, I'm practically quivering in my big pants thinking of how revolutionary this will be for chubby little girls everywhere. In the past, the only obviously bigger woman in Disney that I can think of was Ursula, and while she was fierce and fabulous in her own way, she was also a villain. In The Little Mermaid, while she wore body-hugging dresses, Ursula was still painted as grotesque and manipulative – transforming into the slim, beautiful, seductive and approachable Vanessa in attempts to sabotage Ariel and Prince Eric's relationship. As a girl, I learned from Disney that skinny equaled heroic, desirable, and 'good'. Big meant bad, undesirable, evil. Any other characters that were portrayed as plus-sized were side-lined and stereotypically, quite frankly, dumb. The stupid side-kick, often with an insatiable appetite: Rolly (named after his 'rolly-polly' physique) from 101 Dalmatians, Gus){kind=link}
Growing up, I was always the biggest kid in school – and the biggest ballet dancer in the mirror, uncomfortably fiddling with my tight leotard.
I was chubby, and classmates called me ‘Emmie the elephant’. It hurt.
No one looked like me – not in the films I loved, or in the illustrations of the Disney books I cherished.
Growing up in the ’90s and early ’00s, every Disney princess and heroine looked skinny: Belle, Aurora, Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, Ariel, Esmeralda, Jane, Meg.
Every. Single. One. That is, except, until now.