Is Makeup in Disney Evil?
Have you ever noticed how a Disney Villainess always wears lots of makeup?
But the protagonist princess wears hardly any, if any at all?
Is this just a coincidence?
Or is Disney trying to tell us something?
It is a common misconception that Disney princess's wear red lipstick,
But in fact these characters don't.
Princess Anna from frozen is the best example
Where you'll see her wakeup without makeup on
So when you compare her in bed to when she is fully dressed,
You'll notice she's not wearing any lipstick, eyeliner or eye shadow.
The same goes for the 1950s version of Cinderella�
Where Cinderella is in bed, you can see her lips are bright red
she also has long thick eye lashes.
Now her evil step Mother on the other hand, wears very obvious thick dark eye shadow with
matching lipstick,
In Sleeping Beauty
Princess Aurora has a magic spell cast on her to make her Beautiful,
So why would she need makeup?
But the evil Maleficent can't get enough of the stuff!
In the Rescuers,
The Villainess Medusa wears tonnes of makeup,
Disney even makes an effort to show her taking it off, while saying cruel things to poor
little Penny!
The same goes for Cruella Deville in 101 Dalmatians
In snow white, everyone appears to wear makeup, but the queen wears the most by far!
In The Little Mermaid
Ariel and Ursula both get ready in a mirror.
Ariel literally waves her hands through her hair, as she requires nothing else to look
good
while Ursula kills an oyster for lipstick, connecting evil with makeup!
Now where it gets really interesting is where Ursula Transforms
into a pretty woman in order to steal Prince Eric from Ariel!
When she transforms, she imitates a princess!
She has No eye shadow, no dark lipstick.
Wouldn't you have expected Ursula to transform into a prettier younger
version of herself, with Make up?
But she doesn't.
It's as though Disney are hinting that Ursula is subconsciously aware,
that makeup is for either evil or Ugly people!
So when she's pretending to be good, she doesn't wear any.
The Fairies in Sleeping Beauty don't wear makeup, but technically t-h-e-y-'r-e not beautiful,
and the same goes for the Fairy godmother in Cinderella.
Mad madam mim, Although a villainess, doesn't wear makeup, but then again,
she's not evil she's mad, hence her name!
So Disney's makeup rules are:
as long as their good and not evil, they don't need to wear makeup,
As age and weight don't' appear to be the reason for wearing it.
This is best explained by Author Roal Dahl in his book the twits
"If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face.
And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year,
the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it."
"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.
You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth,
but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face
like sunbeams and you will always look lovely"
An Interesting point, but is there more to this than just a stereotype?
Historically, many forms of cosmetics have been hazardous for your health
such as 18th Century lead or arsenic based makeup
Back then, if a woman used cosmetics, they might have sacrifice their health or even
life
not to mention her looks in the long run, for a brief attractive appearance.
At the very least, makeup was a sign that if a woman chose to wear it,
they were labelled either�vain or foolish.
This trope faded out as make-up became acceptable with the arrival of non-toxic materials
Things changed slightly, where wearing make-up in general was not considered bad
but to wear heavy make-up would still imply something negative!
During the 1960s and 1970s
many women in the western world influenced by�feminism decided to go without any makeup.
The anti-cosmetics movement was an outgrowth of this!
Feminists in this movement objected to the use of "cosmetics'
as it implied that woman were second-class citizens
More recently, people who follow Punk Rock�and�Heavy Metal music�have demonstrated that a painted
face
is a sure sign that a character is mean, crazy
or at least sinister!
In Frozen while the film revolves around the two sisters,
Queen Elsa and Princess Anna,
Early sketches show the two weren�t originally related
Princess Anna was meant to be a peasant, who asked an evil Snow Queen to freeze her broken
heart
Director Jennifer Lee�said " Elsa was going to be the complete antagonist"
But Disney changed their mi nds and made them sisters.
they also made one Subtle difference between them.
The good natured Princess Anna, wears no makeup
Queen Elsa, the confused, lost, semi-evil Queen does.
There is another unique feature to frozen.
The movies villain "Prince Hans", who Anna falls in love with.
Is a stereotypical prince charming, for nearly the entire film.
Until his plot twist turnabout, which comes out of nowhere!
There are literally no clues towards him being a villain in any shape or form
There's a scene early on where he falls into the water and smiles.
Knowing his real intent, shouldn't we have seen a hint of evil?
A Gaston thrown or something similar?
As all villains do in Disney.
In Beauty and the Beast
Gaston can't wear makeup, so Disney's writers had to find another way to make him appear
evil
Which brings me to my second point,
in Disney animation, sex appeal is considered a bad thing.
Gaston might be arrogant but he also has his own form of sex appeal.
He's super masculine and muscular,
and has all the woman in the village fallinvvvvg in love with him.
BUT Disney makes it very clear that his sex appeal also makes him vain and self absorbed.
Now imagine swapping Gaston for prince Hans.
Beauty and beast wouldn't make any sense.
You would be wondering why Belle wouldn't want to marry Hans?
He has no sex appeal, and he's not vain, he's just a Prince charming.
If you had Gaston in Frozen, his betrayal of love to princess Anna would at least make
sense!
The main villain Gothel from�Tangled is forced to rely solely on her wit,
charisma and intelligence, as opposed to sorcery in order to survive.
Gothel also has an exotic appearance,
her dark curly hair and curvy figure were deliberately designed to be the exact opposite�of
Rapunzel's.
She was even inspired by the singer�Cher,
who is well known for her sex appeal!
Like Gothel - Maleficent is an unconventional but considerably notable case of this
In both the animated and live action versions of the character
She might not have a noticeable figure like Gothel,
but her feminine looks, graceful style, and seductive voice give her a form of sex appeal.
Meg from Hercules, technically isn't a villain, but she works for one.
Her role in the movie is a "seductress"
Where she uses her looks and sex appeal to seduce the hero Hercules.
Ursula even explains sex appeal to Ariel while singing!
Mad madam mim from The sword and the Stone demonstrates sex appeal in her transformation
and Medusa.. well gets points for trying at least!
So to conclude,
Is it all just a coincidence?
or have we been programmed by Disney since childhood to associate Makeup and sex appeal
with being bad or evil?
Or is it simply Disney using stereotypes and movie tropes?
There are exceptions to the makeup rule,
for example princess Jasmine from Aladdin, wears quite a lot.
But historically, Indian princess traditionally wore makeup, so it wouldn't make sense for
Jasmine not to.
Modern royalty doesn't appear to wear much, perhaps Disney are just copying that?
But then again
Queen Elizabeth was the epitome of beauty and style for the women of the Elizabethan
era.
Even though cosmetics were considered a hazard, women still
strived for that "Leadtastic" pale and porcelain complexion.
So What do you think?
Is this a Disney conspiracy against the cosmetics industry, or do you just disagree with all
my points?
Either way, let me know in the comments below!