But the complaints about Cinderella and Aurora came in the early days of Disney, when the studio was still defining its style. In the 1990s and beyond, those design choices could be attributed to consistency across Disney’s in-house style. Heroines look one specific way everyone else looks different. To pull from Roger Ebert’s 1992 review of Disney’s Aladdin: “Most of the Arab characters have exaggerated facial characteristics - hooked noses, glowering brows, thick lips - but Aladdin and the princess look like white American teenagers.” That isn’t exactly the same as pointing out that Jasmine has the same face as Ariel and Belle, but it speaks to the uniformity of faces when it comes to certain characters in the Disney canon. Walt Disney Animation’s guidelines for “acceptable” female faces get especially dicey when the movies are about nonwhite characters. Brenda Chapman, co-director of Pixar’s Brave, however, recounted the difficulty she encountered when trying to make her female characters more realistic.

Jennifer Lee, Frozen director and chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, jumped in to clarify that the statement was about the technicalities of CG. Regardless of the actual intention behind the quote, it stirred up conversation.

In 2013, a Frozen animator’s quote about female characters being difficult to animate because they need to stay “pretty” made headlines.

Disney brave nightgown