I don't want to be that obvious, but I am a black women (girl...whatever). I washed all the Disney princesses movies when I was growing up. Because I was the only one girl in my family with three boys, my parents wanted me to be comfortable playing with the guys, but in the same time they did not want me to forget that I was a girl and from time to time I was suppose to be girly. My parents figured out really early that I was not a girly girl (NO PINK, NO PUFFY PRINCESSY DRESSES...NONE OF THAT) and I am pretty sure my mom was a little disappointing by that. I am not going to lye, I loved washing Cinderella, sleeping beauty, snow white, and all those wonderful "fantasist" movies, but in the same time it did not help me. Me, as a black little girl, I grow up feeling left out; my skin was not light enough, my hair was not good enough pretty enough to be in a beautiful princess head. Even though I grow up liking those beautiful fantasy girl/women, I did not relate to any of them and for a little girl, it is confusing.
I do not blame my parents for that, there were not really much choice at the time. I am glad that I am the person that I am today and I feel really confident to say that I will prefer not showing those "Disney princesses movies" to my future children. I believe those movies have a negative point of views, women have to wait on "prince charming" to save them or the day, a certain type of women are considerate beautiful/ princesses (size zero, if that is possible), for women to be happy they always have to find that particular prince charming. also what a pressure to pit on a man.
I was chocked and curious
I stated in my blog that I love Cinderella so I owned every version so of course I owned the "black" version featuring Brandy as well. And when I was a sophomore in high school that was our school play and some community members (I live in a mostly white town) were kind of pissed because it wasn't the "original, white, perfect" version of the story. But we did it anyways and it was fantastic!!!! I'm thrilled that even though Cinderella is white, they cast Brandy as the lead. Not to mention pretty much the entire cast was going against their "typical" roles, with Paolo Montalban, a Filipeano-American, as Prince Charming and the late Whitney Houston as the Godmother.
ReplyDelete... I told you I loved Cinderella. :]
I can see you loved Cinderella Noelle, but as you said many people were upset that they choose Brandy and Paolo as Cinderella and prince charming because she and he did not fit their criteria. To tell you the truth, I did not see that version of Cinderella few years until I got here. I was happy and sad at the same time for the simple reason this version was not as popular as the other one.
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