The enchanting girl character Merida from the film Brave is now a Disney Princess. The company has given the animation a make-over--which has occasioned an online petition. Most noteworthy is she has been stripped of her bow--which gave her power.

Perhaps if I were less cynical, I would applaud Disney's "I Am a Princess" TV spot as a new direction for Disney maybe even suggesting that it’s the influence of Pixar, the makers of the Toy Story movies, which in an odd David and Goliath moment took over the larger studio a few years ago. But I am a cynic, and this is not a PSA, it’s an advertisement.

A new video from AVbyte, purveyors of YouTube musicals, is a send-up of the news that Disney had purchased George Lucas' Lucasfilm for $4 billion. In the video, the DIsney princesses -- Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Snow White, and Aurora -- welcome Princess Leia to the Disney family. As the princesses tell Leia, "A princess must be kind / A princess must be sweet / With elegance refined / You must refuse to ever eat."

Thinking about princess movies, you quickly realize that most of these heroines grow up cursed, motherless, orphaned, or generally miserable. It's no wonder they have so little spirit by the time they reach adulthood that they need a charming prince or some cheery dwarves to rescue them. But Princess Merida, the heroine of Brave, is in no need of rescue. She's just trying to do what women have been trying to do for millenia -- change her fate.

On this weekend's show, Saturday Night Live aired a parody of the popular "The Real Housewives" reality TV franchise. Instead of botoxed socialites, the skit featured the Disney princesses, who were given a heavy Real Housewives treatment: booze, marital problems, and petty fighting. There's Cinderella, the lush with a gay husband; Jasmine, who's out of money; Belle, the stuck-up party girl; and more. Watch the skit after the jump.

After the jump, watch the trailer for the latest Disney Pixar film, "Brave." The film is the first from Pixar to feature a female lead; it focuses on the adventures of Scottish archer Merida, voiced by actress Kelly Macdonald. Other voice actors in the film include Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, and Craig Ferguson. "Brave" will hit U.S. theaters in June 2012.