By AnaMichele Morejon
In 2017, the internet blew up with controversy over a new “fat-shaming Snow White movie.” The movie audaciously tried to modernize the Snow White fairy tale by making Snow White a plus-sized princess. The producers shared that the movie’s message was intended to challenge the social standards of physical beauty and emphasize the importance of inner beauty. In their initial marketing, however, the movie seemed to say that heavier women are not beautiful. Two years later, the movie was quietly released with new character designs and a reworked plot, and unfortunately, it seems to have flown under the radar of the mainstream media.
I was curious to see how the movie turned out after the initial controversy, so I watched it. While it was not perfect, I really enjoyed the film. I saw a massive improvement from the original marketing — so much so, that I decided to make a video essay comparing two trailers published before the controversy and a trailer published prior to the movie’s eventual release. I have seen a few videos on YouTube that defend the final movie, but I could not find any video that really delved into the original trailers and compared them to a newer trailer.
This comparison helps reveal the effect that the critics had on the final outcome of the film and the power of fairy tales to shape how we view real-world topics.
As a forewarning, the original trailers feature home invasion, voyeurism, fat-shaming, objectification, sexualization, and non-consensual contact. I want to make clear that, while I use a sarcastic tone in portions of the video essay, these are issues that I take very seriously. The depiction of women as objects and the body-shaming of the female protagonist are unacceptable.
