Disney's Live-Action Remake: Ursula Should Not HAVE To be Thicc

Yesterday, when I was scrolling through Facebook, I came across this article:

TBH, I felt really old because I didn't know who Lizzo is and I totally had to Google her.

Okay, Disclaimer before I go any further: I am not opposed to Lizzo playing Ursula; this article just reminded me of another one I read a few weeks ago:

Now, this...this I have thoughts on. Lots of thoughts.

First: y'all know my love for The Little Mermaid runs deep, no matter how many critics -- and celebrities (I'm looking at you, Kiera Knightley) -- point out how problematic it is. (I'm more in-line with the authors of this article from Time.)
Second: y'all know I'm super excited about the live-action remake -- especially because it means Lin-Manuel Miranda is teaming up with Alan Menken and if that isn't a match made in a Disney fan's Heaven, I don't know what is. (Plus, I'm hoping LMM will be nominated for an Oscar for ANYTHING he writes here and The Little Mermaid will be the film that makes him an EGOT winner.)
Third: I firmly believe Ursula is one of the -- if not THE -- best Disney villains and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is my go-to car-karaoke-jam.

But.

I take issue with The Mary Sue's post caption, and the article doesn't do much to assuage me. Chelsea Steiner's writing in response to the rumors -- emphasis on rumors -- that Lady Gaga might play Ursula in the live-action adaptation. Here's her argument:

"Sea witch, please: Ursula is a fat girl icon. In an animated world populated with slender princesses, Ursula has stood out not only as a legendary Disney villain, but as an unlikely role model for body positivity. Ursula is confident, clever, and able to run a successful business helping poor unfortunate merfolk solve their problems. 

Ursula makes being bad look like a total blast, which is a shocking rarity for plus-size women in popular culture, who are too frequently portrayed as the butt of the joke. Ursula is not a dowdy shrew, nor is she a desperate wannabe seeking approval from King Triton and the rest of Atlantica. She marches to beat of her own drum fish, no matter how unpopular it may be. 

Over the years, Ursula has become an unlikely icon for the LGBTQ+ community as well. It’s well known that the character was based on John Waters’ muse, the outlandish drag queen Divine, and was brought to life by the music of gay lyricist Howard Ashman."

To Steiner's credit, I kinda see her point. I do agree that she's become an "icon for the LGBTQ+ community" -- the character's connection to Divine and Ashman have been solidified over the years, and it's a piece of Disney Trivia that always blows my students' minds.
I also agree that Ursula "makes being bad look like a total blast," because I'm a sucker for a villain who enjoys being bad and doesn't have some broken-heart-backstory that "explains" her villainy.

But that's just the thing: Ursula IS a villain. Seeing her as running "a successful business" when she's actually manipulating merfolk, no matter how naive they may be, by preying on their weaknesses and insecurities because of some vendetta with Triton? That's a loose interpretation at best.

And, yes. Steiner's not wrong when she says that, "in an animated world populated with slender princesses, Ursula has stood out" -- but I don't think it's in a good way. There are so few plus-size characters in Disney at all -- only a handful come to mind. Russell from Up is one, as are Lilo and Nani from Lilo & Stitch and while Elasti-Girl is surprisingly hippy for an animated character -- as she should be! She's had three kids! -- she still has that impossibly tiny Disney waist. But narrow the parameters to princess movies? The only non-hourglass shaped females are older, benevolent females -- the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella; the Three Fairies from Sleeping Beauty; and Mrs. Potts from Beauty and the Beast.

And then there's Ursula. Her age is a little hard to pin-down, and even figuring out that she's a contemporary of Triton's isn't much of a help, since he's white-haired but surprisingly muscular. Plus, the guy's got a 16 year old daughter. But, like most-villains, she's probably middle-aged -- older than the teenage princesses but younger than the benevolent helper fairies.

So, here's my grief: when your most famous plus-size character is a villain -- when your only plus-size character is a villain -- that's not body positivity or empowering. That's problematic. There's a critic who, I think, says it more succinctly than I can. While I find Robert Trites' argument, as a whole, problematic in parts, I think she's accurate on the matter of Ursula's weight:

"The Disney-constructed conflict in The Little Mermaid is between an overweight, ugly woman and a doe-eyed heroine with a figure less realistic than a Barbie doll's. Once Ursula transforms herself into a rival love-interest for the prince, the conflict is between a dark-haired anorexic and a fairer one. The stereotyping of evil as dark and good as fair is traditional, but only recently has Disney associated corpulence with evil. Disney's villainesses before the 1970s look predatory because they are so thin...In the 1970s, Disney begins to reflect the cultural emphasis on weight consciousness.[...] The movie's portrayal of good as fairer and thinner than evil presents a bigoted distortion of the human body."

Because when Trites brings up Vanessa -- the "dark-haired anorexic"; this is the late 1980s, the era of heroin chic -- she makes a point about the dark vs. light aspect of her appearance, but neglects to consider a broader implication. This may be because Trites thinks Eric is "easily deceived by Ursula's disguising herself as the raven-headed ingenue who possesses the little mermaid's voice. Eric loves the imposter as he has loved the image in his mind: for her physical attributes and for nothing more" (148). To Trites, Eric dismisses Ariel once he hears Vanessa's sing--but Trites doesn't acknowledge the role magic plays here. Eric, with the magic smoke seeping into his eyes, is clearly enchanted by Ursula-as-Vanessa, as evidenced by his robotic behavior in front of Grimsby when he announces the marriage.

