This Artist Decided To Show What Disney Characters Would Look Like If They Had Realistic Bodies
Disney gave us a colorful bunch of friends to grow up with. Some were bold, expressive, and charismatic. Others were quiet, deep thinkers, carrying a world of emotions in their kind hearts. But as different as they were on the inside, most of them were very similar on the outside.
So artist Wyethe Smallish decided to try and see what they would look like if they were built differently. "I have my own body image issues that I work on, and a major way that I do that is through my art," Wyethe told Bored Panda. "So as a therapeutic exercise I wanted to alter some characters I really loved growing up."
But what started as a personal project has already touched hundreds of thousands of people—after Wyethe shared her works on social media, they quickly went viral, receiving tons of praise from people who really appreciate such a refreshing take on their beloved characters.
More info: website | Instagram | TikTok | Twitter
This post may include affiliate links.
Ariel
Mulan
The Disney Princess franchise is comprised of thirteen princesses and a number of associated heroines. Regardless of any actual title(s) they have, each official Disney princess is properly addressed (within the franchise) with the title of "Princess" preceding their name.
They are: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Moana, and Raya.
"Growing up as a little girl, I always looked up to [Disney's] princesses and admired [their] stories," Wyethe said.
"I noticed that they all had the exact same body proportions, and that made it harder for me to relate to them as I grew up."
Princess Aurora
Jasmine
Rapunzel
She's probably got the strongest arms and core in the world from swinging around, painting, and kneading dough all day!
Having said that, Wyethe really enjoys the Disney character design. "It is a gorgeous style!"
However, she believes that, "as a society in this day and age, body representation not only makes the image more relatable, but it also helps with body acceptance and body appreciation."
Jasmine
She looks great either way. I don’t understand why Disney characters aren’t allowed to have average bodies. Surely kids won’t care.
Cinderella
Jasmine
Princess Tiana
"Overall there has been an enormous amount of positivity and appreciation for these illustrations," Wyethe added. "I receive messages every day saying how these images have helped heal their inner child. That makes it so worthwhile to me."
But we should remember that there's more to her art than this series. "While I do appreciate the love I have gotten from these drawings, as an artist this is not what I focus on. I may make more videos from time to time, but I have no desire to pursue this any further than a therapeutic exercise."
Mulan
Jasmine
Princess Aurora
Princess Tiana
The classic Disney movies have long been criticized for the problematic messages they transmit to impressionable girls, including the idea that you need a man to be happy, that you should wait around until you meet the man of your dreams, and that, once you marry the prince, you will live happily ever after.
But the image of feminine physical perfection often takes center stage when it comes to criticism towards the studio. For example, in their paper 'Mirror, mirror on the wall: Whose figure is the fairest of them all?', anthropologist Toe Aung of Pennsylvania State University and independent researcher Leah Williams said, "Disney princesses have extremely small waist-to-hip ratios that are nearly impossible to achieve naturally."
Princess Tiana
Rapunzel
Elsa
Ariel
Aung and Williams argue that such characters "might heighten or reinforce our preference for lower waist-to-hip ratios, and the perception that physically attractive individuals with lower waist-to-hip ratios possess morally favorable qualities."
So instead of building girls' self-esteem, the way these princesses look might actually bring the opposite result in the long run.
Cinderella
Rapunzel
Belle
Meg
She looks so much better- the original looked like a beanpole 😅 I love her new face shape too
But since beauty is a subjective trait, Aung and Williams focused on a measurable quality: the female characters' waist-to-hip ratio.
Using screenshots, they determined the "minimum waist and maximum hip widths" for 11 official Disney princesses, and the main characters of the phenomenally popular Frozen as well as seven Disney villains, including Maleficent from The Sleeping Beauty and Ursula from The Little Mermaid.
Princess Aurora
Princess Aurora
Princess Tiana
They found the median waist-to-hip ratio of the characters was a ridiculously low 0.535, meaning their waist measurement is just 53 percent of their hip measurement.
That is far below the 0.7 that is widely accepted as ideal and, surprisingly, even lower than that of the traditional Barbie doll, which is 0.56.
