Thursday, June 26, 2008

Sleeping Beauty's Dress is Blue!

There is a ridiculous obsession with pink and blue that's occurring when it comes to boys and girls. As I am a relatively new parent, I can't speak to how long this stupidity has been going on. However, it is appalling and brings sexism to new heights. Nothing demonstrates this more than Disney's alteration of Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty was my favorite movie as a child. I loved everything about her and especially the idea that this handsome prince came to rescue her. (My mother likes the prince from Cinderella. I maintain the prince from Sleeping Beauty is better. That's another blog). What I really loved was her dress. I had blond hair, blue eyes and blue was my favorite color. The fairies made her a beautiful dress to wear to the castle and a fight ensued over what color it should be. One fairy wanted blue, the other pink. I remember cheering very hard for the blue dress to win, and it did. She wore that throughout the movie and it was not pink unless the fairies were fighting and changing it's color. But now, Disney has succumbed to the idea that little girls, especially ones that one to be Princesses, should only wear pink. Blue, it has been decided, is a boy's color. Just look how Disney has altered it's own movie. The first is an original of the screen shot from the movie, the second is the DVD cover as sold by Disney, altering her dress to be pink instead of blue.


What is the matter with people? Would it really be so terrible if her dress was blue? What would that imply? That she was secretly a lesbian? That Prince Philip was maybe a littler more metrosexual than heterosexual? God forbid blue mean anything other than little boys. The obsession to divide the world into pink and blue only serves to unnecessarily confuse kids. Wear pink if you want, or wear blue. But don't sexualize the colors. That's ridiculous.

28 comments:

Holly said...

Sleeping Beauty's dress being pink has absolutely nothing to do with the sexualization of colors. It all has to do with marketing. You see, in the Disney Princess line there is already a blonde princess with a blue dress: Cinderella. So they changed Sleeping Beauty's dress color. Simple as that.

Anonymous said...

So because Cinderella has a "blue" dress (even though light light blue isn't a true blue) Disney can't afford to have a second princess with a blue dress? Why is it that they can't do that? Oh, yeah. It's because little girls are told they can only wear pink so Disney had to scramble and come up with a pink princess dress. Dumb.

Anonymous said...

I'm not a mom, but an avid Sleeping Beauty fan, and nothing drives me more insane than the fact they always have her in the pink dress. The dress is blue for 80% of the time the dress exists! Because of this, it's very hard to find figurines or pins of her in blue. The ones i do have are actually worth more than the same ones in pink because they are so rare.

My boyfriend works for a company that makes merchandise of many disney characters. He had asked one of his contacts why they make her dress pink instead of blue and Cinderella Blue instead of white (he only did this to try to shut me up about it...it didn't work LOL). He said that the reason that they put CInderella in blue is because the white dress doesn't reproduce well, so they use blue. And since Aurora's dress is 2 colors, they make it pink. I hope that helps some =o)

Anonymous said...

Ok, I just have to say I was so happy to read your blog because this is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves of my life, lol. Sleeping Beauty was always my favorite princess disney movie growing up. I LOVED her in the blue dress. When they started this whole "disney princess merchandise" bonanza like 10 years ago, I was LIVID when I repeatedly saw Aurora being represented in the horrid pepto bismul pink nightmare gown. I HATED HATED HATED IT!! I get that they don't want to have cinderella in her clssic white gown because of marketing reasons (I GUESS...) but it still pisses me off to no end. I always used to tell my mom to be on the look out for that rare sighting of a product of aurora in her blue dress and I'd tell her to buy it for me, lol.

Ok, all this was probably like 5-7 years ago so I had gotten over it. And then Harry Potter and The Goblet of fire came out. sigh....THEY DID THE SAME THING TO HERMIONE'S DRESS! In the book her dress in written as a beatiful periwinkle blue, and so in my mind I'm picturing it to be almost like sleeping beauty's dress. And then the movie comes out and I go see Hermione wearing the most GROTESQUE pink dress I have ever seen. I felt so disappointed and all of my blue/pink debate feelings of Sleeping Beauty were brought to surface once again. But I digress...


anyhoo, hope you don't think I'm loony toones, b/c I'm not. I'm just a frusterated fan like you:)

Deb said...

I gotta say, Hollee, you got it exactly right. That's how I feel about it and I don't know why they have to force that pink dress on us for any reason, marketing or otherwise.

Rogue Designs said...

