Nose-Gate at Disney: Fans Slam Beloved Princesses

If there’s one company that knows animated characters, it’s Disney. From Snow White to Elsa, Walt Disney Studios has spent the past century giving us some of the industry’s best-known faces.

However, one TikToker has sparked a debate about how Disney animates some of its characters – particularly women.

Is Disney Setting Unrealistic Beauty Standards?

In a viral video, user @gangbanger_0 calls out Disney for its habit of giving its female characters tiny noses (especially compared to villains and men), which ultimately sends a negative message to young girls about beauty standards.

@gangbanger_0

#greenscreen #fypシ #disneyplusvoices #dis #disneynuimos #disney #fypシ゚viral #fyp

♬ Remember_you_mars – Trillian

The video features several images of Disney princesses – including Moana, Ariel, Belle, Aurora, and Snow White – with their small noses circled. It then shows several villains, such as Maleficent, Mother Gothel, and Ursula, who have bigger, more defined noses, set to a track that bemoans, “That must be so confusing for a little girl.”

This soon racked up 5.4 million views, with users leaving comments such as, “There’s not a single character that looks like me that isn’t the villain.”

But the debate didn’t end there. User @RobinReaction shared a video that looks closer at the issue, asking: “How much nose is a Disney princess allowed to have?”

Their analysis started with the earliest princesses, whose “noses consist of a hint of nostril, and then depending on the angle, also like a slight curve.” That includes the likes of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, whose respective villains had stronger, more realistic noses. In RobinReaction’s words, “One of the easiest ways to tell if a woman was going to be evil or very unfuckable is to see if they have a nose that actually resembles a nose.”

@robinreaction

Here’s to more Disney noses #disney #disneyprincess #disneyprincesses #animation #animationhistory #beautystandards #greenscreen

♬ original sound – Robin Reaction

As time moved on and animation styles evolved, Disney still clung to the “lack of nose treatment.” And when the studio moved on to 3D animation, it had to find “new ways for their characters to technically have noses which take up as little space as possible.”

The result is characters such as Moana, Rapunzel, and Frozen (2013)’s Anna and Elsa, all of whom have identical small button noses.

“I think it’s worth noting that Disney knows how to draw extremely hot people that have defined noses,” RobinReaction points out. “They’ve been doing it to men a long time.” Case in point: Hercules, Naveen, Kristoff, and Prince Eric.

Small noses definitely aren’t the only feature Disney tends to stereotype as princess-worthy. It’s previously also come under fire for giving its princesses unrealistic body types – namely, disproportionately tiny waists.

While the studio clearly still has a long way to go in this regard, it has taken small (but significant) steps in recent years by introducing its first plus-size protagonist in the short film Reflect (2022) and incorporating more body diversity in the likes of Encanto (2021).

Do you agree that Disney is setting unrealistic beauty standards for young girls?

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