A Pictorial Analysis of Disney Male Characters: Princes and Reflections

CW: This shows a lot of bodies and talks a lot of ratios and trends. This can be triggering for some folks.

Diclosure: I started this in March 2021 and am just now finishing it in November 2021 — turns out finishing an MS, moving across the country and starting a new life, all with COVID in the background, does things to your brain and you get behind on life. Something about eventually peeling yourself off the ground to do things again.

Over a year ago I published a short visual data essay called A Pictorial Analysis of Disney Female Characters.

It was centered on taking classically animated (2D animated only) female characters and computing different body ratios of them. This was based on my own curiosity to previous enragement I had seen.

One thing that everyone has always been enraged about is the way that women are portrayed in Disney movies, not only in plot but also in looks. Disney princesses are usually the battleground for this. Big eyes, thin wrists, invisible waists, impossible boobs. Buzzfeed and other sites have done write-ups on this. — Nina Lutz, A Pictorial Analysis of Disney Female Characters.

However, there aren’t a *ton* of articles about the unrealistic standards of male Disney characters. Here are some good ones though: