DPS, more commonly known as Disney Princess Syndrome, is a problem which affects many, many Disney Princesses (as I'm sure you're no doubt aware having read the name). The symptoms are common, always present in the patient and, sadly, are very contagious. The Syndrome itself is most commonly found among the Disney brand but is present in most forms of media which cater to the female sex (no giggling!). The symptoms include a single parent, anorexia (or unhealthy bodies), virginity and purity, Caucasian skin tone, a lack of an identity beyond the biological difference of being female, a plot device ability to fall in love in five minutes and lastly an unending desire to complete their last, and only, goal; to be married.

Almost every Disney Princess film has carried these traits. From Snow White, to Cinderella, right up to Enchanted. Will the upcoming The Princess and the Frog, due to be released this December, prove to be any different from its predecessors? Only time will tell (though if you're taking bets I've a twenty that says it won't). For the time being however, it is worth taking a look at the beginnings of DPS and watching as the trend began in 1937...

SNOW WHITE

It is difficult to have a go at Snow White since the film was made in the 1930s, well before modern feminism, but there are many of the characteristics of later Disney Princess films present in their first animated feature. The first? Well, the mother is dead. The biological mother that is. The father is also out of the picture. Who is left? The step-mother. Naturally she is the most evil creature imaginable, embodying everything that is disgusting and inhuman (Hitler was a step-mother, did you know that? True story). Anyway, the step-mother; vain, sexually aware (she's mature, single and takes care of herself) and in charge of the household is the evil one. The good and pure (read virgin) Snow White knows nothing of sex, hell she even looks like a child:

Snow White loves housework, as any good girl does, and is only saved from death in the woods by the male woodcutter and the dwarfs, and is only saved from the evil, sexually mature, in charge step-mother by the Prince. Snow White then runs off to get married and she lives happily ever after.

Like I said, it's easy to have a go at Snow White for being sexist. I mean really, truly, mind boggingly easy! But perhaps it should be thought of in the same light as the racist Gone With The Wind, another classic film released two years later. DPS is excusable here, but the effects of it are long lasting. For now we move onto the next film:


Cinderella

Well at least we know for certain that we're dealing with an adult woman this time round. This time however we are presented with other problems. The film, made in 1950, is about a slim, blonde girl who, thankfully, hates being forced to clean up after her two ugly step-sisters and step-mother. Once again, dead parents. A substitute/step-mother is evil. Once again, the mother is sexually mature and single. "But," I hear you say, "so is Cinderella!" This is true. But she's a virgin, so she's not sexually aware which is what really matters in DPS. "But there's also the fairy godmother! She's old and probably gotten some in her years!" Perhaps. This is never built upon so it's a grey area. What is not a grey area is her relationship to Cinderella. She's the godmother; her link with Cinderella is cemented in religious tradition and bound by church and god. The step-mother is bound by law. That's not traditional, so it's got to be evil.

Beauty is clearly an issue her as well. The step-sisters are ugly and you wouldn't really do the step-mother either. The king and his aide are bumbling fools one fat and the other lanky. This is the first time in which beauty gets chopped up into good things, and ugly into bad. The step-sisters are both flat chested, and the step-mother isn't pushing out further than a B-Cup. In Snow White both female characters are the best looking women in the kingdom, or so the Mirror says, but Cinderella enforces a new symptom of DPS; to live happily ever after you have to be beautiful. To obtain a waist like Cinderella's you'd have to be photo-shopped or be this:

All the symptoms of DPS are present and accounted for; desire to be married, unrealistic beauty, virginity, dead mother, a lack of any real character beyond being a woman, a bizarre desire to sing, and the easy love.


Aurora

First things first, Princess Aurora, from Sleeping Beauty, was modeled on a famous pin-up model Evelyn Kaufman. The character was practically built on sex. But regardless of this the film has to get some props for being the first, and the last, Disney Princess to have both parents living, and have mature women who aren't evil or related in any fashion to the Princess. But that's where the praise ends. In the film Aurora is destined to die if she gets penetrated by a pointy thing, which makes her bleed. Yes, I'm making a point of the spindle being a penis symbol and the pricking the finger being the breaking of her hymen and loss of her virginity. To graphic for you? Sorry.

But, in the end, Princess Aurora falls in love with a man after five minutes and a song, is woken by his kiss and gets married. Once again, for a 15 year old, Aurora has a tiny waist. Smaller than her head.

