By the time Melissa Atkins Wardy’s daughter celebrated her seventh birthday, the gender stereotype crusader and author of the forthcoming Redefining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, Birth to Tween had (proudly, purposefully) yet to buy her little girl a single item featuring a Disney princess. Then Merida came along. A strong archer with serious spunk, Merida’s plotline didn’t revolve around landing a man, and her long red curls were less Ariel the Little Mermaid and more Julia Roberts-as-Erin Brockovich. The character was so different from her fellow Disney starlets – the ones who stand with their petite hands perfectly poised for bluebirds and butterflies to alight upon them; the ones who sing of their prince coming one day soon – that Wardy opened the door and invited Merida into their family’s home.
“She was brave, daring, athletic,” Wardy recalls. “She didn’t look that typical female protagonist. I thought it was a wonderful message for girls and boys. So we got Merida pajamas. We saw Brave three times. I totally bought into that brand.”
Then, about a month ago, Disney pulled what Wardy calls a “bait and switch”: As Merida was officially coroneted as a Disney princess, a makeover took her from Katniss Everdeen to Bratz Doll.
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