When I was a little girl with similarly thick, curly, brown hair, my parents, like many parents in the mid-to-late 1990s, took me to Disney World. As we walked through the park, all I wanted was to meet Princess Jasmine. At that time, she was one of the two "official" princesses whose melanin levels came close to that of my permanent Afro-Latina tan. It's not like Brandy's 1997 version of Cinderella was wandering around Magic Kingdom. But, Jasmine wasn’t available, and I spent a major chunk of my time in the Happiest Place On Earth sobbing. That’s because representation matters. Seeing yourself in Disney royalty — even when you know it’s magic that only lives in TV screens and books — matters. While it’s great that young white girls prone flights of princess fancy in the '90s grew up choosing if they wanted to be Cinderella or Snow White, Belle or Ariel, children like me were desperate to see any piece of themselves in the characters onscreen, no matter how small the similarity.