Petition for plus-sized Disney princess reaches 22,000 signatures

Disney is under pressure to make its princess characters less uniformly slim. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

More than 22,000 people have signed a petition for Disney to make its next princess character plus-sized.

Organised by Jewel Moore, a US high school student, the petition is entitled 'Every body is beautiful'. Moore explains: "I'm a plus-size young woman, and I know many plus-size girls and women who struggle with confidence and need a positive plus-size character in the media... it would do a world of good for those plus-size girls out there who are bombarded with images that make them feel ugly for not fitting the skinny standard."

Moore told Yahoo that another reason for the petition was for "little boys to see plus-size Disney princesses so they don't grow up and think women they date have to look perfect."

From Snow White to Pocahontas, Disney princess characters are uniformally slim and beautiful. With recent hits like Tangled and Frozen, the characters have become feistier, more independent and less focused on romance, but still cleave to the same physical attributes.

There are also voices within Disney who are critical of the way it designs its characters. When a curvaceous version of the young Princess Merida from Brave was designed for a Disney toy line, another Change petitionrailed against it, winning the support of the film's director Brenda Chapman – the company backed down from the designs.

Writing in the Guardian recently, journalist Anna Smith criticised Frozen for its own unrealistic body images: "To use these big doe eyes as standard in supposedly realistic human females reduces the characters' individuality and sends out a message: to be a princess, you must not only be brave but have a specific, unattainable brand of beauty."

It comes in a week where the designer of Barbie has defended the proportions of the doll, often criticised for being unrealistic. Kim Culmone said that girls don't draw their self-image from their toys, which are merely for play, and that the doll's proportions are made to allow easy dressing-up.