Beauty is good, ugly is bad. The evil woman is once again ugly. And if you don't think so I wonder what about a green skinned woman gets you going. I'd actually like to know. Call me strange but I'll be calling you stranger. There isn't the emphasis on body shape that there was in Cinderella as the old fairies in Sleeping Beauty are quite squat and comical, and yet basically save the Prince and Princess from death. As a DPS sufferer, Aurora has one of the mildest cases.


Ariel

Sweet merciful Christ where do we start with this one? Okay, Ariel, a motherless mermaid princess, falls in love with a sailor (a twist on actual mermaid tales where it's the sailor who falls for the seductive mermaid). Ariel, whose age it is impossible to determine (though she seems to be a young teen), can't get the sailor because she can't walk on land. The obvious solution is to get legs. She does; from her evil, older, fat, alternative-mother woman sorcerer. For the legs she exchanges her voice. She gives up her voice for a guy she saved from the sea and did nothing else with at all. Ever. Okay, getting past this without her voice, she still has to get handsome Eric to fall in love with her. How you ask?

When ya get 'em, spread 'em.

So it's old, sexually aware, 'ugly', woman versus virginal, innocent, pure little girl. Again. But this little girl wants to get it on. Talk about your mixed messages. "Sell your soul to have sex, but don't have sex 'cause then you become evil!" But, in the end, the day is saved by the men. Fan-fucking-tastic.


Belle

HOORAY. A woman who doesn't do menial tasks and go after the first handsome male she sees. She even likes books! Sweet merciful crap it's like she's a real character! Her waist is almost as wide as her head! Holy crap could this be it? Could this be the first major DPS breakthrough recovery? Eh, kinda. Like Sleeping Beauty before, Beauty and the Beast does shake off most of the trappings of being a Disney Princess. In the beginning of the film the Beast, in human form, refuses entry to his castle to an ugly old woman who it turns out is beautiful sorcerer (happens to me all the time) who admonishes him for being such a cold-hearted, vain prick. And thus the Beast is born.

So what's the problem? Well I'll tell you. Belle gets traumatised by Beast on numerous occasions, even seeing her father locked up in the dungeon of the castle (Again, no biological mother. Seriously, what the fuck is going on in Disney that they can't give these girls their mothers?). However, she sticks it out and eventually turns the abusive Beast into the handsome Prince whom she marries. Well, again marriage seems to be THE happy ending. At no point do these girls go off to lead their own lives. They always end up being with the man. A strong female character would simply have told the Beast to go to hell and walked out. You may say that this is simply the character's choice to stay, but it's not. It's the writer's choice. The writer made Belle stay with a monster and marry him. Anyway, for creating possibly one of the worst lessons to teach a young girl when talking about love, and once again making traditional, heterosexual marriage the happy ending it's difficult to separate Belle from the rest of the pack.


Jasmine

And so we're back to Cinderella era body representation. Jasmine has a tiny waste, even smaller feet and hands (and quite sexualised for a Disney film), while the evil Jafar is lanky and quite unattractive, her father is a small portly ball of comedy relief and the palace guard are bumbling, runs-into-walls-ugly men. Once again Jasmine has no mother to speak of. The main problem here is that, in a reverse from the earlier Princess films, Jasmine uses sex to win the day. In the end battle with Jafar Jasmine is kept as a pseudo sex slave, but to contribute to saving the day uses her body to distract Jafar. Doesn't hit him with anything, just distracts him with sex.

The implication of all this is that girls can't fight the fight, that's the men's job (ie. Aladdin and the Genie), but she can use her sex asset to distract the bad guy... that's about it though. Jasmine, while lacking the virginity and purity aspect of the other Princesses, still maintains the absurd body, surprising Caucasian features (despite supposedly being an Arab, or perhaps Persian. Disney's very sketchy on ethnicity.) and is completely reliant on others to save the day.


Pocahontas

Kind of odd this one. DPS doesn't really apply here; there's not too much sexism to go around here as Pocahontas challenges John Smith when he calls her a savage, defies her father (SOMEONE GIVE THEM A MOTHER!), and doesn't end up getting married in the end. Strangely enough, Pocahontas is the best Disney Princess character ever created. This is purely on the basis that she is not a 2D character. Well, she is but you know what I mean. It's just a shame she's in a film which is mired with bad history and some mild racism. Pocahontas rejects a man from her tribe for... well, no reason at all. When she sees white John Smith however she falls head over heels. Essentially she 'trades up' to the white guy, over a man she's known all her life. The film also makes both white and Native American peoples the bad guys, despite the fact that the white Europeans were the murderers and plunderers of Native civilisations. Also, Pocahontas isn't really Native American. Her skin is sort of a mush of every ethnicity on the planet.

