Dec 15th, 2009 by woodstone
Last Friday, December 11th, was a day that we’d looked forward to for a loooooooong time.
It was the day the first Disney animated movie to feature an African-American princess was released.
For years there was nothing but a string of white Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel), although more recently there were a few “ethnic” princesses too (Mulan, Pocahantas, Jasmin). But we thought the lack of an African American princess was inexcusable… Why overlook such a large percentage of the population?
We thought it was so unfair that we boycotted Disney for awhile (not that I suppose they noticed…), and R has written letters to them… sometimes nice ones, and sometimes not so nice ones… pointing out to them their HUGE oversight.
Now finally, we got what we wanted…The Princess and the Frog has been released and there is an African American Disney princess…Tiana.
We went to the first showing of the movie on the day it opened in our town. R had been counting down the days…
She was in heaven.
(R waiting for the movie to start)
I had a few gripes with the movie (I didn’t like all the “voodoo” stuff and thought the movie probably perpetuated some negative stereotypes), but R didn’t notice the problems with it, and I didn’t point them out to her… I didn’t want anything to mar her happiness at finally seeing a princess that looks like her…
We stopped and bought the soundtrack on the way home, and R has been listening to “Almost There” ever since…
The rest of the weekend was busy… We had S here, and had several things planned for her visit, including going to a dinner and karaoke night at our church, and going to town to watch the annual Christmas Carriage Parade.
I didn’t get any pictures of this year’s parade, but this is a photo from another year…
After the parade we talked up and down Mainstreet. We especially enjoyed the ice sculptures…
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By the end of the weekend, we were completely worn out… but in a good way. We won’t see S again until after Christmas so I’m glad we were able to do some fun things with her while she was here…