Such an hourglass figure is "nearly impossible to achieve naturally," the researchers highlighted.
Belle And Adam
I never cared for the design they gave the human Beast. He actually looks a lot better filled out.
Prince Eric
Cinderella
Ariel
People really loved Wyethe's Disney series
And even requested a few other characters for her to transform
Image credits: fartscapade
Image credits: fartscapade
Image credits: fartscapade
Image credits: fartscapade
Image credits: fartscapade
Image credits: fartscapade
Am i the only one who watched cartoons knowing they *weren't* real people and wouldn't look like such? Like, I was a little kid, I didnn't care about realism
isn't shaming someone for being thin the same thing this is supposed to be protesting? (been nice knowin' ya. i'll be banned after this for sure!)
Being fat and over weight is not healthy and people need to stop normalizing it. I'm not being mean or calling out over weight people, but its just science facts. We don't need to be rail thin either though. Even chubby isn't good. This needs to be taught at young age. You need to maintain a healthy weight.
Too thin is bad, too big is bad. This illustrator went from one bad to another. Also ignores the story in some case, like Cinderella would be thin AF, wasn't like her family would feed her well enough to get normal sized let alone fat
Yes, the 'befores' are unrealistically skinny, but they are also out of proportion. They are not real people, they're cartoons! Do kids think that all mice wear gloves and have 3 fingers & a thumb? What hurts young women is photos of real celebrities that have been photoshopped. Making these cartoon images more chunky isn't fixing anything.
This body positivity is getting out of hand, it’s a very smart and needed revolution but handled in such a stupid and superficial way most of the time. Like celebrating fat instead. Most of those are not heathy body, they might be common bodies in the US because of how unhealthy most of your diet is (and I don’t want to be offensive) but they are not healthy. Now let’s really celebrate healthy bodies instead of celebrate just a different and more common way to have an unhealthy body just for pleasing people.
As an animator myself, cartoons are supposed to be exaggerations of reality. Outrageous proportions are a part of that. However, taking the same characters, and trying to normalise obesity/being overweight as being something that should be accepted, is not something I jive with. I'm not saying be anorexic (the same applies with the reverse of obesity, obviously), but the radical ends of each spectrum are not healthy. You don't see the people who want to normalise being obese saying it's okay to be too thin. They're hypocrites. They'll call that person unhealthy because they're too thin, whilst sitting there 15kg overweight. It needs to stop.
I don't like how they are all just filled out a little more... What about different body types... tall / short ... muscular . there is more than just thin and chunky
Should the characters be depicted smoking cigarettes, drinking to excess, and abusing drugs too? Why not normalize other unhealthy choices to signal our acceptance of others.
Isn't the very phrase "cartoon character" used to suggest a depiction that is exaggerated or out of proportion???
I am quite disturbed by how uncomfortable this makes me. I obviously have a deeply ingrained assumption that princesses have to be inhumanly thin, with waists which do not allow for internal organs!
Why are "real bodies" always on the plus side? There are skinny girls, too. And Disney princesses are mostly teens, their bodies haven't even fully developed yet, there are plenty of thin teen girls. And none of these super active girls are toned? Just the amount of exercise they get would make them thin and ripped.
Am I the only wondering why no one seems to remember kids, including teens, don't look like middle aged women? I'm so baffled. They certainly need to be less sickly thin, but that doesn't mean it needs to cross over to chubby. And believe it or not, not everyone has a paunch. Especially not kids and teens. Let's not promote unrealistic weight on the skinny side, but let's also not promote plumpness and obesity, which also equals poor health. Let's find that healthy middle ground.
I never really realised quite how unrealistic some of the proportions were, the waists especially! I guess we never notice this stuff as kids.
Why everyone is thinking the realistic versions are fat? Did you saw real people without clothing? Or with thick layers of corsets and etc. Most of these are normal, some even to thin side...
They're cartoons. It's okay to not be realistic. I don't think any grown man is having body image issues due to He-Man and Skeletor being more jacked than they'll ever be.
