New junior princess will be voiced by Ariel Winter of “Modern Family”

Oct 19, 2012 12:16 GMT  ·  By

Disney Junior has landed itself in very troubled waters with its new made for TV movie, “Sofia the First: Once Upon a Princess,” which claims to have as protagonist Disney’s first Latina princess. Visuals, though, contradict this statement.

Check out the trailer for the new movie, which is presented as a family special and will air in November, below, embedded at the end of this article.

Sofia is just a regular girl who, one day, finds out she is actually a princess and, as one, must act and talk accordingly.

The story seems usual Disney fare so it’s not that which is getting people all hot under the collar, but rather the way the little princess is presented.

As you will see, she has blue eyes, porcelain skin (including rosy cheeks) and light brown hair. If her name wasn’t Sofia, perhaps no one would even believe she’s Hispanic, angry voices online are saying.

The discussion is pretty heated on various forums, with many saying that Disney is, once more, pretending to be a trendsetter while actually sticking to the same stereotype it’s been pushing since the days of yore.

In other words, Disney is being a hypocrite about how inclusive it is because it remains strictly traditional and narrow-minded, people are saying.

In its defense, studio high-ups stress that they never publicly called Sofia a Latina, it was just an assumption people made the moment they saw her, her mother (who has darker skin) and the trailer.

“We never actually call it out. When we go into schools [to talk to young students about the show], what I find fascinating is that every girl thinks that they’re Sofia,” Joe D’Ambrosia, vice president of Disney Junior original programming, says for NBC Latino.

Disney can’t possibly be hypocritical about Sofia because they never claimed she was Hispanic.

“Sofia” airs in a little over a month. The little princess will be voiced by Ariel Winter of “Modern Family.”