Someday my prince will come

[austin_dern]

At the Centrepoint mall there's a Disney Princess promotion. This is probably tied to the opening this month of Hong Kong Disneyworld, though the contest's grand prize is a trip to Tokyo Disneyworld. Maybe they're worried that come opening day they won't be done with the Dog Murder Pavilion. Centrepoint has huge posters all over the place of various Disney princesses, including Snow White (whom I'd always thought above this sort of promotional stunt), Cinder-elly, Jasmine, Belle, Ariel, and another one I don't recognize but who looks like a generic Disney Princess. (Blonde hair, pink dress.) The common area's a special sales area with a lot of very pink things.

Part of the promotion is those who spend at least S$150 in the mall can have ``your little princess'' made into a Disney Princess. There are little ad hoc makeup rooms ready to dab all sorts of pink things on little girls, put them in dresses, and take (digital) pictures of them in front of a generic ballroom cardboard backdrop. It makes me wonder, if I had a girl the right age for this, which princess I'd hope she preferred. I suppose I'd hope for either Belle, who showed considerable signs of having a non-submissive side to her personality, or Ariel, since mermaids are more interesting than plain old humans.

There was a delightful kid moment with one girl dressed as Ariel, a feat done by having her legs covered with a sparkly green long skirt with fin sides, so she could walk around on her fish tail, which seems like missing the point of playing mermaid. Perhaps I'm excessively leg-based but I do think mermaids shouldn't walk down stairs. Anyway she looked quite bored and a bit irritated by the whole thing. She smiled -- slightly, just with her lips -- as the pictures were taken, but gave this ``is it over yet?'' pout the rest of the time, and stamped her tail-hidden foot. Not everybody wants to be a princess.

Trivia: Walt Disney hoped originally to animate Snow White for US$250,000; the movie cost about six times that. Source: Of Mice and Magic, Leonard Maltin.

Currently Reading: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W Tuchman.

Comments

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Generic Disney Princess with blonde hair and pink dress?

Maybe Aurora from Sleeping Beauty?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hey, yeah, that could be it. I forgot all about Sleeping Beauty.

Wait, Sleeping Beauty was named Aurora?

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Wow, I've got more to say about that than there is room in an LJ comment, but it can be summed up rather quickly... "Rigid gender roles are really scary and should only be attempted by trained professionals."

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, now, there is that too. I didn't see any kind of sign saying what the policy would be if a little boy wanted to be made up as Jasmine (or whoever), and I can honestly see it being settled as either ``no, boys don't wear dresses'' or ``his parents paid for it, he gets the pictures, lah.'' Girls who don't want to be princesses should be quite able to say so.

As for whether anyone should want to dress up as a Disney character, well, that's a different issue, but they're quite determined to market all over Singapore as with everyone else, and probably the organization can't imagine children not wanting to be licensed characters at some time or other.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

It always kind of annoys me that you never see Nala or Faline in the 'Princess Collection' stuff.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

They'd both be kind of tricky to do dress-ups for, although I suppose if they don't regard Ariel as too involved probably something could be worked out. For general merchandise and sale, I don't know ... to be honest, I had to think out why they'd be princesses at all, but I suppose they do qualify.

I must remember, some slow day around here, to talk about the horrifying experience I had thanks to (rein)deer at a Wendy's.