As if Facebook didn’t already offer enough tempting ways to waste time, apparently they’ve now developed their very own line of quizzes, too. Recently I got a message in my news feed telling me that one of my cousins had taken this quiz, and discovered that if she was a Disney princess, she would be Pocahontas:

Since my cousin is an environmentally aware outdoor adventurer who works for a company that cleans up oil spills, this sounds plausible enough to me. Looking at the quiz, I also thought it was completely cool that it was gay-friendly (asking “What kind of guy/girl do you like?”).

Personally, though, I didn’t feel I needed to take a test to work out which one of the Disney princesses I was. Ever since the brunette Belle wandered into the early scenes of Beauty and the Beast, her head buried so deep in a book that she barely noticed what was going on around her, I knew I had found a Disney heroine I could identify with:

I’m still convinced that the main reason she married the Beast was because she’d seen his library.

According to this interview from last summer, Harry Potter star Emma Watson always saw herself as Ariel from The Little Mermaid: … continue reading

Ah, classic Disney. A princess, a prince, an evil queen and ... a divorce lawyer? In Disney's new movie, Enchanted, the answer is yes.

Enchanted, due to be released Thanksgiving Day after a long production journey, combines animation and live action to tell a fairy tale that Patrick Dempsey, who plays Robert the lawyer, calls "a love letter to Disney." The story begins in Andalasia, an animated world reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Handsome Prince Edward (James Marsden) falls in love with the lovely Princess Giselle (Amy Adams). … continue reading

Disney's upcoming animated movie The Frog Princess, an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Age, will star the first black princess in Disney history. No announcement has yet been made about who will voice the 19-year-old a chambermaid named Maddy, but Alicia Keys and Dreamgirls Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose are reportedly among the contenders.

This is a really great - if long overdue - development, but I rolled my eyes when I saw that that the movie was set in New Orleans. Of course the first movie featuring a black princess would be set in New Orleans - because that's where the black people live, according to Hollywood. Not Cleveland or Seattle, or Boston, but New Orleans. Yes, there is a very large population of African Americans (and Caribbean Americans) in New Orleans, but a lot of black people live elsewhere, too! Apparently a movie about a black princess from Cleveland just isn't as appealing. Why not?

In a word: voodoo.

Every time there's a special New Orleans-themed episode on a TV show, like the one on Bones earlier this season, or the latest episode of Blood Ties I watched last night, it always features black folks who practice voodoo. And sure enough, one of the characters in The Frog Princess is "an elderly, 200-year-old Voodoo priestess/fairy god-mother."

Nevermind that (I'm guessing) the majority of black people in New Orleans don't practice voodoo - white people just can't get this idea out of their heads. It exoticizes black folks and makes them seem more like the "other," and less like your neighbor down the street. I'm not black, and I'm not from New Orleans, but I'm offended on behalf of both. And intelligent people everywhere. Yes, I know I'm on a rant, and probably about something no one else cares about, but I don't like lazy writing that's based on stereotypes.

Watch, now I'll go home tonight and discover a voodoo doll that looks like me with pins stuck in it on my doorstep. If I turn into a giant snake in my sleep tonight, you'll know why!