Princess Pernicia
I was riding the train to work the other morning, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night. I'd been late geting to the station and caught the later train which is not an express, and so it was that I found myself searching through half-closed eyes for something to occupy me. At the far end of the train car I was in was a poster touting the ice show "Disney on Ice: Princesses". Now I could spend probably another three paragraphs being exasperated with the "ice show" genre but that's not what this particular post is about so I'll spare you the rant. But what sort of Lo Fat Mo would I be if I didn't rant about something?
The poster had the usual stylized lettering and of a course a pinkish/lavender background (they're Princesses!) and the faces of seven beloved Disney heroines: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Ariel (the Little Mermaid), Jasmine (from Aladdin), Belle (Beauty of Beauty and the Beast), and Mulan. As I examined the poster I broke the princesses down into categories because that's the kind of guy I am. Strictly speaking Belle isn't a princess although after marrying the Beast she may have married into minor nobility, like Cinderella did, whereas the rest of them were born nobles. The princesses were two brunettes (Snow and Belle), two blondes (Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella), a red-head (Ariel) and a two "ethnic" girls with black hair (Mulan, Jasmine). The princesses were three "goldn age" icons, and four characters from the Disney resurgence of the 1990's. They were five white girls an Arab girl and a Han Chinese girl. Which is when it struck me that there wasn't an African princess up there.
Now if you know me, you know that I am not really one for paying too much attention to race. Yet the missing black princess was startlingly apparent by her absence. I cast my mind back to the Disney movies I'd watched in my youth and found that their omission wasn't so surprising - after all there'd never been an African princess in any story that Disney had committed to celluloid. It certainly wasn't for lack of interesting stories. The various African mythologies and folkloric traditions are not wanting for depth of character and story material. Even the hackneyed Egyptian stories can be mined, let alone the tales of the west African civilizations. Yet when Disney sets a story in Africa, they choose to use animals as the main characters. Which may explain why there's no African princess in "Disney on Ice" since having Nala the lioness on the ice wouldn't really be very glamourous.