Minnie Mouse is too fat to wear designer clothing
Barneys New York is a chain of luxury department stores in the US and this year they have teamed up with Disney to create "Electric Holiday," featuring a 3-D film featuring iconic Disney characters as supermodels. As you do.
In the movie, Minnie Mouse heads to the fashion shows in Paris and runs into her high fashion friends, including none other than Cruella de Vil and Snow White. There’s only one problem - Minnie's too fat to fit into a Lanvin dress. Yes, you heard that right - Minnie Mouse is too fat.
According to David Freed, Creative Director for Barneys New York says. “The standard Minnie Mouse will not look so good in a Lanvin dress.”
So will they find different outfits for "fat" Minnie? No way. They want Minnie AND they want Lanvin. "Luckily" for Minnie the problem is easily fixed. When the dress doesn’t fit, you don’t change the dress -- you change the body. Because you know that's totally the message we women want to hear when we go shopping. Buy the dress and change your body to fit it - just like Disney and Barneys.
Self acceptance blogger Ragen Chastain writes:
"They turned Minnie’s cute little rodent-sized frame into that of a 5’11” supermodel. And Daisy Duck and Goofy face similar fates. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a 5’11, size-0 body, there is plenty wrong with massively changing the body of an internationally recognised character so that she can fit in a dress that doesn’t look good on a “standard” body.
This brings up a lot of questions: How is Goofy not tall or thin enough? What the hell are they thinking!? Do they not know that young girls are already under crushing pressure to meet an impossible Photoshop standard and don’t need to be told that the answer to looking good in clothes is to drastically change your body? Do they just not care?
We need to teach our kids to love their bodies. Because kids don’t take care of things they hate and that includes their bodies. Teaching kids that their bodies are worthy of care is the first step in teaching them to care for themselves. Then, when they are adults, perhaps they’ll be empowered enough to insist on designers with enough talent to actually design dresses that look good on all bodies."
I just want to echo every one of Ragen's words. I know that Minnie Mouse is already an unreal character but she's a character created for children and the child-like, a character of wonder and innocence. She belongs at Disney, in polka dots not at Barneys in Lanvin.
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