I was six the first time I went to disney world. It was also the first time I met my step family in florida. See, my grandfather had three wives in his lifetime, and the third wife was the only one I ever met. She had five kids when they married, and moved to Hawaii from the Phillipines. Now jump forward, my dad’s step siblings have families of their own, including my uncle Jett, who married a native hawaiian woman, and had two beautiful daughters.
Back to that first trip to disney. I was six, my sister was ten, and our smack in the middle of that age difference was my cousin Malia at age eight. She, and her younger sister Bella, both took hula classes, because their mother wanted them to stay close to their roots, despite the distance of having moved to florida. We were all pretty young, but we knew enough that the princesses at disney world were actresses in costume.
“How cool would it be to play a princess at one of these parks?” I had said after a long day in the magic kingdom. “I wanna do that one day.”
“Who would you play?” Bella had asked.
“I don’t know. Belle maybe. She’s the only one with brown hair other than snow white, and mulan, and I could never play either of them.”
“Yeah, but you don’t really look like Belle either. Your noses are to different.” Malia had cut in, and I shrugged it off, knowing It’d never happen anyway.
“What about you guys? Who would you play?” I asked them, unaware that there was no answer to that.
“We don’t look like any of them either. There are no princesses from where we’re from.” So we all settled on the sad belief that none of us would ever get to be disney princesses.
Years pass, and I decide that one day I would help write a movie for a princess from either the phillipines, or the polynesian islands, so my cousins could become princesses. Because they held on to that dream. It might have been harder for them to let go of it, because they lived so close to disney.
Now it’s 2014, and Malia has just been hired as a dancer, at the polynesian resort at disney. She started as a swing, and in two years worked her way up to a featured dancer. It helped that she was of polynesian decent.
About a year ago it was announced that disney would be releasing a movie featuring their first polynesian princess, and my cousins & I were all excited, but none of us had high hopes. We all figured they’d make her look more like Rapunzel, the way Anna and Elsa had.
Fast forward a few months. They have just released the first look at moana.
I text my cousin as soon as I see it.
“No, why?” I send her the picture above, and a minute later I get a call. “SHE LOOKS LIKE ME! I LOOK LIKE HER!” Malia is screaming into the phone with unabashed enthusiasm. She couldn’t believe that a disney princess bore such a resemblance to her.
Yesterday, 11/16/16, my cousin began her new job at disney world, and I couldn’t be happier that her dream of ten years had been realized.
This is why representation matters. This is one of many reasons why Moana is so important.
Congratulations Malia. I can’t wait to come down and say Mahalo