Oh thank God there is a support group of sorts here for people like us. I was Sleeping Beauty at a Princess Pub Crawl recently and was infuriated at all the pink dresses. Aurora was my favorite because she wasn't super girl and DID NOT WEAR PINK.
I ended up going with her more "peasant" outfit because I refused to wear that stupid pink number.

Anonymous said...

Now the new aboniation is to put Aurora in a dress with alternating blue/pink colors such as the Lenox folks have done. I'm an avid Sleeping Beauty collector but refuse to look at anything if she's not in blue! Years and years ago we could find her in blue and it was wonderful but as the marketing grew, so did the need to expand the princess line and the pink overtook the blue. Now I can't find anything with her in blue anymore and the items that do come out are awful. It's a shame as I too have loved that moved since I was little.

Anonymous said...

oh my god the first holly got it one. if you want blue so bad theres cinderella or yellow, blue and yellow and many 'other' colours that the rest all wear!besides i think that in most people's childhood memories a big fat pink dress features even if collectors have to be so fastidious or parhaps its americans who read too much into trival things and besides in europe girls like to wear all colours ps. didn't realise cinderella was gay!

The Attentive Creator said...

Hokay... In the 1930s, blue was still the feminine color, especially light blue, being a white-ish color. Pink was the masculine color, being a light-ish red.
If you will notice, all the early Disney heroines wore blue or a close shade thereof: Wendy, Alice, Cinderella, and Aurora all wore blue. Granted, Cinderella and Aurora also wore other colors, but the point still stands. By the time Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" was released, the colors had switched. No one really knows why. And if you want to be all nitty-gritty about what color Aurora's dress was at what points, her dress is originally pink, then blue, then a godawful splash of the two. When she is in the room with the spindle, it takes on a green hue, probably because it's blue in this scene. While she is sleeping, it is actually PURPLE.
Now, as to why my favorite princess is marketed in pink. Deb said that girls are taught they can only wear pink and Disney had to scramble to conform. It's not all social conspiracy, people. Yeah, Cinderella was marketed in blue because silver is ridiculously expensive, especially when it was first released. The reason for every princess having a separate color is so that even at the earliest stages, the princesses can be distinguished among by children. Before they can fully recognize the difference in face structures, they can recognize color differences. That much is a societal "conspiracy".

Anonymous said...

OMG! I cannot believe I ran across this post! I am an avid Sleeping Beauty fan and absolutely HATE the pink dress. It enrages me and I honestly want to vandalize the merchandise when I see her in pink.

I am also constantly on the lookout for her in her real color dress, and snatch up anything that has it (I have a pack of little girls underwear (unopened) for this reason).

I understand the marketing concept (especially now that you can get all of the princesses in a pink dress regardless of what color their original dress was). My peeve is that you can also find all of those princesses in their original dress too; just not poor Aurora!

The most frustrating thing about this is ALMOST ALL of the disney female heroins wear almost the exact same shade of blue, if not the entire movie for a long time in it (In order):
Snow White: Top of her yellow gown /sleeves
Pinocchio: Good Faerie
Dumbo: his moms 'shawl'
Bambi: Faline's and Flower's eyes (since they have no clothes)
Ichabod and Mr. Toad: The section of Katrina's dress that laces
Cinderella: the sleeves on her 'work' outfit (her ball gown is a very very light blue)
Alice in Wonderland: Her dress
Peter Pan: Wendy's PJ's
Lady and the Tramp: The collar Lady is given
Sleeping Beauty: The dress the fairies make her (90% of the time shown in film)
101 Dalmations: Perdita's collar
The Aristocats: NONE - the girlies were in pink, gold, and diamonds in this one
Robin Hood: NONE - Marian's choker gem is blue, but she is clearly a pink/ purple girl
The Rescuers: Pennys outfit - a darker blue than 'the heroine blue,' but Im giving it to her
The Black Cauldron: NONE - this girl's poor dress has also been changed color
The Great Mouse Detective: Little girl mouse (also been changed on covers to pink)
Oliver and Co: Jenny's entire outfit
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's regular human dress
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: NONE: Webbigail's in pink
The Rescuers Down Under: NONE
Beauty and the Beast: Belle's regular dress
Aladdin: Jasmin's regular outfit
The Lion King: Nala's eyes
Pocahontas: her necklace
Toy Story: Bo Peep's hook and bodice
Hunchback: Esmeralda's bodice
Hercules: NONE - meg wears pink/purple
Mulan: her Kimono when she's in the palace
Tarzan:NONE
Atlantis: Kida
Monsters Inc.: NONE
Lilo and Stitch: NONE
Finding NEmo: Dory
The Incredibles: NONE
Cars:Sally

Im getting tired of posting, and I think Ive made my point. No reason not to put Aurora in her origianl BLUE dress, with and 'extra' one as pink; just like all of the princesses now have gold dresses, and Christmas dresses.

