Happy World Princess Week!

We are two days into World Princess Week, the annual celebration of the Disney Princess brand, which takes place from August 25th to 31st this year. The beloved brand has moved on from its Ultimate Princess Celebration campaign to begin a new marketing campaign called "Create Your World." The campaign kicked off at the beginning of the month with a commercial entitled "The Magic Within" in which little girls imagine Disney characters and symbols popping into their ordinary lives so they can live the modern princess life. This particular brand campaign seems more consumer-based than "Live Your Story," which encourages incorporating princess traits like kindness and bravery in everyday life. "Create Your World" sounds like an invitation to buy lots of Disney merchandise and turn your home into a castle, which is on brand with modern Disney's questionable decisions that favor corporate greed over good storytelling.


Although World Princess Week started yesterday, most of the festivities around it took place earlier this month. For instance, Coco Jones performed her new World Princess Week cover of "Almost There" at the D23 Expo a little over two weeks ago. On August 13th, Disneyland Resort hosted "Create Your World: A Disney Princess Regal Experience" to showcase all the new merchandise they will be releasing over the next year to go with the campaign. The event looked absolutely magical with glitter, castles, gowns, surprises, and even a guest appearance from four famous princess actresses--Jodi Benson, Paige O'Hara, Linda Larkin, and Anika Noni Rose. Lots of fun things were featured there, including makeup, dolls, and plushies. A similar event was held yesterday in Times Square so the magic of Disney Princesses could be celebrated from coast to coast.


World Princess Week usually takes place during the last week of August and features Disney Princess movie marathons on TV as well as lots of fun imagery of the princesses on social media. Unfortunately, this year's artwork was recycled from earlier World Princess Week events and had few new images to offer. One particularly fun revelation from this week is that the premiere movie of my favorite show, Sofia the First, Once Upon a Princess, is now free to watch on YouTube. This is super exciting because the movie rarely aired on television since its inception and was never on Disney+ despite the rest of the show being available there. The surprise release is likely in anticipation of the upcoming series, Sofia the First: Royal Magic to ensure that younger fans can watch the original story from the beginning before diving into the sequel.


World Princess Week is also being celebrated in Disney Parks worldwide. Disneyland Paris even has a special exclusive show for this magical week called "Live Your Story," inspired by the former Disney Princess anthem. Hong Kong Disneyland has a special themed walkway called "A Royal Walk with Princesses," and all of the parks have special princess-themed food items that are only available this week. If you don't have a Disney vacation planned in time for World Princess Week, never fear. ShopDisney is featuring a Royal Savings Event on their new "Create Your World" merchandise so you can bring some of the magic home. Disney Channel is showcasing a specially curated schedule of Disney Princess movies all week including Raya and the Last Dragon, Moana, The Princess and the Frog, Brave, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Cinderella remake. Disney Jr is joining in the action as well by using the week as an opportunity to promote their new Ariel series.


World Princess Week is a celebration of all things Disney Princess, and this year's "Create Your World" campaign is a call to action for young fans to embrace their inner princess and create their own magical world. While the campaign's focus on consumerism is questionable, the festivities surrounding World Princess Week are fun and engaging. From movie marathons to exclusive events, themed food, and special merchandise, there's something for every Disney Princess fan to enjoy. Here at The Princess Blog, we celebrate princesses every week, so stay tuned for more royal treatment all year round!
I have always dreamed of being a writer and creating the next great fairy tale princess heroine. Princesses inspire us to be our best selves. While you're here, feel free to follow my page on Facebook, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and check out my books. I'm also on Instagram and Twitter.

