I remember being six or seven I went to Disney World and was fascinated with everything. A few decades later, I took my daughters to Disneyland. I remember smiling. I remember sweating in long lines. I remember watching their eyes light up as we stood in line for rides built on stories I had long since memorized. But this last time—watching The Princess and the Frog again as a Black, Queer, neurodivergent adult—I couldn’t unsee the rules beneath the fairy dust.
That’s the thing about rewatching Disney through a different lens. What once felt whimsical can start to feel like quiet propaganda. Whose dream is this, exactly? And what are we being taught to trade in to reach it?
Welcome to Neurodivergent Gumbo. A series where I stir the pot and serve the real: identity, fantasy, erasure, and spectacle—Disney style.
Welcome to the pot.
The Bootstrap Lie
There’s something about The Princess and the Frog that never sat right with me. Even the first time I watched it, I remember feeling proud that Tiana was a Black princess—but also tired. Not just because she worked so hard (though she did), but because I recognized that work. I’d been raised on it. Lived it. Was still undoing it.
Tiana doesn’t get a dream sequence. She gets a ledger book and an apron. While other Disney heroines sing about faraway lands or forbidden love, she sings a song called “Almost There”—a lullaby for every little Black girl raised on bootstraps and borrowed hope.
It’s a catchy tune, but when you listen to the lyrics, you realize it’s not a dream—it’s a grind.
“Ain’t got time for messin’ around, and it’s not my style.
This old town can slow you down, people takin’ the easy way…”
She’s not aspiring to royalty. She’s aspiring to ownership—of a restaurant, of her labor, of her future. But the story doesn’t center joy, creativity, or community. It centers respectability, hustle, and sacrifice. It tells Black girls: You get to have something if you give everything.
And then—just as she’s about to cross the finish line—Tiana is told no. Not because her credit is bad. Not because the location is unavailable. But because, in the banker’s own slippery words, she’s “a woman of [her] background.”
That’s where the fairytale fractures.
Because Disney wants us to believe this is a story about overcoming poverty, not racism. About hard work, not historical exclusion. But the reality is that no matter how hard Tiana works, she lives in Jim Crow New Orleans, a city where Black women couldn’t legally or safely own commercial property without jumping through impossible hoops—or relying on white intermediaries.
And the film knows this. That line about her “background” is as close as Disney gets to saying what it really means: you’re Black, you’re poor, and this dream was never for you.
But instead of diving into that reality, the film veers into fantasy. Tiana is turned into a frog. A literal frog. Not a metaphor, not a daydream. A slime-covered, lily pad-hopping frog who has to learn how to loosen up and “have fun” before she’s allowed to claim any version of her dream.
And yes—she eventually gets the restaurant. But only after marrying a prince.
Let that sit.
Tiana’s reward doesn’t come from labor or legacy. It comes from royal proximity. She doesn’t get to win until she becomes palatable to power. The same girl who was denied by the bank gets fast-tracked into fantasy once she’s respectable by marriage.
Even her father’s death—offhandedly mentioned as a casualty of war—is used as emotional leverage, not a site of trauma. There’s no conversation about what his service meant, what his death cost, or how many Black men were sent to die for a country that would deny their daughters a loan.
And this is where the gumbo metaphor breaks down.
Because real gumbo, the kind passed down through generations, is slow, rich, communal. It’s built on memory. It honors the ingredients. It knows the hands that stirred it before yours.
But Disney’s gumbo? It’s aesthetic seasoning. Background flavor. Something to make the grind look delicious.
This isn’t a story about liberation. It’s a story about containment. About teaching Black girls that their value lies in how much they can endure—and how graciously they can do it.
So no, Tiana’s story doesn’t feel magical to me. It feels familiar. Too familiar.
Because some of us were told to chase a dream that was never meant for us.
Some of us were fed bootstrap stories in gumbo bowls.
Some of us were told we were “almost there” our whole damn lives.
But maybe the goal was never the restaurant.
Maybe the goal was rest.
Maybe it was community.
Maybe it was a seat at a table we built ourselves—with no prince, no banker, no transformation required.
And if that’s the fairytale, maybe I’ll write my own.
Next, we’re diving into the characters — from Charlotte’s pearls and privilege to Naveen’s swampy redemption arc — and what they really teach us. Paid subscribers get early access on Tuesday.
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