Some pictures from a series on Disney princess really bothered me, so I contacted the artist and expressed my concerns. She said that no problematic social implications were intended, that they weren’t “technically” supposed to be the characters, and that she thought fully coloring their skin would “detract” from the dresses, which were supposed to be the focuses of the pictures. When I argued that whitewashing the characters detracted from them and that fully coloring them would only compliment the dresses, she said we’d have to “agree to disagree”. I figured I’d take some color samples from official art and test the theory that darker skin would only “detract”:
I’m receiving a college art education and I cannot think of a single Goddamn reason how using the character’s actual skin colors detracts from their clothing. Those color schemes were designed to go with those characters specifically because of how they complimented each other. If you look at the official art, you can see that the green of Tiana’s dress is complimentary to the dark reddish-brown color of her skin, that the warmer browns of Pocahontas’ skin work well with the cooler, less-saturated color of her dress, and that the bold, warm color of Esmeralda’s skin is complimented by the bold, cool colors of her clothing. To me, the whitewashed skin tones actually make the clothing looker blander and more washed-out.
TayTay:
Oh, definitely agree! I think the most noticeable is Esmerelda. Her dress against plain white looks… dull. With her real skin tone it becomes absolutely gorgeous.
I agree with both of you but I think whether or not the dresses look better when the women in them are given their proper skin colors misses the more important point: that dresses are not more important than people.
Reblog again because THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT!
Hmm as a woman of color Im kind of on the fence about this post. I mean the artist said the focus was on the dresses, and if they felt as the artist that their drawings would be more visually appealing that way I dont really think the idea was motivated by like racism or anything. if that was the case maybe they wouldnt have used these princesses at all. I mean I could be wrong, but still. And while I do agree that yeah some of the dresses do look better with the girls with colored skin Im not sure thats enough to raise the argument.
and lastly the whole dresses vs people argument is a little ridiculous, unless it was meant as a joke. Its like if I use a model in a photo shoot to show off my clothes and the girl gets wet Im not gon worry about the model im gonna worry about the clothes because thats the focus of my shoot so….
