A Big Fat Movie Review

December 26, 2009 | By: Rakisha White

We all have seen what little girls with low self-esteem grow up to become–plastic surgeon addicts, promiscuous, drug or alcohol abusers, or medicated depressives. I have low self-esteem and I am a medicated depressive, but years of therapy have yet determined which came first–the depression or the low self-esteem. I was not showered with praise as a child for my looks or my talents, and my health and my weight (no correlation between weight and health) were more of an issue than anything else for my family. (As a child I had chronic Asthma and was painfully thin and frail.) My mother, who didn’t live with me, encouraged my long held desire to be a writer and my brother’s desire to be an artist. My grandmother, whom we lived with, thought they were good hobbies, but encouraged us to get practical work that paid the bills and had benefits. At 37-years-old, both my brother and I have “city” jobs.

When I became a mother for the first time, I made a conscious decision to praise all my daughter’s abilities and her looks. I promised myself I wouldn’t comment on her weight; call her hair nappy; or prevent her from pursuing a career or hobby that was perceived as just male-oriented. As much as I doubt my mothering abilities, I don’t think anyone can say that I don’t build my two daughters’ confidence in their abilities, smarts, and looks up on a near daily basis. Both my daughters, Dew and Jo-Jo, are being raised as feminist as possible.They both are going through a princess phase, and love their dolls and tiaras but every now and then they will play smash ‘em up with their trucks. Dew takes ballet, but loves the kung fu antics of Mulan. Jo-Jo’s favorite catchphrase is from a Barbie version of the Three Musketeers that’s on DVD. She’ll shout “Don’t mess with the dress,” before she pummels her pretend enemy.

Lately, my beautiful African-American children have been obsessed with Barbie and all of Disney’s “yellow-hair” princesses. They were dressed as Tinker Bell and Barbie for Halloween. When we read picture books together, they immediately point to the fairer-skinned characters and shout “that’s me!” This makes my and my husband’s skin crawl, but we avoid getting on our Black is Beautiful soapbox to lecture our preschoolers. We keep reminding ourselves that this is a phase, and gently remind our daughters that “everyone is beautiful no matter the color of their skin or hair. Everyone is beautiful no matter what they wear. We are all beautiful all day every day.” We think it is starting to sink in a bit, because our young Jo-Jo will reply “Everyone is beautiful” when I play to her “Do I look beautiful?” game after she gets dressed.

Despite the general acceptance of the Obama family, the United States’ representation of beauty is still pretty narrow-minded. (And, not to air Black folk’s dirty laundry, but our own representation of beauty is still pretty narrow-minded as well.) Because of this, it was very important to me that my daughters saw the new Disney princess movie The Princess and the Frog. The movie features Disney’s first African-American princess and black people of all hues from tan to chocolate. The movie also introduces an element of American culture that is distinctively Black– Jazz. I applaud Disney for making a multi-layered, culturally sensitive (albeit extremely subtly) movie with an African-American protagonist.

Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Princess and the Frog (Frog) have strong women characters who eschew common beliefs about a woman’s place. All the young ladies weren’t yearning for a prince to rescue them, but a chance to live their lives as they saw fit in spite of society’s constraints. These movies are almost counter cultural if it weren’t for Disney’s incredibly girlie-girl marketing. Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, was an avid reader but do we see Belle book lamps and book marks flooding the shelves of Toys R Us? Or Mulan swords? At least the tea sets and serving sets that bear Tiana from the Frog’s likeness are appropriate, because she wants to open a restaurant.

Princess Tiana as a little girl with her parents

The Princess and the Frog is a good movie for little boys and girls of all races for it teachers the value of hard work, inner beauty, and teamwork. It is a good movie for my daughters because it gives them positive images of fat/fuller-figured people and a brown-skinned beauty to add to their growing repertoire of beauty. Basically, the movie gives them balance.