Dressing up as Elsa, the blond queen with magical powers from Disney’s animated film “Frozen,” wasn’t necessarily Jeff Hemmig’s idea of a good time.
“It was well outside of my comfort zone,” said Mr. Hemming, a 43-year-old father of one from Killingly, Conn. I definitely had to find some courage.”
But Hemmig knew it would make his 3-year-old son, Jace, happy. So he squeezed his shoulders into the narrow frame of the dress his mom had sewn him to match the Elsa costume she made for her grandson for Christmas and performed a rousing rendition of “Let It Go,” choreography and all, with Jace in the living room. “I put it on, we did the dance, and that was about it,” said Hemmig.
It was a small act of love, a minor sacrifice of comfort, that delighted his son. “He loved it. He was laughing. He was filled with joy,” Hemmig recalled. And even though Hemmig wasn’t thrilled about the dress, which he said was tight in the armpits and made him feel vulnerable, he loved bonding with Jace. “I think just seeing Dad do it, too,” Hemmig said. “It felt like a big moment. It was a unique experience.”
Actually, it wasn’t. In the decade since Frozen took the world by storm, shattering global box office records and blowing the minds of toddlers everywhere, millions of parents have gone to great lengths to satisfy their Elsa-obsessed children. Hemmig is hardly the first father to don an Elsa dress with his son. There have been countless viral videos of Dads and sons dressed as Elsa together—for Halloween, for a screening of Frozen 2, or even just an afternoon of dress up. It has become such a routine occurrence that, at an event in 2022, the actor Jonathan Groff, who plays Kristoff in Frozen and Frozen 2, thanked the films’ directors for “creating space for young boys to dress up as Anna and Elsa.” Purchase an Elsa costume from Disney’s online store today, and you will see an image of a boy smiling head to toe in the light-blue dress of Gen Alpha’s most beloved superhero. It’s as if to say, “This dress is for your kid. Whoever they may be.”
Everybody loves Elsa
When it comes to the Elsa dress, Jacqueline Ayala has seen it all. The 38-year-old had been a preschool teacher for five years when Frozen came out and turned her world upside down. “It was so beyond,” said Ayala, who currently lives in Culver City, California. “Everybody was Elsa. Boy and girls. There was no, ‘I'm gonna wear it because I'm a girl,’ or ‘You can't wear that because you're a boy.’ It was everybody.”
Ayala remembers a brief, stressful period when the daycare where she worked only had a single Elsa costume in the dress-up chest. The kids had to pass it on when they were done with it, which caused major meltdowns in the “pretend play” room. “That’s why the kids started wearing their own costumes to school,” Ayala said. “So they wouldn’t have to share it.”
They didn’t just wear the Elsa dress, though. They wore the Elsa braid, the Elsa shoes, Elsa socks, and Elsa nightgowns. They came to school with Elsa water bottles, Elsa backpacks, Elsa lunch bags, Elsa beach towels, even Elsa bathing suits. There was a set of pajama shorts and shirts that H&M made, which Ayala recalled as being particularly popular. They were made for girls, but the boys wore them too because they had Elsa on them. When parents asked Ayala if it was okay for their sons to wear them, she reassured them that it was. “They made Olaf things for the boys,” Ayala said, “but they weren’t interested in them.”
They wanted to be Elsa.
“The Batman of Disney”
“There's a very specific age group that falls in love with Elsa,” said Sarah Goodier, whose son was an infant when Frozen came out. To him and now to Goodier’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Elsa is a powerhouse. “She can shoot ice, she’s beautiful, and she has the voice of an angel,” Goodier said. That last part is important because, as several parents pointed out, Elsa first dons the dress that has become synonymous with the character during her performance of “Let It Go.”
“Music is very persuasive,” said May Ling Halim, a 42-year-old professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach. “The messages we hear through music, we believe them more,” said Halim, whose research focuses on gender identity development among diverse young children. Halim has not let her 4- and 6-year-old daughters watch Frozen yet because she doesn’t want her children of color to equate beauty with Elsa’s blonde hair and white skin during a critical stage of their identity development. “It would possibly be the start of a lifelong message they will likely receive from society that there is only one kind of beauty that they don’t have,” Halim said.
Several parents expressed similar concerns. While Shannon Davis, 45, likes the Frozen films and understands Elsa’s appeal, she was dismayed when her daughter, who was four when Frozen 2 came out, told her she wanted the character’s signature “long, straight, and blonde hair.” Davis still purchased Elsa costumes for her daughter, but she drew the line at the blonde wig. “I would throw away that braid immediately so she wouldn’t even see it,” Davis, who lives in Los Angeles, said. “When you have a little black girl, and she grows up with the European beauty standards, you have to always reinforce that her hair is beautiful and her skin is beautiful.”
