Right after I wrote about how wonderful things were and how I was practicing great habits and ra-ra yay go me, life got really full. Good things happened, busy things happened, sad things happened. Plus schoolwork and grading. So, I’ve got some blog posts that I’m working on, but they involve research so the going has been slow. Back to it toward the end of the week! In the meantime, here’s something cool.

Finnish artist Jirka Väätäinen has created portraits of what the Disney Princesses would look like in real life. I think they’re really beautiful.

On a more critical level, the women’s bodies are still thin, yes, but they have proportions that are more akin to a healthy, thin body than a Barbie doll. For example, Ariel and Jasmine’s bare bellies (below) show some softness and curves. On some of the princesses, their arms actually have meat. Also, his renditions emphasize the beauty of racial differences rather than the way Disney tends to make even their “diversity Princesses” slightly whiter. Anyway, I think what I like best is that they look like real women, and a lot of the portraits have facial expressions that make them look like smart (quizzical, ironic, etc.) women. I mean look at Jasmine’s eyebrow there. (Yes, I know that the princesses are cartoons, but their bodies are unnaturally proportioned and their eyes, lips, and other features are largely drawn to look like a hyperbole of beauty standards rather than how a face really looks.) Take a gander. What do you think?

I think that some of these look like actresses/models I’ve seen before too, but I can’t quite put names to that feeling.

Ah-hah! It came to me. Sleeping Beauty looks like Heidi Klum. Pocahontas looks like that woman from Wayne’s World.