Sheesh! They are CARTOON characters in fairy tales! My ego can handle them being disproportionately drawn. Help kids be their truth self. Stop trying to repair wrongs that don't matter.
This artist tried to make people talk about him but forgetting the very essence of what a cartoon is: An exaggeration of physical traits (fat/skinny/tall/small/muscular/etc.) and psychological traits (very nice, very naughty, very miserly, etc.) Or when we try to be politically correct by taking bad examples.
If you start from the premise that children will somehow see these cartoon figures as real people and role models, and therefore want to look like them, is it really a good thing to portray them as fat? I don't think the premise is valid anyway, but the idealised body image used by Disney for characters it want to be perceived as attractive is (loosely) based on actual attributes generally found to be attractive. They're _supposed_ to be exaggerated, to help us identify the hero and villain characters - it's like baddies wearing black hats in old cowboy movies.
cant we just say body neutrality, call out celebs photoshopping and promoting harmful practices and products and call it a day? like yes disney should be, yk, f*****g realistic, but we did not need some tik tokker to slam the characters which already had an okay-ish design?? like so many girls at my school look like ariel or belle and some of it is a stylistic choice like stop being performative and actually do something, you know what im saying?
Cartoons aren't meant to be realistic, people need to stop with this disney princess c**p. Honestly kids couldn't care less, you're not going to make a kid insecure when all they want to do is watch the movie lmao
We understand that for most of them (Cinderella, Araura etc) they are realistic to the time right? I mean Cinderella does chores all day and they bearly fed her... And it's not like she was eating processed food we have today it was real food I mean do we really think ariel who swims all day and eats idk things grown in the sea is going to be anything but skinny...?
I think they need to take into account how impoverished some of the characters were in their movies. Cinderella, for example, barely got enough to eat; she would not look overweight.
This is so fxcking stupid and pointless. Most of these characters weren't even 2 0yo and pre GMO/pesticides everyone didn't look like they grew up in Idaho. Realistically there are thin women with narrow waist and small bust and it's common outside of American and European countries to not have the largest assets. The fact that people feel better because these cartoons were drawn thicker shows that some can't enjoy content without projecting their insecurities.
Why all the obsession with the charracters being "fatter"? Why cant they just have different ones? What about thin people? Are they not allowed anymore? Not everybody looks like the "fatter" version... they should thin ones, average ones, fat ones, muscular ones with differnet har and skin. That would be awesome! Also, its a cartoon!!! I've never though I "should" look like that growing up because of watching the cartoons...
Most women back then wore corsets so tight they looked exactly like the princesses. I think the fat rolls are more inaccurate actually...
why is it okay for people to say "oh my god she looks like a stick, please make her fuller," but if I were to say "oh my god she's too curvy please make her skinnier" I'd get banished to Mars? PLEASE normalize ALL body types, including slim. Everyone gets insecure about their body--even if you consider them beautiful. ALL body shapes are beautiful and ALL deserve to be loved.
When the original disney princess were designed, women wore corsets and beauty standards were different. They were also stylised versions of the "normal" at the time. They are cartoons. Women were a lot smaller than today's weights. People ate less processed food and less. A lot of these turned into middle aged women when they were made bigger. And skirts don't automatically tuck under fat rolls when they are sitting. As a fat woman who only wears dresses and skirts, it never folds under. They wore 2 - 3 petticoats under those dresses. And muscles come in all shapes and sizes. Go have a look at Chinese images of armies. They aren't weight lifters. They are slim and strong. I'm tired of this constant need to make everything overweight. We still come in all shapes and sizes, and belittling one over the other needs to stop, regardless of the numbers on the scales.
Is this saying that thin people dont exist? Im a thin woman and I saw some of these as cool but some of these were a bit over the top. also THE GAVIN GUY GOTTA STOP, HE IS A PERVERT
What annoys me the most about this is the artist isn't staying true to the art style. All of the original characters seem to have thin, black line art (with rare exceptions). The artist disregards this and uses varying line weights and colours when it isn't part of the style. As well, many of the characters aren't being redesigned with accurate weights to their stories. Cinderella would be stick thin due to food restriction. In fact, any rags to riches character probably wouldn't have had enough food to be overweight.
