"Once upon a time, in a distant land, there was a small peaceful kingdom, prosperous and rich in romance and tradition. Here, in a majestic castle, lived a widowed man with his little daughter, Cinderella...". Wait a moment: they already know this story. Let's go faster. Then comes the stepmother, the stepsisters, the household chores, the prince, the glass slipper, the pumpkin turning into a carriage until midnight, the fairy godmother, the kiss, the wedding.... And so, for 75 years, "they lived happily ever after" has been an inseparable part of the childhood of boys and girls around the world, of the Disney empire and even of Western culture. Because on February 15, 1950, with the premiere of Cinderella, a new world began.
The United States was still recovering from the aftermath of World War II. And so was Walt Disney, who was trying to weather the crisis resulting from the war with a series of animated shorts. Suddenly, that young blonde, very fine with blue eyes appeared to save the studio and inaugurate one of the greatest sociocultural phenomena of contemporaneity: that of Disney princesses. Although in 1937 the businessman had already brought Snow White to life with considerable success, the real beginning lies in the aesthetics and narrative of Cinderella, in the blue dress and the glass slipper, in the girl who escapes from the clutches of her stepmother and ends up with the prince of her dreams. This is how a critic of the time defined it: "It is Disney's first total devotion to human romantic love". A myth was built upon it... and a million-dollar industry.
The film grossed $10 million at its 1950 premiere and has accumulated $96 million thanks to its five re-releases. In 2000, Disney decided to create the Disney Princess brand to have greater control over its consumer products: clothing, dolls, stories, video games... It included Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, and Pocahontas. In the following years, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Moana -Vaiana in Spain- and Raya joined. In 2001, the company's Consumer Products division generated around $300 million. A decade later, revenues were $3,000 million.
Hypersexualized and Empowered?
There is no child, and not so child, who has not had the face of one of them printed on a t-shirt, a mug, or sneakers. Or a house where a doll that someone desperately asked Santa Claus or the Three Wise Men for has not entered. According to data from the specialized publication The Licensing Letter, in 2011, just the princess line accounted for $1.5 billion in sales in the United States and Canada. According to an estimate by Visual Capitalist, their historical revenues already exceed $46 billion. Although the company does not break down that heading, its first-quarter budgets for 2025 show that in those three months, consumer products billed $400 million and theme parks, about 1,800. What visitors are looking for there is to take a photo with Mickey Mouse. And, of course, with the princesses.
But the economic impact is almost the least of their impacts. Because Disney has been the one that has set the standard of femininity for the past few decades from the earliest childhood. Beyond the women in their environment, girls from almost any corner of the world have as their first female image one of their princesses. "From a marketing perspective, their figure is so iconic that one closes their eyes and the first Cinderella that comes to mind, out of the thousands out there, is the original Disney one," explains Ana Vicens, a doctor in Communication, professor at the private university UDIT, and author of the work Heroines or princesses: the evolution of Disney protagonists. "We are all exposed to Disney every day," she points out. "There are even Mickey diapers, everything is Disney. And the princess phenomenon has permeated like no other among girls. We have lost the image of the classic princess and the Disney one has prevailed. An Americanized, passive princess who tells you that if you believe in your dreams, everything becomes reality".
The analyses of these princesses are endless. A basic search on Google brings up hundreds of papers, opinion articles, or even physiognomic studies of them. These analyses have skyrocketed in the last decade due to the resurgence of the feminist movement, critical of the psychology and patterns that Disney has been shaping in women for over seven decades. "Many of these princesses were deeply self-demanding and lived to strive to be sweet and perfect, not to upset anyone and take care of others," explains psychologist Júlia Martí, author of the book Women who demand too much (Roca). In it, she points out that "a large part" of her female patients are influenced by that construction. "There is that constant need to measure up, to demonstrate our worth, and that imagery was constructed by Disney princesses," she argues.
"There is that constant need to measure up, to demonstrate our worth, and that imagery was constructed by Disney princesses," explains psychologist Júlia Martí
However, over the years, the pattern has been changing. In the beginning, there were the classic princesses, delicate and angelically beautiful devoted to love: Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora. In the 90s, Disney gave its protagonists new implications, although love still permeated everything for Jasmine, Ariel, or Pocahontas. And, in the latest stage, those romantic stories have faded to focus on the very concept of being a woman: Merida, the princess from Brave; Moana or Raya.
"Current girls find the classic princesses a bit boring, they feel more identified with those who deviate from that ideal of romantic love," says Carla Maeda, a researcher at the Tecnológico de Monterrey and author of the study Between princesses and witches, for which she interviewed 30 girls who chose current characters as references. "I can't predict the future, but it seems to me that Disney will continue along the line of these empowered women, strong leaders who go alone and with a group of people supporting them. Perhaps eventually, as they did with Rapunzel, they will return to romantic love. But they will have to present it as something more normalized because people will find it absurd that someone wants to get married at 15 just after meeting their prince charming."
