Disney Princess/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Base Breaker: Ariel. Fans are a bit divided on whether she's "an idiot for throwing her life away to be with someone she doesn't know" and should be regarded as poorly as the previous three Disney Princesses (who haven't aged well), or she should be commended for being "the first Disney female lead to have an actual personality and be the one to save her prince first."
  • Girls Need Role Models: Initially why the line-up was created—certainly all of them are in possession of admirable "role model" traits.
    • In the ABC preview special for The Princess and the Frog, Miley Cyrus pointed this out. She speculated that "Princess" was an honorary title instead of an indication of actual royalty, that they'd gained the titles for exemplifying certain traits (Belle is smart and compassionate, Tiana is a talented chef and hard worker).
  • Girl Show Ghetto: "Little girls know them. Little girls love them.. This being said of movies that opened to the acclaim of young and old and man and woman alike.
  • Les Yay Shipping: The Periphery Demographic of older fans includes a fair number that like pairing the princesses up with each other instead of with princes. Cinderella/Aurora and Ariel/Jasmine or Ariel/Meg appear to be fairly popular ones.
  • Memetic Outfit: Pretty much every Disney Princess has one of these. Ariel is a bit unfortunate, in that her most memorable attire is as a mermaid, and she only wears a Seashell Bra. So her representation varies the most out of all the princesses—either she's shown as a mermaid (sometimes balancing on her tail in art) and her tail is decorated and bejeweled, or she's dressed in the pink dress. Occasionally her blue sparkly dress from the end of the film is seen.
  • Periphery Demographic: The merchandise is aimed at young girls, but if they aimed for males adolescent and older, they might find an audience there as well, as long as it's subtle enough to avoid setting off moral guardians.
    • There are also plenty of female fans in their teens or older.
  • Purity Sue: Many of the Disney Princess are beautiful, kind, friendly to all living things and generally flawless instantly beloved by anyone who isn't an inveterate Jerkass or a Complete Monster, in particular Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Belle, Pocahontas and Rapunzel.
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: All of the Disney Princesses are treated as such. The older princesses receive the most disdain, as the time period their movies were made from put them in the passive role that would not be acceptable in a female role-model today. Even the modern princesses are often closely scrutinized and found unworthy, particularly Ariel. While there is some truth to the criticisms, the biggest criticisms lobbied at the girls tend to twist the actual events of the movie. For instance, the common criticism that Ariel gives up her life at home for a man isn't exactly true—Ariel clearly desired to live with humans long before she knew who Eric was.
    • Disney draws a lot of ire from the older fans when Mulan is put in a feminine dress (particular the pink one with make-up that she felt uncomfortable in). However, as with the above case, even those criticisms are often twisted—Mulan is also clearly uncomfortable wearing armor and hiding herself that way. The happy medium is usually the far more practical (and plain) dress she wears at the end of the film.
  • Values Dissonance: One justification of the Real Women Never Wear Dresses criticism. Not only were the original fairy tales written centuries ago, but the time periods in which the earlier Disney Princesses were made had the "demure-but-hard-working" type as the epitomy of womanhood, at least in mainstream America.