Say the names Belle, Ariel or Jasmine, and almost anyone will know you're talking about the Disney Princesses. Many children see their movies and fall in love with the characters, so much so that they often aspire to be like them. With their beauty, charm and happily-ever-afters, who wouldn't want to be a Disney Princess?
But little do any of us know at that age that while it's fun to watch the Disney Princesses on screen and many of them do have qualities that are admirable, they might not be the best or most realistic role models. In fact, there are plenty of real women from history who would serve as better inspiration for children to look up to.
A new blog shows just that. Rejected Princesses highlights the tales of "women too awesome, too awful, or offbeat for kids' movies," as its tagline says. Original illustrations of the women by former DreamWorks animator Jason Porath, who runs the blog, accompany little write-ups of their true stories.
Porath features women from history, literature and mythology on the blog, which has entries going back to June of this year. One of them is Hatsheput, a forgotten Egyptian pharaoh. Another is Mariya Oktyabrskaya, the first female tanker to win the Hero of the Soviet Union award. Yet another is Mai Bhago, an 18th-century Sikh warrior-saint and only survivor of the Battle of Khidrana. And those are only three out of the 23 women currently featured on the blog.
Porath told NPR, "It's sort of an alternate-reality glimpse into, 'What if they got their moment in the sun?' "
Of course, there's women featured on the blog who fall into that "too awful" category. Porath has given some real estate to Elisabeth Bathory who was known as the "Blood Countess" for being the most prolific female serial killer in history, according to legend. There's also some controversial ladies, such as Lolita, the title character from Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel.
Porath's inspiration for the blog came from a lunch conversation he had while still at DreamWorks about unlikely princesses to be given animated movies. He told NPR that he has a list of about 600 more women he's planning on adding to the blog.
Rejected Princesses blog is the latest out of a slew of illustrations depicting a different image of the Disney Princesses. Artists have given the Disney Princesses hipster makeovers, used them to raise awareness about domestic abuse and turned them into Miley Cyrus, just to name a few. While all of these have a subversive tone to them, Porath told NPR that his intention with Rejected Princesses is not to criticize Disney but to just give attention to those not normally in the spotlight.
Amen to that.