Would you like to contribute to The Princess Blog? Become a patron, and you could pick the topic for my next post!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Mermaid Magic

Image
It's been a bit of a wait, but Rainbow SpA  has delivered on their promise of an original animated mermaid show ! From the creators of Winx Club ,  Mermaid Magic  premiered on Netflix a few days ago with ten fun-filled episodes. Although the show didn't have quite as much underwater content as I was hoping for, it's a solid new Magical Girl series with beautiful animation and a female-empowering plot. I was thrilled to dive into the world of Merlinda, Sasha, and Nerissa and learn about their incredible powers on their journey to save Mertropia (originally called Mertropolis) pirates, witches, and toxic waste. The first season ended on a satisfying note with the potential for new adventures in future seasons. Merlinda is the sheltered princess of Mertropia who leaps into action when she overhears a conversation about her father using up his life force to protect the kingdom. If she can travel to the dangerous surface world through a magic portal and recover five Neptune Pea
Read more

Review: Sailor Moon Cosmos

Image
It's been over two years since the last double feature for the Sailor Moon Crystal anime series , which covered the second to last arc of the original anime and manga. Closing the gap between the two anime versions of Sailor Moon, a two-part theatrical release premiered in Japan last summer called Sailor Moon Cosmos , which covered the final arc of the story, Sailor Stars. The film was released in two parts, which is barely enough time to cover the expansive story and is probably confusing to people watching it if they aren't already familiar with the source material. Although there is no English release of the film planned at this time, I was able to watch a fansub that allowed me to experience the thrilling conclusion to the newest iteration of this popular Magical Girl franchise. Sailor Moon Cosmos  has the same plot as the controversial final season of the original Sailor Moon anime , but covers it in a much shorter time span. It introduces the trans-friendly Sailor Stars
Read more

Princess Fashion

Image
I've been seeing several viral posts recently about historical fashion lately. One was  a gallery of women's fashion every year from 1784 to 1970 , and another was a video re-enactment of how women got dressed in the 18th century . These got me thinking about some of my favorite princess fashions. Though princesses are not known to be  historically accurate , their fashions drew inspiration from many different places, and history is one of them. If you take a look at the way fashion has evolved over time, you can get an idea of which parts inspired the princess movies and which parts were altered. Something that surprised me in the re-enactment was how many pieces were assembled on a woman to give the appearance of a single dress. Today, most dresses are a single piece, but historically, gowns consisted of a corset bodice and a large skirt with a crinoline underneath. This was something I also noticed about Disney's  theme park princesses . Though they look like one dr
Read more

Review: The Spanish Princess/White Queen Trilogy

Image
Yesterday, the Starz network  released the series finale of The Spanish Princess , concluding  The White Queen  trilogy of miniseries that began in 2013. Based on a book series called The Cousins' War  by Phillippa Gregory , the trilogy covers the women who stood behind the men in power in the English monarchy from 1464 to the 1530s, preceding the first two sovereign queens, Mary and Elizabeth. The White Queen , The White Princess , and The Spanish Princess  grant us a rare opportunity to see what life was like for medieval monarchs. Watching them reminded me of why I prefer the fairy tale versions of royalty. Those stories do not contain the gory deaths, gruesome births, and invasive politics that historical dramatizations like these exemplify. In fact, I had very little interest in watching the second season of The Spanish Princess until I watched some historical videos and learned that the king that Catherine of Aragon was married to was none other than King Henry VIII, who was
Read more

Disney's Descendants Makes Even Less Sense Thanks to The Rise of Red!

Image
I have never been a fan of the Descendants franchise , which was originally created by Disney to take down Mattel's semi-successful Ever After High line of dolls, books , and webisodes. It succeeded in this endeavor thanks to  Disney brand recognition  despite being an inferior product. Coming out nearly a decade after the original , we have a fourth Descendants movie entitled The Rise of Red . This movie introduces a new generation of fairy tale offspring with countless changes to the classic stories, most of which are for the worse. Its only redeeming factor was a heartfelt tribute to Cameron Boyce , who played the son of Cruella de Vil in the original films. The Descendants franchise had very little working in its favor from the start, but it at least had a leg up over The School for Good and Evil  by basing the backstories of the Disney characters on their films instead of superimposing an artificial school setting where they learned to be heroes and villains. This film retcon
Read more

Review: Unicorn Academy (Netflix)

