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There is nothing wrong with liking stereotypical "girly" things, or ten of the eleven Disney Princesses being stereotypical girls.

There is also nothing wrong with being a tomboy, or having one of the eleven Disney Princesses being a tomboy.

While I'm sure there are some extremists out there that want to see nothing but tomboys and hate pink colored things, I think (and hope) most people are just outraged that the only tomboy Princess was changed into something that she clearly didn't want in the movie. This isn't saying that being stereotypically "girly" is bad, but that being a tomboy is. Nobody's asking for the likes of Snow White or Cinderella to become a tomboy 'cause fuck being a girly girl.

As someone that grew up as a tomboy but likes baking and knitting and dressing up, I would vastly prefer a Merida that stayed true to the movie rather than yet another girly Princess because goodness knows there are enough of those. And I don't think protesting Disney for this change to Merida is saying that being girly is a bad thing.

I haven't seen this movie, only the previews...

Isn't the princess in the movie an archer? Why can't giving her a sparkly dress mean: "It's okay to wear a sparkly dress and do archery at the same time! Do whatever you want!"

That seems...more in line with the idea of liberating people from binary gender roles.

This movie presented a character who wanted to do her own thing, but because of societal conventions was being forced into her 'traditional' role. The movie (among other things) explores this and ultimately gives her the freedom she (and apparently you) desired. It doesn't say that not being a tomboy is shameful, it was intended to show that being a tomboy was not shameful.

What's wrong with having a choice? Should all movies show men only doing manly things? Is it shameful for men to be in less than stereotyped roles? The presentation shown to many girls is precisely that they are expected to fall into certain roles. Breaking that mold is not a bad thing.

As much as I now want to see the Disney Princesses do that while in their finest dresses...

In the movie, she objects to the sparkly dress because it's too confining and isn't anything like what she wants to wear. In the archery scene where she does wear the sparkly dress, she causes a mini uproar because you can see her corset and underthings as she rips the dress in the process of showing everyone up. Speaking of which, it's the same corset that her mother helps her put on in a painful scene before the archery one and she's told she has to conform to a specific set of beauty "ideals" to be a fitting princess and heir to the throne.

So, seeing Merida in the sparkly dress she hated so much and without her bow and arrows is pretty distressing to me.

There's no bow or arrows on the modified version. In that picture, she's been changed into a stereotypical Disney princess, and some other aspects of the original character design were also betrayed, like the hair and eyes.

Well... they took away the bow and arrow for one thing.

It seems like you're over-analyzing this from an anti-political-correctness dogma. The fact is no girl is made to feel guilty for liking sparkly dresses just like no man is made to feel guilty for liking camping. Just because someone complains about the sexism of the stereotypical portrayal is not an attack against the existence of the base archetype, and you are quite frankly being way oversensitive to take it as such. It's the same reason that there's no such thing as "reverse racism": as a member of a privileged group, whatever indignation you feel pales in comparison to the that blacks / women / girls have had to deal with when they step out of accepted social norms.

Wait, wait, stop everything.

You haven't seen the movie, so you have no first-hand knowledge of the relevant issues the co-director is trying to address. Specifically, the issue is not feminine identity as a whole (or the fact that Disney has 8-9 other princesses who have that demographic pretty much sewn up) but that one of the biggest themes in Brave is that Merida doesn't want to be the stereotypical princess that society says she has to be; she can and does choose to be the tomboy archer who goes her own way.

BUT NO! Intelligent discussion and on-topic conversation be damned, you have something to say about your five sisters and how they like to bake in sparkly clothes while you like to be manly! GREAT! GO DO THAT! NO ONE IS SAYING YOU CAN'T.

But that's not good enough. Instead, you create a contrarian strawman that has nothing to do with the OP but that riles up the internet masses who want to defend personal visions of gender identity which have never been in question. If internet comments mattered, I'd call your behavior shameful, but that'd be overselling it. Instead I'll just point out that you have no room to speak about intellectual communities if this is your modus operandi.

