Put down your bows and arrows, Brave fans. After more than a week of concern over the changed appearance of our favorite animated redhead, a Disney rep tells EW that there’s no cause for alarm: Merida’s seemingly sexier image was only created for the heroine’s official induction into the Disney Princess Collection and was always planned to be phased out within a few months of the coronation.
When an image appeared online that showed a drastically altered Merida, it prompted a backlash among fans, including a petition on change.org. “This new Merida is a paler reflection of her former self without the spark and the ‘you go girl’ quality that her creator intended,” the petition reads, urging Disney to return to the Merida from the film.
Twelve days and over 200,000 virtual signatures later (including Cinderella Ate My Daughter author Peggy Ornstein and Snow White and the Huntsman actress Lily Cole) reports started to surface that the Disney Store had quietly taken down all banner images of the thinner, more glamorous Merida, and replaced them with the familiar freckled-face and wild-haired version that we got to know in the film. And petitioners were clear that they wanted it to remain that way.
Shelby Knox, a senior petitioner on the “Keep Merida Brave” campaign and a Sundance-winning filmmaker responsible for the 2005 documentary The Education of Shelby Knox wrote the following update Wednesday:
GET MORE EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue!
Making changes to a website are easy & easily undone; the true test will be how Disney plans on depicting Merida on merchandise now that she is part of the official Disney Princess collection to know that Disney is truly committed to preserving the Merida we all know & love, we need to keep the pressure on until we receive an official statement from them promising to keep Merida brave!
Through all the hubbub, Disney Consumer Products has been fairly quiet but a source wanted to clarify that the image was actually never on the Disney Store site, despite reports to the contrary. It appeared on an invitation sent to bloggers for the coronation and on the Target site, they say. When the petition first started getting press, a Disney representative issued a vague statement to Yahoo! Shine that didn’t come close to addressing the concerns of the petitioners. It reads: ”Merida exemplifies what it means to be a Disney Princess through being brave, passionate, and confident and she remains the same strong and determined Merida from the movie whose inner qualities have inspired moms and daughters around the world.” Our source says that no other official comment on the matter is planned.
What do you all think? Was this grass roots at work or much ado about nothing?

Spoiler:

Merida’s seemingly sexier image was only created for the heroine’s official induction into the Disney Princess Collection and was always planned to be phased out within a few months of the coronation.

 Ouze wrote:

Merida’s seemingly sexier image was only created for the heroine’s official induction into the Disney Princess Collection and was always planned to be phased out within a few months of the coronation.

smells like CYA, after the fact, shenanigans. The corporate equivalent of, say, casually dropping a racial slur in conversation, having everyone gasp, and then awkwardly laughing and saying "hey guys I was just joking"

 Ouze wrote:
While I have no real comment on the merits of the argument on either side, I will say:

Merida’s seemingly sexier image was only created for the heroine’s official induction into the Disney Princess Collection and was always planned to be phased out within a few months of the coronation.

smells like CYA, after the fact, shenanigans. The corporate equivalent of, say, casually dropping a racial slur in conversation, having everyone gasp, and then awkwardly laughing and saying "hey guys I was just joking"

 DeathReaper wrote:
The whole thing was "much ado about nothing"

She is a animated character. Both of those images represent her just fine.

 Goliath wrote:

 DeathReaper wrote:
The whole thing was "much ado about nothing"

She is a animated character. Both of those images represent her just fine.

That's the thing. It doesn't represent her well at all.
The entire character of Merida was about being able to go out and do stuff for yourself, rather than just sitting in a castle looking pretty and waiting for a prince to come marry you.

Partway through the film she has a fancy dress put on her like the new version is wearing, and actively tears it apart because it restricts her movement. So an image of her wearing that sort of dress and smiling, having shown her disdain for that type of clothing in the film, doesn't "represent her just fine" it goes against almost everything the character was about.

 DeathReaper wrote:
She is, after all, a cartoon character.

My kids absolutely LOVE this film. I was just reading this article on my laptop, and [my four year old daughter] peeked over at the comparison picture and asked why does the Brave princess look so different (totally unaware of this controversy). So I played along (out of curiosity) and asked so how are they different. She rolls her eyes and says it's obvious that the faces and dresses are not the same and asked why isn't the other version carrying her bow & arrow? That must be her older sister.So for those that argue what's the big deal, it's quite clear to me that some may pick up on subliminal queues, and images do play a role when raising for impressionable young girls.

 Newabortion wrote:
I dont see a differance?

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah, Disney is pretty fething stupid about this.

The kids I've spoken to said that Disney's thing is "fake" and "not the real Merida".

Not that I'm at all surprised to see some random nobody on the internet mocking people for caring about a fictional character (even as they spaz out about entirely different ones).

“I think it is atrocious!!!… Since I am no longer with the company, I’m sure they could care less what I think on the matter. But they have betrayed the essence of what we were trying to do with Merida—give young girls and women a better stronger role model. She’s strong inside and out—she’s not just a simpering pretty face waiting around for romance! She was created to turn that whole ideal on it’s [sic] head! Oh yeah… that’s why I created her… they’re just in it for the money… not the integrity. They don’t care what message they send about women, as long as it makes them a buck.”

 Sigvatr wrote:
The right image looks very derpy.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
But the appearence doesnt change how she acted in the movie or what she did(I saw half of it)

 Rented Tritium wrote:
The fact that it's just for the princess ceremony is actually what makes it bad.

It's basically saying that she couldn't be a princess as-is. She had to be sexed up slightly to qualify for princess status.

Meridia from the movie doesn't cleanly fit into the madonna/whore dichotomy, so they had to change her to be one of the two.

 Mannahnin wrote:

I don't know that I'd say it's so much about sex, but I agree completely that it's a betrayal of the character. Giving her makeup, a more hourglass figure, a fancy dress, shampoo-commercial hair, AND taking away her signature weapon add up to throwing away all the character's personality in favor of a banal parody; shoving her into the Generic Princess #456 mold.