I wonder how the artist chose which characters would be average sized vs. overweight? There's a lot variation in his recreations. I've seen another digital artist that made them "realistic" too, but only made them look like Kardashians. Still the tiny waist, just curvier on top and bottom. Lol.
I don't know how to tell you that literally none of these characters are obese. I think the very fattest one in this line up could be considered slightly overweight. If you think these drawings are "glorifying obesity" you have VERY f****d up ideas about what a healthy body looks like. Jesus Christ. Do you look at everyone with any sort of tummy and assume they're lazy binge eating beasts? I have the same physique as most of these girls even though I'm, y'know, actively anorexic and eat one meal a day. Go to hell, all of you.
cinderella wouldnt be "chubby" neither would meg, unless thier abusers/caprtors were nice perople who liked to see their slaves well fed but i kinda doubt that, its not about making them actually "realistic" its about making them fat and calling it "realistic proportions"
While I support this I have a few points…. 1) Disney isn’t supposed to be real life. I knew that as a kid. I just saw a princess who was pretty and found a prince. I didn’t care that she was thin. She was a princess who I loved and she made me happy. 2) I get body shamed for being thin. I have a very noticeable hourglass shape and what do I get said to me? “You need more weight. Girls shouldn’t have that hourglass shape. Don’t you eat? Look I can wrap my hands around your waist!” People get shamed for having that ideal body too! There is no perfect person. You get shamed for being thin, you get shamed for having more weight. Society will always make comments and it’s stupid
This is absurd and dumb. She just made them all fat. These are 14-18 year old girls. When I was a teenager I ate nothing but ice cream, soda and pizza hut and was still a size O. No teen should have 30 extra pounds like a middle aged woman who has never exercised. Diabetes, heart disease and covid are all the fun result of eating fast food and calling it positive.
Disney doesn't do realistic bodies - apparently they only know one cup size....however your body WILL change as you age, but getting fat is a CHOICE. At 59, I'm 5'8" and 140 pounds. Bigger than I was when I was 20, but I was way too thin then.
Most of these aren't "normal", they're fat, and on many of them the redraw makes them look weird and out of place compared to the rest.
Elsa and a few others just looked but but most were pretty good. Ariel could just be unrealistically skinny because shes a fish though
Am i the only one who watched cartoons knowing they *weren't* real people and wouldn't look like such? Like, I was a little kid, I didnn't care about realism
isn't shaming someone for being thin the same thing this is supposed to be protesting? (been nice knowin' ya. i'll be banned after this for sure!)
Being fat and over weight is not healthy and people need to stop normalizing it. I'm not being mean or calling out over weight people, but its just science facts. We don't need to be rail thin either though. Even chubby isn't good. This needs to be taught at young age. You need to maintain a healthy weight.
Too thin is bad, too big is bad. This illustrator went from one bad to another. Also ignores the story in some case, like Cinderella would be thin AF, wasn't like her family would feed her well enough to get normal sized let alone fat
Yes, the 'befores' are unrealistically skinny, but they are also out of proportion. They are not real people, they're cartoons! Do kids think that all mice wear gloves and have 3 fingers & a thumb? What hurts young women is photos of real celebrities that have been photoshopped. Making these cartoon images more chunky isn't fixing anything.
This body positivity is getting out of hand, it’s a very smart and needed revolution but handled in such a stupid and superficial way most of the time. Like celebrating fat instead. Most of those are not heathy body, they might be common bodies in the US because of how unhealthy most of your diet is (and I don’t want to be offensive) but they are not healthy. Now let’s really celebrate healthy bodies instead of celebrate just a different and more common way to have an unhealthy body just for pleasing people.
As an animator myself, cartoons are supposed to be exaggerations of reality. Outrageous proportions are a part of that. However, taking the same characters, and trying to normalise obesity/being overweight as being something that should be accepted, is not something I jive with. I'm not saying be anorexic (the same applies with the reverse of obesity, obviously), but the radical ends of each spectrum are not healthy. You don't see the people who want to normalise being obese saying it's okay to be too thin. They're hypocrites. They'll call that person unhealthy because they're too thin, whilst sitting there 15kg overweight. It needs to stop.