Anonymous said...

MAKE IT BLUE!!!!!

Anonymous said...

OMG. FINALLY. Somebody understands me. Blue is my absolute favorite color. And Sleeping Beauty is my favorite princess. I have blonde hair and really red lips, (but I have green eyes). Her dress is supposed to be blue. For godssakessss. IT IS BLUE!!!!

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU! I always wondered if I was alone in the feeling that the pink dress was an abomination. I can't really add anything new to the convo other than to say I'm right there on all points - a collector, a cosplayer and a fan of the film. True Blue all the way!

Anonymous said...

Cinderella's dress is a silver blue and Sleeping Beauty's dress is a sapphire blue. I hate seeing her in pink. The two different blues would not clash and they should stick to representing the movie and not their pockets. MAKE IT BLUE!!!

Anonymous said...

At the end of the film the dress is pink..... maybe they flipped a coin to decide how she would sell.

Anonymous said...

Pink is the color that was settled on because of it's relationship to sleep. Much research was done and it turns out that when people see the color pink, a chemical that calms a person down is released in the brain. In fact, there is a shade of pink called "drunk tank pink" that is used to calm down inmates. The fact that they changed it from blue has nothing to do with Aurora being a secret lesbian or whatever you said; that would be ridiculous. Just as blue is more suitable for Cinderella, and yellow is more suitable for Belle, pink is more suitable for Sleeping Beauty.

Anonymous said...

The Disney Princess franchise is a huge thing for Disney. Each Princess needs their own 'look' to make it work. Sleeping Beauty's dress colour is merchandised as pink because Cinderella already has a blue dress and each princess needs different appearances.
It is obviously nothing to do with her sexuality as Cinderella and Tiana wear blue and green dresses which are typically seen as male colours.

Anonymous said...

I realize that I am late posting to this but I never thought about it since now (I just watched the movie since I was a child--now I am 21).
I'd like to point out that the difference in the dress colour on the covers probably has to do with the majority of the cover being the opposite colour (the late one having a lot of pinks and other colours so they made her dress blue, while on the new cover there is a significant amount of blue so of course they are going to go with the image of her in pink). This is done probably due to that they would like the audience to focus on her while looking at the cover)

I think that if you desire to get mad at those Disney characters that switch colour you must examine them all. What wasn't mentioned was Belle who goes from a BLUE peasant dress to PINK winter covering thing then finally to a YELLOW dress (yes I know that yellow is gender neutral but if you're fighting that women can wear blue, gender neutral I think should be argued against).

I have to mention it but since these movies are directed towards young children you have to examine it from their perspective, girls like pink (probably the most common assumption till they get to an older age)so of course they are going to put Sleeping Beauty in pin to appeal to what their audience is. This is why you don't see the prince/ hero going around in pink/ light/bright colours has they want to maintain a masculine sense regarding them. If you really want to poke at one gender inequality in a Disney movie I do think that you should touch on everything rather than just one subject-such as why cant the prince be in pink??(would a young boy like that?).
Yes if I had to choose I do prefer the blue dress but its all in marketing and appealing to who and what their audience is. This is probably why in some Disney movies they have Easter eggs (hidden symbols from past movies) that probably intrigue you to watch the other movie (Ms. Pots in Tarzan, Scar in Hercules, The ball with star from Toy Story in Monsters Inc, Lady and the Tramp in 101 Dalmatians.....there's tons). This is also probably why they have the vault as you hear Beauty and the Beast on dvd and you start to think "I have to have it".

Anonymous said...

HI I am the author of a children's book titled PINK IS JUST A COLOR AND SO IS BLUE. Check it out.
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Just-Color-So-Blue/dp/1469902176/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351352420&sr=8-1&keywords=pink+is+just+a+color+and+so+is+blue

Anonymous said...

I finally found an Aurora figurine in her blue dress! After all those years of searching. I had to pay $15 which ask me is a little overpriced but I think its worth because it is extremely rare to find Aurora in her blue dress.
http://www.fantasiescometrue.com/product/sleeping_beauty_in_blue_dress_pvc_figure_2013/

Anonymous said...

