Disney Princess Sofia, Not so Diverse

By Danielle Hrachovec

This just in: Disney gets a Latina princess!… Except, they don’t...

Sofia, an auburn-haired blue-eyed little girl, featured only on the Disney channel, was rumored to be the first Latina princess in Disney history. But, as it turns out, she is actually just the white girl we all thought she was.

When I first heard that Disney was getting a Latina princess, I got embarrassingly excited. I said, 'Oh my gosh, this movie will be suh-weet!' And then I read more. This is not a “Disney Princess". The Disney Princess franchise (which is already controversial in the feminist community) consists of characters from full-length feature films. All of the characters are (for lack of a better term) adult young women who face some “adversity.” The only thing Sofia has going for her is that Sofia is a princess. She is about five years old and only will only be seen on the Disney Channel. (Of course she is a part of a “mini princess” series… excuse me as I vomit at the enforced gender roles from an even younger age.

While I was excited, she would have been kind of a lame representation of a very rich and often disenfranchised culture. Sofia’s ethnicity is fictional. She is half-‘Enchancian’ and half-‘Galdizian’, both of which are made up. I will say that I know plenty of Latina and Hispanic women who have blue eyes and light hair, but the vast majority of Latina women do not look like that. The only reason we thought that the character is representative of a minority population is because a spokesperson allegedly told us, and of course we now know that it was all a lie anyway. But when the population of those with a Hispanic or Latino origin in the United State is around 17%, shouldn’t we be working harder to make sure they are represented by the media around them? (And I am not talking about the stereotyped bird in, what was it was, the Brave Little Toaster…?)

Why can’t we show the real culture that Latinas relish in? Disney took the risk once of creating archetypical characters in the Princess and the Frog; they showed a part of the African American cultural history and myth in Louisiana. Princess Tiana was a hard worker, but she lived in party city, New Orleans, around Cajuns who ate frogs or larger than life Voodoo priests. While this is obviously not representative of all of African

Americans, it gives a perspective on how the culture is perceived. Had Sofia been an actual Latina, we wouldn’t have gotten any of that. Why would we have to fictionalize the Latin-American culture? Why do we have to create a fictional place with a toned-down model?

If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right. We should be encouraging young girls to embrace their heritage, not half-heartedly trying to make them feel 'miss-represented' at best.