After Belle marries the Beast and Tiana opens her restaurant with Naveen and Aladdin and Jasmine fly off to see the world on a magic carpet honeymoon…then what? As they’re living happily ever after, there’s probably some sex involved at some point. And that means even Disney princesses need to take responsibility for their reproductive health.
Enter writer and sex ed speaker Danielle Sepulveres and artist/illustrator Maritza Lugo, who collaborated on a series of illustrations at Sepulveres’ Tumblr showing Disney princesses visiting their gynecologists to raise awareness for Cervical Cancer Awareness Month and all the healthy behaviors that women can take to reduce their risk of this almost completely preventable cancer. Sepulveres became frustrated last fall when she and fellow writer friends had trouble successfully pitching stories to write about Gynecological Cancer Awareness Month in September. After sharing her frustration in a blog post at a cervical cancer “cervivors” site, she decided she needed a new approach to catch people’s attention when January rolled around.
Tiana, of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, gets an HPV vaccine that will reduce her risk of HPV and, by extension, cervical cancer. Illustration by Maritza Lugo
“Almost every day my timeline on social media is bombarded with re-imagined Disney princesses in one way or another and most people get a huge kick out of it,” she told me. “So one day it hit me—had anyone ever drawn them going to the gynecologist before?”
There was one problem, however: she can’t even draw stick figures. So she reached out to Lugo, whose website features a style well suited to placing icons like Cinderella and Mulan in a new context.
“I was absolutely honored when Danielle asked me to illustrate these images,” Lugo told me. “She told me she was trying to convey how important it is for women to be educated on all fronts when it comes to their bodies.”
More than 12,000 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, and more than 4,000 died from the disease, according to the CDC. Yet with highly accurate screening methods and avaccine that prevents human papillomavirus (HPV)—the underlying cause of nearly all cervical cancer and several other cancers—those numbers could be reduced to almost zero. Several obstacles stand in the way.
“There is a stigma attached to HPV and cervical cancer, and the media plays a part in perpetuating it,” Sepulveres said, even though the majority of sexually active individuals will contract at least one strain of HPV at some point in their lives. “I want women to know that even though they don’t have a celebrity ambassador, they don’t need to be embarrassed and they don’t need to feel ashamed.”
That same stigma helped drive documentary filmmaker Frederic Lumiere toproduce the film “Someone You Love: The HPV Epidemic,” featuring the Cervivor website creator, Tamika Felder. In that film, at least one woman went for regular screenings and still developed cancer that might have been prevented with the HPV vaccine, yet uptake for the vaccine, recommended for boys and girls around age 11 or 12, remains low: about 60% of girls and 42% of boys received at least one dose in 2014, and just 40% of girls and 22% of boys received all three doses.
Hesitancy on the part of doctors and misconceptions about the vaccine have been big parts of the problem for vaccine uptake, but access to women’s health services and ineffective sex education are even bigger problems thwarting women’s ability to take charge of their health, Sepulveres pointed out.
“We need better comprehensive sex education as whole in this country, we need doctors who aren’t afraid to speak up, and we should point out the success in Australia that has come from the vaccine,” she said.
If nothing else, she and Lugo hopes it gets people talking when they see Aladdin and Jasmine discussing family planning, Belle picking up emergency contraception, Cinderella getting tested for STDs, Mulan undergoing cervical cancer screening and Tiana getting her HPV vaccine.
The Disney princess Mulan sees her gynecologist for her regular cervical cancer screening, which could involve a Pap test and/or an HPV test. Illustration by Maritza Lugo
Belle, of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, visits a clinic to pick up emergency contraception. Illustration by Maritza Lugo
Cinderella has blood drawn for STD testing. Illustration by Maritza Lugo
Jasmine and Aladdin discuss family planning options with a doctor. Illustration by Maritza Lugo
Special thanks to Danielle Sepulveres and artist/illustrator Maritza Lugo for providing permission to repost the images. Check out their websites and follow both Danielle and Maritza on Twitter.