A week or so ago, pretty much everyone on the internet covered the fact that Yandy.com, an online lingerie shop, was offering a Disney-inspired princess collection (for the low, low price of $24, too). While the proper licensing to remix Disney’s IP in such a manner seemed questionable — the Cinderella version, for instance, is branded as the “Midnight Curfew Princess Lingerie Set” — all of its most iconic female royalty was accounted for: the aforementioned Cinderella, along with Ariel, Belle, Pocahontas, Jasmine, Snow White, Elsa and Aurora.
It made business sense. Or as my colleague, MEL staff writer John McDermott, rationalized in our Slack channel, “Every straight dude has a Disney princess fantasy. They’re pretty sexualized, and you’re exposed to them at a very young age. It’s like, seared into your memory.”
Similarly, there’s a whole AskReddit thread dedicated to “who is the hottest Disney princess? Because let’s be honest we all have an opinion on this one.” A few choice responses:
- “Ariel for the nice girl next door. The understated Meg from Hercules if you want a girl who puts out.”
- “Belle, she’s the smartest and the only one who would go for a guy like me. She’s also the only one who love her dad.”
- “Jasmine, bitch has a tiger.”
Still, it wasn’t exactly unanimous. “It’s hard to get away from the kid of it all,” our Editor-in-Chief Josh Schollmeyer argued. Similarly: “They’re all underage,” noted Managing Editor Serena Golden.
But who are we to judge? We reached out to a variety of guys — including those who are fathers of young daughters — to see how they would respond to a woman in their bedroom wearing an Ariel-esque seashell-shaped purple bra and turquoise thong and garter.
I’m of the mind that any lingerie is sexy, but once I connected the dots to Disney, this lingerie made me uncomfortable. It doesn’t so much heighten my nostalgia for those princess characters as it makes the memory confusing. Because when I was younger, I wouldn’t say that I found the Disney princesses to be sexy. I didn’t even know what sexy was. So at best, this sort of lingerie might make for a good gag gift from my girlfriend. —Karl, 22
My own long-lasting childhood crush, weirdly enough, was in fact Ariel, having first watched The Little Mermaid at nine years old. (To this day, my wife accuses me of having a thing for redheads, which may not be entirely untrue.) As for whether I’d be turned on by someone wearing a lacy take on her signature seashell-bra ensemble, I mean… probably? Frankly, unless the outfit is screamingly egregious (and I’m talking “Flirty Mussolini” here) then it seems churlish to derail the moment — specifically, a moment when a person you love has painstakingly dressed in something just to make you want to have sex with them — by instigating a debate around the cultural ramifications of their underwear. Unless the outfit is Sexy Winnie-the-Pooh, in which case, get the fuck outta here. —Nick, 37
Frankly, I was never really into the princess thing. Except for Pocahontas. If you traced every relationship I’ve ever been in, the one thing they have in common is that they all look a bit like the Native American princess of my dreams. Would I be weirded out if any of them had surprised me with Pocahontas lingerie? Maybe a little, but I wouldn’t complain. The problem I have here is that this particular line looks cheap. —Jamie, 28
As a father of a daughter, it pretty much makes me want to die, right after I burn the world down. I would never find this sexy, but I can imagine dudes who would. The daughter part is a separate exercise, because it’s knowing that the ecosystem of gender is reaching critical mass in this form, so it pretty much tells me that she’s fucked. Figuratively and literally, unfortunately. Maybe as Ariel. —John, 37
First, I’ve always been partial to nudity as opposed to the partial nudity that lingerie brings to the table. Second, if lingerie is involved, I’d like it to be cheap and dirty. And while this is clearly both — it’s not in a way that can negate all the subtext it brings with it. Or maybe the easier answer is that I never wanted to fuck a Disney princess in the first place. —Terrance, 39
It’s not like the Disney princesses ARE kids. I mean if there was a Sofia the First one that would definitely be creepy — especially because that’s my daughter’s name. But I assume Snow White and Cinderella are in their 20s. I find “School Girl” outfits creepier, because school girls are actually kids. This, however, doesn’t both me at all. —Mike, 44
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
