Last week, in anticipation of her inauguration into Disney’s pretty, pretty princess court, Merida, the heroine of the Disney/Pixar’s Brave, got a pretty, pretty makeover. Gone was her quiver of arrows and charmingly ruddy complexion. The new Merida had boobs! And makeup! And was thinner! Unsurprisingly, this didn’t really fly with Brave fans and assorted feminists. A web-based public outcry ensued, with people claiming that the gussied up Merida was a subtle message to girls that looking like (sort of) a real person was inferior.
Quiet as a mouse, Disney has pulled the girly version of Merida from its site and has replaced it the original movie version. So, hooray! Online petitions work one percent of the time. Still, there’s no official word from Disney as to how the relatively CGI-looking Merida will fit in with the rest of the more hand-drawn princesses. Hopefully she won’t be relegated to some royalty gutter, where lesser-known, less gussied up princesses go to languish in pretty purgatory.