Disney’s Newest Princess Is Latina? Really?

You know when you have pages like NBC Latino and Remezcla sending you posts about a new Latina Disney princess, the Rebeldes have to check it out.

Ok, at first, we thought the princess, named Princess Sofia, looked like a young Christina Hendricks from Mad Men. Not Latina.

But like NBC's piece said, let's assume that she is because Disney said so. As the story reports:

Some may say that Sofia doesn’t look very Latina and others might say Hispanics come in all shades, but Disney says she is.

During a recent press tour, one blogger pointed out that in concept art, Sofia’s mother, Miranda, the newly crowned queen of Enchancia, had a darker complexion than the other characters, according to Entertainment Weekly. “She is Latina,” executive producer Jamie Mitchell said of the character, acknowledging that this makes Sofia the first Latina princess to appear in a Disney animation project.

You could have fooled us. It's the little things, right? Not focusing on complexion for now, you would think that if Disney really wanted to "Latinize" a character, adding that one little accent over the "i" to say "Sofía" would have been an easy addition. That could have been a clue for those who are still scratching their heads.

Later in the NBC story, a Disney VP admits that Sofia (sans accent) is not being promoted as a Latina character, but admits that "“When we go into schools [to talk to young students about the show], what I find fascinating is that every girl thinks that they’re Sofia.” (Maybe because of the name? Did you think about that?) We wonder what schools the VP is visiting.

Now you should go to the NBC piece since there is a rather lively discussion about race and identity going on. As for us? This is Disney we are talking about, and they live in such an alternate universe that is just not the universe we know, and neither do our own kids. Yeah, we have kids. And they don't like princesses.

Cue the really cute trailer.