So everyone knows a couple weeks ago the Walt Disney Animation Studio released the very much anticipated animated film "Moana." If you haven't seen it, you need to go see it. It is very easily one of the most aesthetically pleasing films to watch to this day for CGI-animation. When Disney announced a couple years ago about the movie, they were dropping hints that it isn't your "typical" princess movie. Also the fact that new princess isn't of a European/white background which isn't very common in Hollywood in general. It made everyone so much more excited to see this film. When they finally confirmed who the voice of Moana is, they did it in such a cute way. Video will be linked here. After going through countless of auditions they finally settled on Hawaiian native Auli'i Cravalho who is also of Chinese, Irish, Portuguese and Puerto Rican descent. She was 14 years old when she got picked for the role of Moana.

Which each movie coming out, Disney has been striving to bring out more creative movies and not reverting back into the "typical princess movie." Now we all know that there aren't very many people of color staring in Disney's animated films. Yes, I know we have Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas, but those were all before the 2000's. They have been doing a lot more research with their movies, having it be a little bit more accurate than their films in the past. As we can all tell the amount of work and detail they put into Moana, if you saw the ending credits it will show you how many API (Asian/Pacific Islander) and Hawaiian organizations Disney worked with in order to bring Moana to lfe.

Over the last year, Disney also introduced a new Princess. While she doesn't have her own actual featured film (as of yet) she does show up in a place where it reaches their target audience, little kids. I'm talking about Princess Elena of Avalor. She first appeared on the tv show on Disney Channel, Princess Sofia the First and now has her own spin off show. As a minority, you don't get to see very much on TV of people with a similar ethnic background. Naturally Princess Elena became such a huge hit. The voice actress of Princess Elena is Aimee Carrero and she is a Domincan-Republican born American Actress. It's very important that we have her because she is such an idol to those in the hispanic/latin community.

I've seen so many little kids dressed up as Princess Elena and Moana at Disneyland and it warms my heart. Just casually walking around in various stores and seeing Princess Elena and Moana merchandise makes me so excited to see little kids finally have Disney characters they can look up to. The diversity in Disney characters are becoming bigger and bigger that soon it'll just be seen as a norm, and that is great. Considering people still use Disney as a way to help and teach little kids and everyone else about love, acceptance, and diversity. Disney does it in subtle ways where kids don't really question it. Like the last episode of their Disney Channel show "Good Luck Charlie" where it shows Charlie going on a play date with a little kid who has two moms. Charlie's parents didn't bat an eye at all which is what we should be doing in real life. Not judging or treating those who are in a same-gender relationship raising kids in a loving environment.

Princess Elena and Chief-to-be Moana are both such positive influences right now. With all the bad things going on in the world, the one thing we can keep going to be good are movies, especially movies that speaks to kids and adults of all ages. We need to keep diversity growing even though that is one of the main reasons this country is tearing apart.

While the characters Moana and Princess Elensa aren't 100% perfect, we can be sure that they won't be the last ones to join the Princess/Royalty squad. Disney will bring more diversity with years to come and when they do it'll be better and better every time.