> The idea that who they are is somehow shameful is disgusting, and it's disgusting to me that the third-wave feminists, or whatever the group is that is pushing this rhetoric, seems to get a free pass on it.

It's not that liking girly things is shameful or bad. People should be free to like whatever they want. The problem is that this character had design and writing elements that tried to make it different from that girly princess mold, but over time those facets of the character have been removed to make a more stereotyped character. Keep in mind the original director and originator of this character, Brenda Chapman, was fired from the director role of Brave (she was the first female director for Pixar).

> Should she be ashamed of herself for that? Is she not a real woman, is she weak? Is she submitting to the evil male patriarchy every time she puts on a pink t-shirt or does something sterotypically girly?

Not at all. However, it is good to have diverse representations and there is a significant lack of representations of women that don't fall into a particular set of stereotypes and tropes. That a character that was created to be different from those tropes is being forced back into them by a corporation known for not having diverse representations of women is the issue.

It's great that some children like sparkly princess phase type toys. The market is flooded with toys and films and characters for those children.

It's great that some children like tomboy style characters. There's now one less character.

Look at how this discussion gets framed. I see it every single time.

It's not "oh, well now there is one less non-stereotypical character for me to idolize", it's "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!".

How should girls that like sparkly things feel when they read this? Are they regressive? Should they be ashamed with themselves along with Disney?

They should just understand that other girls have different preferences and it's okay to be different and like what you want to like.

> "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!"

In this case it's regressive because Merida was originally a tomboy changed into the stereotype of a Disney Princess. I would not be outraged about this if Merida was originally that way in Brave.

Why is that regressive? They presumably polled a test group and found that most people preferred a sparkly dress instead of a black one.

My niece will probably prefer the sparkly version of the princess. She's 10.

That's not regression, that's marketing.

Why do you presume that? There's no basis to think that.

Also: If Disney already has a dozen sparkly girly princesses, adding one with a different target market should expand their customer base. Adding another to the same group might just cannibalize sales of other existing sparkly princesses.

Presume that my niece will like the sparkly one?

Because I spend a lot of time with her. Mostly at the hackerspace teaching her what a 3D printer is, how to make an arduino blink faster, and how to design files so that I can laser cut them.

Haha that's good :)

But you said They presumably polled a test group and I meant, there's no evidence to support that.

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2012/07/05/whoa-meridas-real/

I think the above costume was pretty tastefully "sparkled" up. If you want more, you could add the tiara from the movie or a more jeweled belt. Not even the Queen, mother of Merida and trying to shove the princess ideal down her throat, was _that_ dressed up for even the main event of the movie. I don't think this is any plainer or boring looking compared to some of the other Disney Princesses.

Also, not everything has to appeal to your niece or other girls or else we're telling them it's bad to be feminine. There's still a target audience for the Merida from the movie and it doesn't step on the toes of those that want a sparkly Princess.

Girls go through something called the princess phase.

Toy makers know this, and ruthlessly exploit it. That's why toy stores are chock a block full of that particular pink / purple combination. It has been tested.

Reader, you think you AB tested that signup button? Toys is a multi-billion dollar industry. They've tested those colours.

But then girls grow out of that phase. Some of them don't ever totally leave it. See Bic pens for women. (http://www.bicworld.com/en/products/details/420/bic-for-her) Some of them grow out of it early.

So here's an example where a strong character gets trimmed down a bit. Disney do this because they want to sell merch. There's nothing wrong with making (a lot of) money, but watering down creative vision to do so is probably bad. And people are criticising disney for making this character less special.

We'll see what happens next time this character is in a movie. Maybe Disney will create an awesome story with strong plot lines etc.

Ok, so girls are genetically predisposed to a 'princess phase'? If so, I'd love to see the data backing that claim up. If not, then what is it that causing them to go through that phase (maybe the toy/entertainment companies you site as responding to the phase?)?