Her dress was originally pink when it was made. Then it was pink at the very end of the movie. I personally like it better pink. The pink is much brighter than the blue. What bothers me is the lack of brunette princesses. The only one is Belle. Snow White and Jasmine have black hair. Aurora, Cinderella,Rapunzel,and Elsa are blonde. And Ariel, Ana, and Merida have red hair. Tiana's hair is sort of brown but it is almost black. Where are the brunettes?

Anonymous said...

I noticed that as well. I am not sure why there are not many brunette princesses.

MAKE IT PINK!

Anonymous said...

cried like a baby when the dress didn't stay pink...I LOVED pink then and I love pink now! I dressed my little boy in pink shirts and ties, I just love the color. Tried to convince my daughter into letting me dress her son in pink and got told NO. I bought him a pink shirt that said, "Real boys wear pink!" She let him wear it, still one of my favorite pictures!

Anonymous said...

If you pay close attention to the last scene as aurora and Philip dance into the clouds the faries are still changing the color of the dress. Although the dress was blue 75% of the movie, it is pink in all Disney merchandising. There are two reasons. Firstly Disney already had a blonde haired princess with a beautiful blue ball gown, so having another would just create confusion. Secondly referring back to the last dance, the couple dances into the clouds and it fades back to the story book page with the dress color changing all the while. If you pay close attention you see that just before the book closes her dress becomes pink again. It only makes sense for her to be merchandised the way she was in the end.

Danielle said...

Wow, breathe people!! Take a look at the portraits of all the Disney princesses. Here's the color breakdown: 5 in blue (Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine, Merida, and Elsa), 2 in green (Tiana, and Anna), 2 in purple (Ariel, and Rapunzel), 1 in yellow (Belle), and 1 in pink (Aurora). Snow White also has yellow and red elements. Ariel has a green tail. Pocahontas and Mulan don't really have "princess" dresses because they're historical not fairy-tale.

So let's analyze this. 5 in blue, ONE in pink. Huh. If Disney has some kind of conspiracy against blue they're not very good at getting the message across, are they? My gosh, maybe they don't?! It seems to me the only people telling girls what colors they can and can not wear are the people on here saying it's shameful that Disney would make Aurora wear pink. News flash, some little girls like pink all on their own! There are plenty of "blue" princesses to satisfy the girls that don't. Maybe too many compared to all the other colors...

Look, I get that we all have fond memories of our childhood, but from the beginning Aurora had a color-changing dress. Why shouldn't she be merchandised wearing pink? It distinguishes her from the others, especially the similarly blonde Cinderella. All of you declaring the distinct difference between silver blue and sapphire blue need to realize that as welcoming as Disney is to us adult fans, their target audience is very young. That color difference is not clear at all to a pre-schooler. Disney has a dozen characters in their princess line-up now, so of course they have to make them automatically distinguishable to kids. That might be a marketing conspiracy, but I promise there is no "pink" conspiracy!

LisAnnT said...

I agree and it drives me crazy. Of course little girls know the difference. What makes me more crazy is that they are dropping her from the line because she's less popular. She's not less popular. The pink dress is less popular and confusing. It should be blue.

Unknown said...

This is honestly the dumbest thing I've read today. One of the reasons Sleeping Beauty's dress is not blue it's because when she falls asleep it's blue but when she wakes up and at the end of the movie it ends up pink. Blue is a color that is commonly represents sleep.They went with pink because it's a new chapter for Sleeping Beauty she is awake now and not sleeping. It's not about gender roles. Also Cinderella is the iconic princess whose dress is blue (does it matter what color blue?) Over the years Cinderellas dress has gotten more blue anyways. If disney was really about gender roles then they would only have pink for most of the princesses but they also have other colors. Just to remind most of you of what they have: blue, green, yellow, pink, light pink, tan, purple, multi colored dresses. Disney has variety. Disney doesn't force gender roles on your kid because the biggest influence for your children is yourself.

Anonymous said...

Thank God i'm not alone hating that hideous pink dress. I'm from Italy and here it's impossible even to see somenthing with Aurora in blue dress. Actually the prevoius comment from "unknown" is the dumbest thing i've ever read. Is not because of the so called new chapter of sleeping beauty's life that the pink dress dame from. I've always thought it was due to Cinderella, that's why I hate her. I really think that Disney is making a huge marketing mistake: MAKE PRODUCTS IN BOTH COLOURS! People can choose the one they love and make everyone happy. They're also changing the dvd cover what the pink dress.. it's insane!
By the way sorriso for this outbusrt but it really driver me crazy seeing my favourite disney princess being sacrifice for Cinderella white dress.