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Home / Makeup Trends / Ursula gets skinny to sell makeup

ursula

Ursula gets skinny to sell makeup

September 1, 2012

Jezebel recently reported that Disney gave The Little Mermaid’s sea witch Ursula a major makeover for their new cosmetics line. Like maybe she went on “Extreme Makeover: Underwater Edition.”

“You might might not recognize her: As you can see in the image on the left above, her waist has been whittled and her double chin’s gone. Talk about a poor, unfortunate soul! (And the Queen of Hearts is looking mighty slimmed-down, as well.) …But was Ursula forced to go on a crash diet so she could model for beauty products? Because that’s bull—.”

Well, I’m not above getting into the body image issues raised by female Disney villains on a makeup compact (SLOW FEMINISM NEWS DAY), so here are my thoughts on the matter.

Disney sucks when it comes to women and beauty. We know this. We never expect Disney to do the right thing when it comes to representing women and their bodies. But here’s the thing: I’m actually not sure that Disney did the wrong thing either. Or at least maybe they didn’t do any worse than they’d already done.

I remember when I was a kid, I loved “The Little Mermaid” and my mother hated it. Hated it. I mean, she loved the music and the animation (who doesn’t) but hated the message and told me why. And I believe she told me at some point or another that she didn’t appreciate that Ursula was the only fat character. And she was the villain. Not only does the movie send a message that a girl should give up her voice and become someone else for a man, but then it takes it a step further by showing us that a fat, darker-skinned woman = bad.

So my first thought when I saw this makeup was actually, Well, awesome…Disney doesn’t think they have to show women as thick to say they are terrible people. That’s progress. But then I thought, Yeah, but turning her into a skinny bitch isn’t really helping women out either.

I loved Ursula in all her throaty, swishy, cynical glory (and I felt like she got screwed in the end — Ariel did break the deal, after all). Even though my mom worried about the message the movie was sending, I didn’t see her fat as a bad thing, and I wish Disney didn’t either. This new makeup line is obviously embracing the dark, sexy side of the evil characters, and I don’t think Ursula needed a makeover to do that. She was sexy enough as she was.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what Disney puts on a makeup compact though; they need to start with their movies. The sooner we see female Disney characters in all shapes and sizes — and that includes princesses and villains — the better.

About the author

Rachel Wilkerson
Rachel Wilkerson writes the blog The Life & Lessons of Rachel Wilkerson, where she covers those "getting it" moments when a light bulb goes off and suddenly everything makes sense. Whether it's a new way to get motivated to work out or the new gadget she never knew she always wanted, she loves sharing her lessons with other people in a straight-up, no-BS kinda way. Her work has been featured on Shape.com and she is a panelist for U by Kotex's Real Answers. When she's not writing, downward dogging, drinking tequila, or writing about downward dogging and drinking tequila, she works full-time as a community manager for a hip little online entertainment company in Houston. She and her boyfriend recently bought a juicer and are officially addicted.


  • everydayrockstar

    Disney sends bad messages about “villians” in general. Ever notice how all the villans are ugly? scary looking? They just LOOK EVIL! Something I always have to tell my kids is that bad people aren’t always ugly. Sometimes the bad guys are the really attractive “I got my stuff together” guy from next door.

  • http://twitter.com/blairloren Blair

    When I was very young I had a swim teacher that was on the heavy side, had short grey hair, and always wore a black bathing suit. My 4 year old self told her that she looked like Ursula. I feel bad about it to this day.
    I agree with you that they definitely shouldn’t have made her stick thin. Her new “look” does not even look like her. If I saw this picture out of context, I wouldn’t even know who it was.

  • Liz

    Not downplaying what they did, but think of an octopus. It’s round, and all the tentacles make it creepy (IMO). There are plenty of instances of the villain being portrayed by skinny characters, Cruella deVil and Madam Medusa (from the Rescuers) are both examples.

    While I’m not a huge fan of how Disney portrays women, most of these stories are based off of fables/tales from long ago when it was thought that a woman needed a prince to “rescue” them from their life. As long as we contextualize when those stories were written, I’m not seeing the harm in enjoying them, nor would I stop my future children from watching them. Kids see and interpret how we tell them to, if we don’t make a big deal about it then they won’t.

    Side note– Ursula terrified me, I cried many many times while watching that movie because I thought it was scary! They succeeded in making her scary!!