I don't like how they are all just filled out a little more... What about different body types... tall / short ... muscular . there is more than just thin and chunky
Should the characters be depicted smoking cigarettes, drinking to excess, and abusing drugs too? Why not normalize other unhealthy choices to signal our acceptance of others.
Isn't the very phrase "cartoon character" used to suggest a depiction that is exaggerated or out of proportion???
I am quite disturbed by how uncomfortable this makes me. I obviously have a deeply ingrained assumption that princesses have to be inhumanly thin, with waists which do not allow for internal organs!
Why are "real bodies" always on the plus side? There are skinny girls, too. And Disney princesses are mostly teens, their bodies haven't even fully developed yet, there are plenty of thin teen girls. And none of these super active girls are toned? Just the amount of exercise they get would make them thin and ripped.
Am I the only wondering why no one seems to remember kids, including teens, don't look like middle aged women? I'm so baffled. They certainly need to be less sickly thin, but that doesn't mean it needs to cross over to chubby. And believe it or not, not everyone has a paunch. Especially not kids and teens. Let's not promote unrealistic weight on the skinny side, but let's also not promote plumpness and obesity, which also equals poor health. Let's find that healthy middle ground.
I never really realised quite how unrealistic some of the proportions were, the waists especially! I guess we never notice this stuff as kids.
Why everyone is thinking the realistic versions are fat? Did you saw real people without clothing? Or with thick layers of corsets and etc. Most of these are normal, some even to thin side...
They're cartoons. It's okay to not be realistic. I don't think any grown man is having body image issues due to He-Man and Skeletor being more jacked than they'll ever be.
Sheesh! They are CARTOON characters in fairy tales! My ego can handle them being disproportionately drawn. Help kids be their truth self. Stop trying to repair wrongs that don't matter.
This artist tried to make people talk about him but forgetting the very essence of what a cartoon is: An exaggeration of physical traits (fat/skinny/tall/small/muscular/etc.) and psychological traits (very nice, very naughty, very miserly, etc.) Or when we try to be politically correct by taking bad examples.
If you start from the premise that children will somehow see these cartoon figures as real people and role models, and therefore want to look like them, is it really a good thing to portray them as fat? I don't think the premise is valid anyway, but the idealised body image used by Disney for characters it want to be perceived as attractive is (loosely) based on actual attributes generally found to be attractive. They're _supposed_ to be exaggerated, to help us identify the hero and villain characters - it's like baddies wearing black hats in old cowboy movies.
cant we just say body neutrality, call out celebs photoshopping and promoting harmful practices and products and call it a day? like yes disney should be, yk, f*****g realistic, but we did not need some tik tokker to slam the characters which already had an okay-ish design?? like so many girls at my school look like ariel or belle and some of it is a stylistic choice like stop being performative and actually do something, you know what im saying?
Cartoons aren't meant to be realistic, people need to stop with this disney princess c**p. Honestly kids couldn't care less, you're not going to make a kid insecure when all they want to do is watch the movie lmao
We understand that for most of them (Cinderella, Araura etc) they are realistic to the time right? I mean Cinderella does chores all day and they bearly fed her... And it's not like she was eating processed food we have today it was real food I mean do we really think ariel who swims all day and eats idk things grown in the sea is going to be anything but skinny...?
I think they need to take into account how impoverished some of the characters were in their movies. Cinderella, for example, barely got enough to eat; she would not look overweight.
This is so fxcking stupid and pointless. Most of these characters weren't even 2 0yo and pre GMO/pesticides everyone didn't look like they grew up in Idaho. Realistically there are thin women with narrow waist and small bust and it's common outside of American and European countries to not have the largest assets. The fact that people feel better because these cartoons were drawn thicker shows that some can't enjoy content without projecting their insecurities.
Why all the obsession with the charracters being "fatter"? Why cant they just have different ones? What about thin people? Are they not allowed anymore? Not everybody looks like the "fatter" version... they should thin ones, average ones, fat ones, muscular ones with differnet har and skin. That would be awesome! Also, its a cartoon!!! I've never though I "should" look like that growing up because of watching the cartoons...