Even without having seen the film, Halim’s girls are still fascinated with Elsa. They loved to wear the Elsa costume they got from their friend before, according to Halim, it “mysteriously disappeared.” Gimel Hooper, 49, didn’t want his black children to experience the world “through the lens of whiteness,” so he didn’t show his daughter, Frozen either. But when a friend’s mom gave her an Elsa doll for her fourth birthday, and it briefly became her favorite toy, he accepted that some things were beyond his control. “We couldn't turn left or right without seeing Frozen something,” Hooper said. “That song was constantly playing. Every kid knew it.”
Halim actually thinks the whole “Let It Go” scene, not just the song, drives kids' obsession with Elsa. “The music, the looks, and then the story, it all culminated in that one scene and was really powerful over kids.” “What she really wants to see is the “Let It Go” scene, said Britta Shine, 42, about her foster daughter. Shine lives in Detroit, Michigan, and has a Dual-Title PhD in Developmental Psychology and Infant Mental Health from Wayne State University. She intentionally bought the Elsa dress, thinking its symbology would help her then-4-year-old, who has a history of abuse and neglect, process the intense emotion she sometimes feels. As Shine observed, “The dress is the one that Elsa manifests when she runs away and builds this beautiful ice castle with all these giant feelings she’s suddenly having.” The dress and the “Let It Go” scene have had a profound effect on Shine’s foster daughter. “She will sit and watch until it gets to ‘Let It Go” and then come back and forth to the movie,” Shine said. Now, when she begins to feel overwhelmed, Shine’s foster daughter copes by taking deep breaths and singing “Let It Go.”
“It doesn't matter where you are in the house,” Goodier said. “That scene comes on, and everybody beelines to the television.” Goodier’s daughter loves to fling one of the family’s old Superman capes over her dress and perform along to certain micro-moments from the scene. “She flings her hair when Elsa says the cold never bothers her anyway,” Goodier said, adding with a laugh, “I’ve seen it a million times.” Many parents reported similar experiences. “Jace would stomp because she [Elsa] would stomp and make cracks in the ice,” said his mom, Jean Hemmig. “He would do the thing where she spun around, and her hair would come down out of the braid.”
The “Let It Go” scene is also when Elsa finally embraces her power. You see, Elsa shoots ice from her hands the same way Spiderman shoots spiderwebs from his wrists, and every parent said their child was obsessed with Elsa’s power above everything else. They all said their kids liked to pretend to shoot ice from their arms and, as one Mom to a young boy put it, “run around the house pretending to freeze everybody.” “Elsa is just a badass,” Goodier said. “She is the Batman of Disney.”
Elsa has other magical powers too. For instance, the power to instantly change from a restrictive, dark gown into an airy light blue gown, which, according to Ayala, may help explain why boys and girls alike embraced her costume. “Being able to change that dress, having that magic, and being able to sing,” Ayala said. “It was just meant to be for the kids to just get so hooked on it.”
It was all kids, too. Ayala will never forget the young Colombian boy who was obsessed with Elsa and the Spanish version of the movie. “That's how he connected with friends at school,” Ayala said, “because they were all into the same character.”
“The only difference,” said Ayala, “is that he knew a lot of the words in Spanish, and the other kids didn't.”
“Are the parents going to be okay with this?”
At first Ayala worried about how parents would react to their sons loving Elsa because she had never seen young boys be so into what was technically a movie about two princesses. But her fears quickly dissipated when she realized how much they loved Frozen too. “Everybody was just having so much fun,” she said. The parents she encounters today seem open to whatever makes their kids happy, including Elsa.
Meghan and Michael Dexter, 42 and 43, were not surprised when their son, the youngest of four, fell in love with Elsa. They would’ve bought him the Elsa dress if he asked them to, but he was happy wearing the one his older sister had recently outgrown. He liked to put it on and run around in the backyard with friends and family, but they would’ve let him wear it in public too. It wasn’t a decision they made lightly. “We had the conversation of, like, should we protect him from being embarrassed,” Megan said. But she and Michael, who live in Richmond, Virginia, didn’t want to discourage him. They worried about him being bullied, Michael said, but they also knew he could count on his big family to have his back. “He has a lot of people around him telling him he is great and not to worry about whatever people say.”
“If we had to modify every behavior that might get made fun of,” Meghan added, “We would be dictating way too much about our kids.”