Wait, I didn't say "genetically predisposed"!!

I didn't give any reason for cause.

In my opinion (and this is just me guessing) it's exactly because society dresses girls up in pink frilly stuff and every toy is pink and sparkly.

So it now becomes a self-reinforcing loop - they like pink and sparkly, people buy pink and sparkly, toy makers provide pink and sparkly, there are no other toys[1] to buy so they keep getting pink and sparkly.

[1] I remember when Lego was unisex. It was just blocks. Now it's STARWARS blocks, or pink and sparkly stuff blocks. Obviously boys and girls can play with whatever they like, but peer pressure is weird at that age.

There's a big niche in the market (it's being filled now) for toys that are great and unisex. You'll have plenty of examples, but check the age ranges, then check against the total toy supply.

There's also a need for clothing that doesn't say things like "Here comes trouble" for boys or "little princess" for girls. Something aspirational and fun and gender-neutral.

> People don't realize that some girls, in fact lots of girls, in fact I would say most of the girls I know like stereotypical "girly" things. They would like to have a dress that is sparkly like the one in the photo.

Is there a shortage of sparkly dresses in the Disney princess stable?

If a woman is "typically" girly, that's fine. But saying a girl can't be anything else is wrong. This particular character was designed differently, and Disney is saying: no, girls can only be this way.

There is a HUGE valley that separates the embraced traits you're describing about the women who surround you and the princess myth that Disney pushes on little girls (and boys!). The director is not attacking women who want to bake, dress in pink, or are nurturing. She is fuming because Disney doesn't want to allow that a female character might not want ANY of that and still be feminine.

Anyone who walks away from this article thinking that the above is a reasonable interpretation of what is going on here has completely missed the point.

Nobody seriously objects to lots of girls liking sparkling pretty things. Or to there being lots of role models for that.

The objection is to the complete lack of alternate role models for girls who don't fit into that mold. And for mutilating a character who emphatically was not of that mold.

To draw an ice cream analogy, this is chocolate lovers upset that they are being offered every variety of vanilla, and nowhere any chocolate.

I think you're missing the point here. The creator of Merida designed here after a real person and didn't follow the standard Disney way of how a princess looks like. Now Disney gives here a makeover and thereby removes some of the attributes that the character and the movie was about. If I were in the position of the Merida creator I would be upset as well.

I also have 2 daughters who are big fans of the Disney princesses, but I would very much like it if they at least had the option to chose a princess that doesn't follow the standard formula of the previous 10 Disney princesses.

> Why is okay to tell my sisters that they should all be ashamed of themselves?

That's begging the question. It isn't about telling people to be ashamed of themselves at all. It is about changing society to have more appreciation for people who don't fit the traditional stereotypes.

This stuff is all around us, it is the cultural equivalent of the air we breath - so omnipresent that we don't even notice it. When I looked at the before and after pictures, I didn't even notice anything particularly different between them. That sort of pervasiveness means lots of people have internalized it and will take it as an attack on their person, but that isn't the intent. It may be an unavoidable side-effect though, it seems like anytime social norms are challenged - gay marriage, ERA, miscegenation, universal suffrage, school integration, etc, there are people who take those challenges as a personal attack rather than a societal reform.

You should be ashamed of yourself for accessorizing with flannel and other manly interests precisely because you do understand the anti-intellectualism behind it. You know better, you know you could be spending time on wiser pursuits, and yet you do it. It's not the end of the world. You're not evil. We all need to try harder.

No one should be saying that they should be ashamed of themselves. The problem is when people get the impression they should be ashamed of themselves for not filling these roles. This happens a lot more than the way around you are describing.

Of course, the crux of the matter is that these feminists still think Disney princesses are the most important role models for girls, thus confirming their own bias, and yet provide no alternatives of their own. Are girls supposed to look up to the shrieking harpies of Femen instead?

This has got to be flame bait. No one is this stupid.