You’re Not Crazy—Disney Princesses Have Insanely Small Waists (and Looking at Them Is Not Great for Kids)

I watch Frozen—at least a few scenes of it—pretty much every day of my life. My almost-2-year-old son is newly obsessed with it, just like my now-5-year-old daughter was around his age. Between the two of them, I’ve seen the Disney juggernaut upward of 100 times—at least. This is my fate as a parent of small children in 2019; I’m resigned to it. But watching it so many times, you start to notice things.

For one, while Frozen was celebrated as the rare Disney movie in which the princesses save themselves/each other (rather than being rescued by a prince), both Anna and Elsa, for all of their moxie, are absurdly and almost disturbingly thin. I’ve often marveled—morbidly—at how tiny the princesses’ waists are (so much so that they nearly disappear when they turn to the side). As are, for that matter, the waistlines of Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, and Aurora.

Now, research confirms it: “Disney princesses have extremely small waist-to-hip ratios that are nearly impossible to achieve naturally,” Pennsylvania State University anthropologist Toe Aung writes in a new study (titled: “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Whose figure is the fairest of them all?”). Further, researchers argue that Disney princesses, who can be so ubiquitous in young children’s lives, especially little girls,’ perpetuate already-extreme and unrealistic ideals of beauty and body image.

The super-skinny princess waists, they write, possessed as they are by these stories’ heroines, “might heighten or reinforce our preference for lower waist-to-hip ratios, and the perception that physically attractive individuals with lower waist-to-hip ratios possess morally favorable qualities.” Not helping matters, the data confirms what we all already know: that Barbie’s waist is similarly extreme—and “nearly impossible to achieve naturally.”

It’s a disturbing landscape for kids (like my daughter) who are princess- and Barbie-obsessed. Sure, you can shield them (wait, no you can’t, because they’re everywhere) and they’re too little to necessarily notice now, but growing up surrounded by images of utterly unnatural hourglass figures can contribute to the perception of an ideal that is both wildly unrealistic and extremely unhealthy. And it’s a stubborn standard, too: Teeny waists are commonplace not only on the original, early-era princesses like Snow and Cindy but also latter-day heroines like Mulan, Elsa, and Anna, who were allowed, spirit-wise, to be more independent and ostensibly feminist but were still drawn as super-skinny. Moana, released in 2016, is the closest Disney currently has to a female lead (they declined to dub her a princess, per se) who has a more normal and strong-looking (though still slender) physique.

I’ll spare you the “Let It Go”/body dysmorphia quips, but, Disney, there are millions of little girls’ eyes on you. Please, give them a princess who looks like a woman they could actually grow up to be.