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kittiekattie, concept art and a little bit of official art of Disney's first African-American princess. The Princess and the Frog is apparently set during the 1920s Jazz Age in New Orleans although the costume geek in me points out that the setting is in no way reflected in the hair, clothes, or body shape in the posted images.

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That first picture looks like she killed the Cheshire Cat and used his tail to trim her dress. PETA disapproves.

I can't see the Cheshire Cat staying still long enough for someone to skin him. XD

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that!

It's a nice character design and a very good-looking role-model for colored girls who couldn't possibly relate to other Disney princesses :p

Speaking of which, it looks like she's wearing Cinderella's hand-me-downs. I hope they correct that detail. I understand it's set in the South, but that wasn't a popular style of dress for the time period, was it?

I wonder how long it will take to start seeing internet pr0ns of her.

The clothing bothers me, but as I said, I'm a costume geek. :D

I am not a costume geek, but the clothing bothers me. It's not even remotely right.

Dude, forget the costumes; I'm looking at her HAIR and going "...no."

*facepalm* MAKE UP YOUR MINDS.

What is it with Disney artists and the costumes? Do they really hire the only artists in the world who aren't devoted to having piles of costume books (and nowadays, costume sites bookmarked on the Interwebs) for reference? Or is it that their execs put the kibosh on anything that looks historical?

(One of the fun things about SDK is that on the Mibu, especially, you can pick out odd bits of Meiji court or religious garb being used in the Vegas-y costumes ... it's pretty funny!)

I think they want to be able to sell lots and lots of costumes to little girls and their parents, maybe?

Yeah, but a little girl would go for a ruffly flapper dress too. Pink and ruffly. Or a drop-waisted number.

I guess the parents might say "that's not really a princess dress, honey." Silly parents ... .

I went as a flapper for Halloween in fourth grade. But then I was always a bit odd. :D

Little girls would look good in flapper dresses, since they don't have chests anyway. Ball gowns just look weird on them.

Disney wants Tiana to be a Princess like the other Disney Princesses, and not a servant-girl-who-marries-up like Belle or Cinderella. (Though neither of these characters was poor -- Belle was from a respectable middle class family, and Cinderella's papa was rich.) Personally just hope the (many) re-writes don't completely kill the script and character.

They could make cute costumes for girls and their parents that were remotely historically accurate. Hell, they're already flat so they'd have a leg up...so to speak.

Even the name is wrong, so it must be the executives. Maddie was a perfectly normal name for black girls at that time. Tiana? A perfectly normal name for black girls now - but not very historically accurate.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Frog#Controversy) says there were complaints that Maddie/Maddy was a lower-class name, so it was changed, but there's no citation for it.

There was protest because at first, because she was going to be the maid of a white girl. I suspect when they changed that, they changed the name as well. I didn't hear any complaints over the name itself, but I may have missed something.

You know, the setup with her as a maid would have worked for one of the role-reversal fairy tales, where a princess goes to work as a kitchen maid or lady's maid, but The Frog Prince? Good lord. Yeah, I know they have to flesh it out to last for 90 minutes or however long the movie will be, especially once you clean up the traditional skeevy-almost-sexual bits, but to put an entirely different story in there?

I know! I mean, the princess in the Frog Prince is... a princess. Ergo the golden ball and everything.

Almost sexual bits? It's all sexual bits! Which is great, considering it wasn't originally a child's story.

I'm assuming that Disney would be taking the story from the cleaned-up version in modern storybooks, rather than the original, anyway, where it was transformed into the frog sleeping on her pillow, and getting a kiss.

I'm certain you're right, which is a pity. The original is, as always, better. *snifflesnifflesniffle*

Ah, don't get me started on the name business! It's like those really bad romance novels, where the setting is the 19th century but the heroines all have late 20th-century trailer park trash names!

(I love names. They've been a hobby of mine since grade school.)

From what I understand, technically, "Stephanie" and "Tiffany" are period medieval names, but nobody would believe them. XD

Well, they might if you reminded them that "Stephanie" is the (French) feminine of "Stephen" and spelled the other one "Theophanie"!

And I was talking about coined sillinesses like Wylena, Dawnmarie, Tanzey, Kaylene, and Zondra ... .

At least this one looks somewhat period....

The hat! The shoes! I want.

That's the one I liked, too! I'm sure it'll never make it into the film. :(

Dude, that's adorable.

You want some kind of historical accuracy from Disney? Madness!

Also, whoever wrote the article made a spelling error when they spelled, "It's about damn time, Disney," as, "Go, Disney."

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