in the movie isn’t significant to her story or her as a character. The story could be set in Asia or even Australia without the central story beats and characters changing drastically! However, this doesn’t apply to all the Disney Princesses. For example, Tiana and Mulan’s race and culture are important to their stories. Changing them would alter their stories to the point the movie wouldn’t work. A South Asian Rapunzel wouldn’t alter the story too much, and that’s important to keep in mind.
At the end of the day, whoever ends up playing Rapunzel in a hypothetical live action would do an amazing job. I would support the actress who gets to play her no matter what. Rapunzel is a kind, caring, and beautiful person inside and out. That can be done by anyone, regardless of race, if you strive to achieve that.