To me, here's the crux: if Ursula was really a body-positive character, why would she voluntarily choose to look like a "raven-headed ingenue"? After all, Eric is enchanted and she has Ariel's voice: it shouldn't matter what she looks like since she can simply enchant them to focus on her voice. Taking human form is a necessity, obviously, but the shape of that human form is important:

She chooses to slim waaay down -- when given the choice, she chooses not only a slimmer figure, but a thin figure. She is just as thin as Ariel, retaining nothing of her previously curvy, fuller-figured size. If she was truly a body-positive character, comfortable in her own skin and size, then that would translate to her human form, her victory ensured as it is through magic.

So, no. I can't get behind this #KeepUrsulaThicc movement. I'm sure Lizzo would do a great job -- as Rebel Wilson before her as done. Hell, I'd even support Titus Burgess in the role, although I don't think Disney would go that way for a variety of reasons. But you know what? I think Lady Gaga would kill it, too.

Because I don't think Ursula has to be "thicc" to be great -- not when a real-life person would be portraying her. I would much rather see a #MakeArielThicc movement start, as I think the body-positive movement would be impacted so much more significantly by a plus-size princess than a plus-size villain.
  

I ❤️ Tee Turtle

Confession: I have a t-shirt obsession. I think it started back in my swimming days when we'd get shirts from the different meets we went to, but all the free-shirts-as-bribes in college definitely didn't help. And now, today, it continues in the form of geeky/nerdy shirts that I wear whenever we go to Disney and to class sometimes.

One of my favorite sites is Tee Turtle, and they've had a little bit of a Disney drought lately. But maybe they renewed their Disney license recently or something because they've had a spate of new Disney shirts lately. These two popped up in my Inbox this morning:



Y'all know how I feel about The Little Mermaid *and* "Poor Unfortunate Souls" so....yeah. Currently coveting both of these shirts.

Food For Thought...

I came across this video this morning...not exactly sure how, but there it is:

This lyric struck me, as it's one of the issues I grapple with when thinking about villains/evil in Disney films. I'm particularly intrigued by the "no one's evil for evil's sake" part...

"We are all misjudged, we are all begrudged, and of course we've made mistakes
But you can rest assured our hearts are pure, no one's evil for evil's sake
We have all had dreams, things are never as they seem, maybe we're the heroes too
But a happy-ever-after is a dream that won't come true."

I've been fascinated by Disney villains and why they're seen as evil for a while now...there's been a trend lately in pop culture to blur the lines between good and evil, hero and villain, and even Disney hasn't escaped this: there's been an uptick in villain origin stories (perhaps started by Wicked?). I think this is the reason I was so drawn to Once Upon A Time, especially when they delved into the background of Regina/The Evil Queen and Rumple. It was all well and good to see how Snow White and Charming met, but the most dynamic episodes early on were the ones that gave some depth and insight into the Evil Queen's character -- showing that she didn't start off evil; that life (and her abysmal mother) caused her to turn that way.

Can people be evil for evil's sake? What about fictional characters? Do all characters, regardless of whether or not we know it, have an origin story? Is there a time, in that origin story, where they're not evil? If so, what makes them evil? Does it justify their behavior? Or at least allow us, as the audience, to excuse it more easily?

"Don't Underestimate The Importance of Body Language"

Y'all know how I feel about Target.

So when my husband asked me if I wanted to get out of the house for a bit and take our daughter on a Target run with my mom while he watched the newborn, I jumped at the chance. (And I don't care how #basicwhitegirl it makes me if I love walking around Target with my Starbucks macchiato. Or #suburbanmom. Or both.)

And I'll admit that one of the reasons I love going to Target -- and there are many -- is that there is always so. much. Disney. stuff. Disney is a marketing genius, and this extends to their ability to merchandize everything and anything.

In our house, we're a sucker for Disney Legos -- if only because Legos are my husband's Kryptonite. Combine them with Disney? There's no hope for us.

So as we're walking down the toy aisles, I noticed this set, "Ariel and the Magic Spell":

Nothing special -- I was actually more interested in the Moana sets on the shelf below -- but it struck me that this was kind of a "dark" scene for Disney to make a Lego set out of. (Aside from the fact that it's the scene with one of the greatest Disney songs, ever.) It would be having a Snow White set with the old crone and the apple or a Sleeping Beauty set with Maleficent and the spinning wheel. 

And then I took a closer look at Ursula:

I'm not one to judge but...if Ursula weren't an animated cartoon character, she'd probably have serious grounds for a misrepresentation/overly Photoshopped lawsuit. She is, IMHO, surprisingly slender, given her original appearance. I mean, yeah. Maybe I'm reading too much into the design of a tiny Lego toy, but still. Part of Ursula's design -- and her appearance did evolve; in early concept art she was based on eels/manta rays/lion fish rather than her now-iconic squidlike similarities -- is her corpulence. The late 80s/early 90s was also the time for heroin chic in fashion, so it (unfortunately) makes sense that the heroine would be impossibly thin and the villainess would be the opposite. (Compared to, for instance, rail-thin Cruella De Vil in the 1960s.)

Again, I don't think Disney or Lego is making a statement about female body image through Lego characters...I just think it's really interesting that Ursula is so much slimmer -- and that she's even in a toy set at all. Just scrolling through the first few pages of the Disney Legos on Target's website, the closest thing to a villain in the other sets -- excluding the Star Wars ones because they make villains cool -- is Marshmallow from Frozen, and even then, he's not the uber-villain of the movie.