Lovelyish

Hey man, she probably worked real hard to lose that weight! LEAVE URSULA ALONE!!!!

;]

Well, she does have curves. Look at her hips and chest.

She didn’t forget about *body language* hahahahaha

So. It’s Disney. Probably not a huge deal. But if we’re going to get upset about something, let’s get upset about them making the villains someone to emulate. I mean, they are the bad guys. You know? Who cares that Disney doesn’t like fat people? 

Same for the Queen of Hearts, isn’t it? It’s just Disney making couture dolls. While I would’ve liked it more if they stayed truer to the original characters, I don’t know, if you take it as a “designer” item to be looked at, then it makes sense. =]

@Sigmund06@twitter - So don’t buy stuff from Disney. I think enough people in the population are overweight/obese that their buying power easily trumps normal weight/under weight people. The statistic that I hear all the time is 2/3 of all Americans and counting, so that should be enough to change the culture, unless it is the fat people themselves that prefer to look at skinny people. 

disney is not trying to send any messages about body image, they are simply trying to market and sell the product, and the truth of the matter is, no one, especially not young/teenager girls, will buy an ugly/fat doll. That, and the fact that  it’d be almost impossible to manufacture a fat doll with plastic, also they’d have to create a different mold/method to make the body, while all the other skinny dolls have the same body type, so they are easier to manufacture

OMG this is horrible.  Now young villainesses everywhere no longer have a healthy role model.  It’s one thing to be evil, but skinny/anorexic and evil.  That just won’t do.  We need another role model for all the future villainesses in the world.

Mountain out of a molehill is what I think

@Erika_Steele@xanga - Exactly. That is exactly what I was trying to say. Lol. 

@WaitingToShrug@xanga - Haha, this is totally a side point, but I rather like the idea of making the villains ones to emulate. When I hit like, age 12, I decided I didn’t really like any of the Disney princesses except Mulan and maybe Jasmine because the rest of them suck as role models. (Coincidentally, I began to see the same flaw in Harry Potter at this time, and I’m pretty sure only the fourth book or so had come out at this point.)

“Bright” and “pure” and “beautiful” is almost always “stupid” in Disney. Ursula and other unsympathetic characters while, well, unsympathetic, at least start out with a plan that they actually put into play. While not geniuses, they’re always crafty and powerful. Much better than sweet and lovely imo.

My personal opinion, is how are you going to make a bigger doll to actually look like Ursula? They don’t make “fat” barbies and dolls because its not easy to to. I could be wrong, but that was the first thing I thought of. 

i loved fat ursula! 

@atl_luv@xanga - Bahahahahahaha yes!

@Erika_Steele@xanga - Exactly! Gotta give us young wicked ladies some hope.

In all seriousness though, I totally get what you guys are saying about making larger dolls. It definitely makes sense to make Ursula a smaller doll from a manufacturing point of view. It just strikes me as sad to make her skinnier because it seemed like such a big part of her character.

@WriterBrit - maybe it is Ursula after she has given up on life.

Disney has portrayed their villainesses in many different sizes, running the gamut from larger-than-life Ursula to monstrously skinny Cruela DeVil. I loved The Little Mermaid, and I also loved Ursula; she had her own style. That was her, big as all get-out in everything she did. She was over-the-top TO-THE-MAX, and don’t forget, in the movie, the first thing she did after gaining power was blow up to (even more) gigantic proportions. That’s who she was, and she made it undeniably sexy. For her, fat fit.

I think the problem with the idea at hand is that 1. we’re working with couture, which even in real life favors the unrealistically thin, and 2. these are dolls, which probably have mold size requirements. They’re really just re-working a pre-fab model to resemble their characters; then, of course, it would look weirder than it already does if the characters were teensy in doll form but appropriately fatty on all the other merch. My problem would come when Dis wanted to make this a forever change, or if they were doing it ‘for the health of the children.’ This isn’t a permanent Ursula makeover, so it’s no big.

Maleficent is the best anyways! Ha ha.

Since you seem to be an aspiring young dollmaker, why don’t you go make your own?  Keep in mind that what looks badass and awesome in 2D doesn’t always translate well to a 3D figure.  But you go ahead and try, maybe you’ll get lucky and make a fat doll that little girls will actually want.

Two things spring to mind.  The first is that, looking at the collection, the dolls all seem cut from the same model.  Just from a business standpoint, having to order a full run of a different doll figure for one of the six villains is impractical.  The second is the idea that some could suggest that if Ursula is fat, and Disney princesses are skinny… Disney could be advocating the idea that fat people are evil.  Is it terrible, unreasonable, and a totally ludicrous suggestion?  Absolutely, so it’ll probably be on the news.  By skinnifying Ursula, you cut this potential argument off before it begins.

I work for Disney, and just FYI, we sell a fat Ursula doll in the store also. The Designer Doll collection is based on couture style fashion sketches, and like it or not any designers sketches that you look at look this way. It’s much more simple to draw a dress onto what is basically a stick figure than something with curves. It’s also easier to make a doll that way. It’s not “fat-shaming” to have a villain be fat. Cruella DeVille and Maleficent were both skinny villains, and they were arguably more evil than Ursula. I’m so tired of people ragging on Disney – it seems everyone is always trying to find a reason to. Disney is one of the most diverse companies around and a lot of the charities they work with are all about helping kids’ self esteem.

:O 80 bucks for a villain doll?! … no thank you!

I think this is Ursala’s sister Morgana..

I wouldn’t think this a big deal if I wasn’t around hard femmes and LGBTQ advocates so much. She’s an icon of the nontraditional feminine, a backlash to the “princess” form of womanhood. The fact that they changed her form to make her more “marketable” is kind of a slap in the face of the femmes that embrace her as their rebellious queen.