Fairy Tales and Self-Image

This is an excerpt from a recent paper I wrote that compares Disney's The Princess and the Frog to other princess films in the Disney tradition. This section deals specifically with ideas on the effects of the "White privileging" of fairytales on multicultural children as described by Dorothy Hurley in her article "Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess."

"The simple fact that Tiana is the first African-American princess has stirred a great deal of controversy. While some advocate and approve the increase in Disney princess racial diversity, others still criticize Disney for a variety of issues, such as the fact that it took nearly 75 years for the incorporation of an African American princess into the Disney tradition. Dorothy Hurley’s article “Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess” speaks to the concern that images of predominantly white heroes and heroines negatively impacts the feelings of self-worth of non-white children. Hurley writes that “children, if they are to develop a positive self-image, need to ‘see’ themselves or their images in texts.” She explains that because of the extreme dominance of Disney fairytale films children have come to believe the Disney version of a fairytale is the real one as opposed to those told by Perrault, Grimm, or Andersen. According to Hurley the Disney ideal privileges “whiteness,” and as a result non-white children associate goodness and beauty with being white. The negative impact on young non-white children is that they develop feelings of “social worthlessness” because they do not recognize themselves in the “good” white protagonists offered by Disney fairytales and because they lack positive models with which they can associate themselves. Hurley suggests that the remedy to the lack of positive self-image in all children is for writers to “retell classic tales” that would feature positive descriptions through visual and written texts of characters of color with whom children outside the white realm could identify.
The Princess and the Frog works to eliminate the equation of whiteness with goodness by casting non-white, specifically African-American, protagonists. Tiana as the story’s heroine is still beautiful but she is also smart, dedicated, and extremely hardworking. Her motivation is not romance or fantasy but a very realistic goal of working hard to earn enough money to buy her restaurant. Not only is she a strong female role model for her perseverance for African-American girls, but her redeeming qualities cross racial lines and she also serves as an exemplar for all girls with a dream they must work hard to achieve. One could even argue that she is a more realistic role model than most of the white princesses who remain passive in their dreams instead of taking action to accomplish them as Tiana does. Tiana’s African-American background speaks to cultural aspirations for an increase in racial equality and representation, which is certainly a modern development since the naissance of Disney princess culture. Critics like Hurley may find solace in the notion that non-white children are gaining more positive examples from which they can draw inspiration they could not have previously with all-white protagonists."