Image
As soon as I saw the previews for Netflix's new animated series, Unicorn Academy , I couldn't get over how similar it looked to Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders . Teenagers forming magical bonds with unicorns to save the world from evil? Yes, please! With a Jewel Riders graphic novel on the horizon, this is the perfect time to revisit that premise. Unicorn Academy is loosely based on a book series of the same name  that got picked up by Netflix and recently aired its first season. The premiere movie and successive eight episodes follow six unicorns and their riders on their quest to protect the magical realm from the evil Ravenzella, who performed reprehensible acts to previous generations, including the father of the main character, Sophia. The show contains a lot of teen angst and drama as well as rainbows, sparkles, and magic. Although Unicorn Academy features an entire school full of unicorn riders training to be protectors, it only focuses on the six students liv
Read more

Fans "Wish" Disney Had Used These Abandoned Concepts

Image
Happy New Year, princess fans! When a new year begins, many of us think about things we can do better than the year before. There is no company this notion applies to better than Disney, which has been failing in every direction  now more so than ever. Their latest feature, Wish , was a genuinely solid movie that sadly did not make the profits it deserved. Following its theatrical run, many fans noticed that the concepts presented in the official  Art of Wish  book  would have elevated it from a good movie to a great one. Most of these concepts revolved around love and romance , which has been strategically removed from modern Disney Princess archetypes , despite being a staple of the brand prior to the past decade. Despite some early rumors that Asha might be the daughter of King Magnifico and Queen Amaya, the film's director Chris Buck explained in an interview  why he was adamantly against making her a princess, which may have been another mistake that could have altered the m
Read more

Disney Announces Sofia the First: Royal Magic!

Image
Almost two years ago, Disney announced  that they were working on a spinoff series to Sofia the First . The best place to reveal new updates about this mysterious series would have been the D23 Expo , which took place in Anaheim last weekend. Instead, Disney Jr. quietly posted on Instagram  today that we can expect to see the new series, Sofia the First: Royal Magic  on Disney+ in 2026. This is fantastic news if it's true, but Disney has broken promises on many  other upcoming shows  over the upcoming years, so it's a good idea to take all their announcements with a grain of salt until there is something more substantial like a trailer or release date. Still, it's exciting to have a title and more information about the series. Unlike the original announcement about it being a spinoff like Elena of Avalor , the show will now be a direct sequel that continues Sofia's adventures after graduating from Royal Prep . The official summary is as follows: "Sofia the First:
Read more

What It Means To Be a Disney Princess in the 2020s

Image
The first post I wrote in this blog was called "How the Disney Princesses Stayed Modern for 80 Years."  The answer was a combination of creating new princesses to match the times along with branded promotional videos, events, and merchandise that combine the old with the new. The latest example is this year's Ultimate Princess Celebration , which is an attempt to celebrate all of the Disney Princesses, including ones that may feel outdated by today's standards, by releasing imagery that makes it look like they're all friends. This is a wonderful method of keeping some of my favorite childhood characters relevant , but it is also a shield used to cover up a darker truth that many of these characters would not be deemed acceptable by today's standards. We have reached a point in Hollywood in which traditional feminine traits are considered weak or problematic . As such, characters like Raya  are considered the only acceptable way to portray a woman in the medi
Read more

Is This Snow White's New Look?

Image
I thought I said everything I had to say about Disney's upcoming remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  starring Rachel Zegler  until  this set leak happened and took the internet by storm. While I'm no stranger to set leaks , this one really takes the cake. Maybe it's the lighting in these shots, Rachel's unfinished hairstyle in the process of being set, or her unnatural expression, but something seems very off about these photos. Can you spot it? It's probably the bright yellow skirt. As accurate of a depiction this is to the dress Snow White wore in the original animated film, these colors are horrendously bright and do not look good on our young actress at all. Don't worry, though. I'm sure they'll fix it with CGI. Rachel Zegler sports a surprisingly screen accurate rendition of Snow White's iconic dress with a blue bodice, white collar, yellow skirt, and red teardrop-shaped accepts on the puffed sleeves. And yet, it looks wrong. Could it
Read more