David Trumble, a 27-year-old artist currently working as a political cartoonist for the Sun, imagined some powerful historical women as princesses of the Disney variety. Here are some of his drawings:
Anne Frank
Jane Goodall
Marie Curie
Harriet Tubman
Susan B. Anthony
Rosa Parks
Trumble says of the images:
"The cartoon is a satire that is not meant to glamorize the princess versions of the characters, but rather to make fun of the very limiting princess mould by showing how ridiculous it is to try to crowbar real-life heroes into the template. These women are far more than the homogenized, pouty guises I have drawn them as, and I wanted to make a point about society's tendency to over-use this archetype.
Regardless, a lot of people have jumped upon the cartoons and said they wish more real-world women were depicted this way, it misses the point of the satire, but is an equally interesting reading of the material nonetheless. I am not waging a war on all princess characters, rather I am trying to make the case that our real world is more diverse, filled with so many different archetypes for young women to find role models in, so why then do we paint all of our fictitious female role models with the same brush?
It comes down to this: Our cultural ideal of a woman is this princess mould that has been captured by too many cartoon media outlets, books and movies. Being an ideal woman has come to mean squeezing your individual greatness into this archetype. My drawings are meant to convey that greatness in women exists in our history books and before our eyes, and they do NOT fit into these moulds, and importantly, they never needed to in order to be who they became, and so it's time to take away this artifice of expectation. We as a society have embraced an archetype that does not serve our daughters. We have to change our consumer habits, before others will change what they sell to our daughters."