"We should not applaud that in Frozen there are two women talking to each other, it is logical in our society. Also, no one thinks of Moana as the Disney princess she wants to be. The girls' imagery is still focused on Cinderella, on the classics, on becoming that princess," counters Ana Vicens. Psychologist and sexologist Lara Ferreiro adds another component to the equation: "There is an early hypersexualization of many of these princesses and a clear lack of empowered women despite the changes." She continues: "The brain develops until the age of 25, and the poison of female silencing, domestic roles, changing for love... is injected into women from childhood. Disney has a stamp, and the seams of machismo are part of it. That's why machismo will always be present in princesses. It is difficult to distance oneself from an idea on which an industry has been built and with which they have earned billions even though it damages women's brains."
Good and Bad Values
The main academic studies published about princesses follow that same line. One from Eastern University of Kentucky, led by Hannah Tanner, showed that Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Anna, and Elsa - the two protagonists of Frozen - presented mental disorders, from anxiety or depression to eating disorders or narcissistic personality disorders. Another study from Duke University, with Jessi Streib at the helm, pointed towards an overrepresentation of wealth in Snow White or Aladdin, while trivializing poverty and attributing social progress to individual effort. Although to a lesser extent, there are also studies that contradict this view. One from the University of California Davis, led by Jane Shawcroft, states that having a favorite princess in childhood improves children's confidence in their own bodies and diversity in their way of playing.
"There is an early hypersexualization of many of these princesses and a clear lack of empowered women despite the changes," denounces psychologist Lara Ferreiro
Now the question is evident: what influence have these princesses had on real women, beyond academic studies, across different generations? "All these princesses are there, whether we like it or not. They are part of the imagination, the collective unconscious, of what is learned. I don't have a specific one left, but the residue remains. Although the echo now is quite distant, as a child, these princesses were mirrors and prisons," explains actress Ana Rujas, author of Cardo and the play The Ugliest Woman in the World alongside Bárbara Mestanza. Two projects that dismantle some of these basic points of the Disney imaginary. "Now I like to think about the witches in the tale, or the creatures that rewrite history without asking for permission. Some values were indeed honest and noble, like kindness, loyalty, the ability to imagine other worlds. But they were wrapped in something dangerous: waiting, silence, the idea that love justifies everything. They taught me things that I later had to unlearn," concludes the actress.
To that same generation, those who grew up in the 90s with Jasmine, Pocahontas, or Ariel, also belongs singer Ana Guerra. "Now I put on a movie and with a song, it can take me back to a super beautiful and innocent past when I was a child. I enjoy that purity again, that innocence that children have. Through those eyes, I watch these movies," emphasizes the artist, who lent her voice in Spanish to the closing song of the movie Disney Wish: the power of wishes, declares herself a fan of Ariel and admits to having a pending trip to Disneyland.
"I used to grab towels at home and wrap them around my legs to make them disappear and have a mermaid tail. I would stand in front of the television like that and sing to the music of The Little Mermaid," she says before emphasizing that at this moment, a type of princess "more adapted to the 21st century" is being created. "I think they now belong more to the current world of women, with different values, independent women who fulfill their dreams and not just fall in love. And the previous ones, well, we will continue to see them as the great classics they are."
An Evolution of the Imaginary
Moana's story is no longer based on love but on saving her people. Her features are not those of a white woman, and her figure, although still stylized, is not extremely thin. Merida, like Mulan, does not aspire to be a princess but rather leans more towards a warrior seeking a place in male spaces. These are some of the small changes that Disney has added to its most recent films, parallel to the social change of women. The female stereotype of the 50s has been fading, and this has also reached the princesses. Although Cinderella's story has served as the basis for a good part of the romantic comedies of the 80s and 90s: Pretty Woman, Working Girl, Can't Buy Me Love...
"Like many girls, I was amazed by the world of Disney princesses. I loved the dresses, the castles, the talking animals... But over time, you start to see the stories with different eyes. As an adult, it bothers you that some were so focused on finding love or that a happy ending depended on a prince," highlights Laura Escanes, who sees Jasmine as a role model for not being "the typical princess waiting to be rescued." The influencer and host of the podcast Between Heaven and Clouds on Podimo has a five-year-old daughter, Roma, who, of course, is also a consumer of the Disney universe. "I love sharing that with her, seeing her dress up, imagine, and sing the songs, but we also take that moment to talk, to question things, and to say: 'What if this princess didn't want to marry the prince and went to travel the world alone?' Being a princess is fine, but being yourself, without fairy tales in between, is even better."
Journalist Sonsoles Ónega was not a fervent fan of princesses, but there was a Snow White story at home where she would stop to see the witch in front of the mirror. "The values were those of the time. It is easy to judge them with today's perspective, even denounce them because they had a bias that, oh, coincidence!, harmed women. Still, I believe that we cannot completely dismiss Disney's argument, as it prevents us from appreciating how much progress we have made." And she adds: "Their beauty ideals are not much different from those conveyed by some 21st-century influencers that influence millions of teenagers."
In the home of Gemma Mengual, Ariel was on television all the time due to her younger sister. Fate had it that her livelihood would be in the water with synchronized swimming. "Think that I have been an athlete since I was eight years old, I didn't have much time to get hooked on these movies, but I have seen them. As girls, we loved the sparkle, feeling beautiful, and seeing ourselves as those princesses. But as an adult, things have changed, and Disney has also done so with these more empowered women," says the double Olympic medalist in Beijing 2008.
And they lived happily ever after. Or not.