Esmeralda

For every step forward with Disney there's two back. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, released in 1996, gives us the gypsy Esmeralda. This woman either has the largest waist of the Disney Princesses or the slimmest head. Either way Esmeralda isn't what would be called the iconic female. She begins the film dressed in red (remember the virginity symbolism I was talking about? The blood, the hymen... yeah this applies here too) and in the end, when she has settled down and taken up with a man she is dressed in purple and white; purple being a royal colour (the Roman Emperors wore purple), and white being virginity (those wedding dresses are white for a reason). The implication of all this is that Esmeralda, by the end of the film, has been redeemed, ascended and is now pure. An imperialist Englishman would say she has been civilised.

The Face of Love. Supposedly.


Added to this there is the return of beauty as being important. While Quasimodo is good, and is ugly, he doesn't get the girl. Instead the girl ends up with the tall, strong white guy. What's most interesting is that this guy is her oppressor for the bulk of the picture. It's like Beast and Belle once again; staying with the oppressor in the hope of changing him. All in all, Esmeralda is not the worst Disney Princess, she is independent and intelligent, but she is still not a good character. In the end, just like the rest of them, she marries to be happy.

Mulan

Really, the only thing that can be said about Mulan is thank fucking god they did it right once. The only problem is that once again, she's married off at the end. There's a point to me mentioning this over and over so do bear with me.


Giselle

The supposed satire of Enchanted was undermined by one tiny detail. The ditzy Princess who only longed to meet the man of her dreams from early Disney, the 'Golden Age', is proven right in doing everything she does and being who she is. Her desire to marry and have children and all that jazz are proved to be right because at the end of the film, everyone ends up married and paired off and truly happy. Everyone falls in love and marriage is the only thing on everyone's minds. The film even has the two romantic leads as dashing, attractive men, while the ugly step-mother (is there a check list of things in Disney studios which contractually have to be put in their films?) and her ugly bumbling male assistant are the evil ones yet again. Of course this tradition is undermined in the end when Giselle becomes a step-mother and proves herself not to be a contemptible harpy. What's the difference between Giselle and every other step-mother in Disney history? She's not single, she has a man.

So now we're at the end and I bet you're wondering what the point of all that was. Well, the point is simple; Disney only sells morally correct happy ever afters. Married ones. Disney's films are very pro-tradition. It's why single women with children are bitches and why a woman can't have a happy ending without a man (Pocahontas being the exception which merely highlights the rule all the more). When will one of these Princesses learn to rule on her own? Or date the guy she's supposed to be in love with?


Disney only sells a Princess who is not white if it's difficult to pin her down to any race. This is of special importance to those looking forward to the first black princess; Tiana. The film has already hit controversy in its portrayal of the Latino Prince (supposedly he's just white). This begs the question of what will happen to Tiana over the next few months? Will she get lighter in skin tone?

Disney only sells the best bodies on Princesses; nothing over a size zero will do. Body image issues are incredibly high amongst women, and self starvation is common, yet Disney's Princesses continue to get the most thin waist and the most handsome guy. Why the need to apply such a tight restriction on the kind of woman who can get the guy?


You could argue that all the things I've written about tonight are present in the myths and stories which the films are based on. And yes, in some cases they are based on the source material. Did you know thought that in the original tale Cinderella had clogs, not glass slippers? That Aurora was made pregnant while she was in her 100 year sleep? That Pocahontas was twelve? That in the end of the story Ariel actually kills herself rather than cause the death of the man she loves? If these things can be changed by Disney, all of the things I've mentioned could be as well.


In the end the point of all this is to warn against hoping that Princess Tiara will be different from her predecessors, and to make you think, wonder and question what kind of the things your kids, or young relatives, are picking up from the kind of films which only give one happy ending, one type of princess, and one type of man to fall for. Women, according to Disney are still expected to want to be mothers, wives, partners first, and then every other need and desire comes second. Yet these mothers, wives and partners all die in the films. All the step-mothers die, all the mothers are dead. What is wrong with Disney? Should Disney stop making films until they change their attitudes towards women? The films have been representing women in a better way over the past fifty years, but I don't see the portrayal as being good even now. Or have I completely lost the plot and these are "just movies", nothing more than simple entertainment? Are there no lessons to be drawn from here?


I leave that to you to decide yourselves.


Talk to ya later.