Remember how I was talking about gendered Disneyland? Well, the absolute lack of satisfying princess merchandise that I could buy got me curious. What Disney merchandise exists for grown-up girls? By merchandise, I mean I’m undertaking to Google Shopping search for each of the princesses plus the words Disney, t-shirt, and women, then looking over the first page in curiosity.
Snow White: exactly eight of the shirts on the front page actually starred and/or featured Snow White herself, in animation; four starred and/or featured a dwarf, and two had the evil queen. (Does Snow White’s queen have a name? I just looked, and it said she was called Grimhilde in “some of the media,” but.) One featured the phrase “Looking For Mr. Right” and nothing else but floral decoration.
Cinderella: exactly seven of the shirts on the front page actually starred and/or featured Cinderella herself, in animation. Three had a carriage, three had shoes (one of which included the inscription “Princesses Must Have Shoes”).
Aurora: all of the Aurora t-shirts actually featured princesses (some of them were the wrong princess, but hey). I particularly enjoyed this one, which made her look like Rainbow Brite:
Ariel: they all seemed to have Ariel on them, which is probably because Ariel’s name is not also the title of her canon. They had a couple of tank tops with seashells over the boobs, which was… sort of odd, but okay.
Belle: twelve of the shirts on the front page actually featured Belle; multiple of them were not featuring cartoons at all, which was odd, because those hadn’t shown up on any of the other princesses. I also note that there is ridiculous merchandise on Etsy like this:
Jasmine: all of these seemed to have princesses on them, though only six (more with duplicate listings) were of Jasmine by herself and not in a group.
Pocahontas: exactly one of these had Pocahontas on it. And it was a shirt of her and Jasmine smoking a hookah.
Mulan: twelve of these had Mulan herself on them, so why weren’t any of them at Disneyland?
Tiana: five of these (more with duplicate listings, of which there were many) had Tiana herself, one of them had Tiana by herself and not in a group. And most of them were for little girls, not adults.
Rapunzel: eight of these had Rapunzel herself.
And for my own purposes, I’m looking to see about
Sally: there are plenty of Sally t-shirts! There’s the “true love” one that bothered me, and a “together forever” one too (which is silly; I mean, they didn’t even maybe get together until the end of the movie) but there are plenty of others, so why weren’t any of them at Disneyland?
Merida: there are exactly two t-shirts listed over and over. And both are for girls, not women.
–your fangirl heroine.