Most women back then wore corsets so tight they looked exactly like the princesses. I think the fat rolls are more inaccurate actually...
why is it okay for people to say "oh my god she looks like a stick, please make her fuller," but if I were to say "oh my god she's too curvy please make her skinnier" I'd get banished to Mars? PLEASE normalize ALL body types, including slim. Everyone gets insecure about their body--even if you consider them beautiful. ALL body shapes are beautiful and ALL deserve to be loved.
When the original disney princess were designed, women wore corsets and beauty standards were different. They were also stylised versions of the "normal" at the time. They are cartoons. Women were a lot smaller than today's weights. People ate less processed food and less. A lot of these turned into middle aged women when they were made bigger. And skirts don't automatically tuck under fat rolls when they are sitting. As a fat woman who only wears dresses and skirts, it never folds under. They wore 2 - 3 petticoats under those dresses. And muscles come in all shapes and sizes. Go have a look at Chinese images of armies. They aren't weight lifters. They are slim and strong. I'm tired of this constant need to make everything overweight. We still come in all shapes and sizes, and belittling one over the other needs to stop, regardless of the numbers on the scales.
Is this saying that thin people dont exist? Im a thin woman and I saw some of these as cool but some of these were a bit over the top. also THE GAVIN GUY GOTTA STOP, HE IS A PERVERT
What annoys me the most about this is the artist isn't staying true to the art style. All of the original characters seem to have thin, black line art (with rare exceptions). The artist disregards this and uses varying line weights and colours when it isn't part of the style. As well, many of the characters aren't being redesigned with accurate weights to their stories. Cinderella would be stick thin due to food restriction. In fact, any rags to riches character probably wouldn't have had enough food to be overweight.
I wonder how the artist chose which characters would be average sized vs. overweight? There's a lot variation in his recreations. I've seen another digital artist that made them "realistic" too, but only made them look like Kardashians. Still the tiny waist, just curvier on top and bottom. Lol.
I don't know how to tell you that literally none of these characters are obese. I think the very fattest one in this line up could be considered slightly overweight. If you think these drawings are "glorifying obesity" you have VERY f****d up ideas about what a healthy body looks like. Jesus Christ. Do you look at everyone with any sort of tummy and assume they're lazy binge eating beasts? I have the same physique as most of these girls even though I'm, y'know, actively anorexic and eat one meal a day. Go to hell, all of you.
cinderella wouldnt be "chubby" neither would meg, unless thier abusers/caprtors were nice perople who liked to see their slaves well fed but i kinda doubt that, its not about making them actually "realistic" its about making them fat and calling it "realistic proportions"
While I support this I have a few points…. 1) Disney isn’t supposed to be real life. I knew that as a kid. I just saw a princess who was pretty and found a prince. I didn’t care that she was thin. She was a princess who I loved and she made me happy. 2) I get body shamed for being thin. I have a very noticeable hourglass shape and what do I get said to me? “You need more weight. Girls shouldn’t have that hourglass shape. Don’t you eat? Look I can wrap my hands around your waist!” People get shamed for having that ideal body too! There is no perfect person. You get shamed for being thin, you get shamed for having more weight. Society will always make comments and it’s stupid
This is absurd and dumb. She just made them all fat. These are 14-18 year old girls. When I was a teenager I ate nothing but ice cream, soda and pizza hut and was still a size O. No teen should have 30 extra pounds like a middle aged woman who has never exercised. Diabetes, heart disease and covid are all the fun result of eating fast food and calling it positive.
Disney doesn't do realistic bodies - apparently they only know one cup size....however your body WILL change as you age, but getting fat is a CHOICE. At 59, I'm 5'8" and 140 pounds. Bigger than I was when I was 20, but I was way too thin then.
Most of these aren't "normal", they're fat, and on many of them the redraw makes them look weird and out of place compared to the rest.
Elsa and a few others just looked but but most were pretty good. Ariel could just be unrealistically skinny because shes a fish though