The Hemmigs had similar fears about letting Jace wear his Elsa costume around town.
Their immediate circle was completely supportive, but they didn’t want their son to be subject to any criticism if he wore it during a quick trip to Target. They let him do it anyway, said his mom, Jean, 45, who reasoned that “knowing we were confident in him would help him feel confident,” no matter what. At the peak of his Frozen phase, Jace wore his Elsa costume to Target multiple times, all without issue. “The more people I talked to about it, nobody cared,” said his dad, Jeff. “Everybody loved it.”
The only parent who tried to keep their child from wearing the Elsa dress in public was Tammy Hart, a 43-year-old parent to a 5-year-old in Brooklyn, New York. She and her child, Rocco, watched Frozen together for the first time when the latter was one year old. According to Hart, “Rocco was instantly transfixed.”
“I have a very profound memory of watching the film and Rocco just turning around and looking at me and smiling in this way that I could tell how freeing it felt,” Hart said. From there, it was off to the races, with Rocco developing an “unrelenting joy around Elsa” and Hart purchasing not just the Elsa dress but anything Elsa-related that Disney sold. “All the accessories from the wig, nightgowns, underwear, shoes, lunchboxes, backpacks,” Hart said, then continued, “Anything that you can put an Elsa face on: yogurt, waffles, ice cream.”
Hart was relentlessly supportive of Rocco’s love for Elsa up until Rocco was 3 years old and asked to wear the Elsa costume to school. “I'm queer and masc-of-center, so I felt very protective about my child going to school in a dress.” said Hart, who grew up in the South and had a “very conservative, scary upbringing.” “I was terrified for Rocco because I experienced it also.” Hart tried to hold her ground, but Rocco was relentless. Eventually, she suggested a compromise: Rocco could take the dress to school, but it had to stay in the backpack. That morning at drop-off, knowing Rocco would probably try and change into the dress at some point, she informed the teacher of the situation. “I just needed the assurance that my kid was going to be safe at school,” Hart said. “That they weren't going to be teased or harassed or bullied by anyone, and that included the teachers.”
The teacher put Hart’s mind at ease, and sure enough, when Hart returned in the afternoon, the Elsa costume was no longer in her kid’s backpack. “Rocco was just fress as a bird, in the little Elsa outfit, having a great time on the playground.” As Rocco approached Hart, wearing the dress and wig, she couldn’t help but smile. “I was like, ‘Okay. This is what we're doing.’”
Moana, Encanto, and moving on from Frozen
All of the parents said their children have moved on from Frozen. They listed Jurrasic Park, gymnastics, Harry Potter, theater, Ghostbusters, fashion, trucks, cars, and “pretending to be a robot,” as their new favorite things and interests.
Goodier’s son, now 11, is currently into music and exploring other hobbies. “He is about 10ft away from me playing with a fishing line right now,” Goodier said. Elsa was the only doll he ever showed any interest in when he was a toddler. Her daughter, who is not quite three, is still in her Frozen phase and refuses to wear anything other than one of her six Elsa nightgowns.
Meghan and Kevin Dexter’s son is now 8, and he is a natural performer. He is also naturally athletic, just like his three older siblings and parents, who were both college athletes, and he has channeled his athleticism to become a star ballet dancer. He can even do a split, giving him a leg up on the other boy in his class, which makes his athlete parents proud. “I think it’s great,” said Kevin. “He does his own thing, and he is excited about it.”
Jace, who is now 9, is into art and the Japanese manga series Demon Slayer. He briefly played t-ball but otherwise never really got into sports. His dad doesn’t mind one bit. In fact, he appreciates the peaceful effect his son’s hobbies have on him: “He stays in one spot more than I did as a kid, which is nice, ya know?”
Meanwhile, Rocco is a budding fashion designer. “Now it’s all about catwalk and modeling,” Hart said.
As for Disney movies, everybody loves Moana, including Davis’s daughter and Halim and her two daughters. “I’m just happy her body proportions are realistic,” Halim said with a laugh. Goodier’s kids are so sick of Frozen that they beg to watch Moana instead.
Over at the private preschool that Ayala now runs, the movie that has gotten the biggest reaction since Frozen is Encanto. “It’s because of the music and the character Mirabel,” explained Ayala. “She sings a lot and has beautiful glasses and hair.” Lots of boys come to school in Mirabel’s glasses, which Ayala doesn’t think ever would have happened if it wasn’t for Elsa. “She had such an impact,” Ayala said. “Absolutely anything that had Elsa on it, it was out there, and the boys were wearing it too.”