In recent years, the Winx Club franchise has experienced some struggles and has began to loose its bearing especially since the short co-production period with Nickelodeon. A lot of issues with change in tone, narrative design, art direction, character and story regression were the order of the day but a baffling decision that took the cake was the whitewashing of the fairies of colour.
What is Winx Club?
In the early 2000s, Winx Club became a global phenomenon in the magical girl genre. Created by Italian animator, Iginio Straffi and produced by Rainbow Studios, the franchise is arguably the company’s most successful property to date. Among a host of similar shows like Sailor Moon, W.I.T.C.H., Mysticons, and Lolirock, the Winx Club is a fitting representation of girl power, friendship, growth, and self discovery. An interesting strategy that made the show what it is today was the use of representation. It features six fairies Bloom, Stella, Flora, Aisha, Musa, and Tecna from different realms with different unique abilities who save the magic universe from villainous threats. The fairies come from a fictional magical universe based on the cultures of our own world. Iginio himself even stated that he wanted them modeled after popular celebrities at the time to make them appeal to various audiences. Bloom was based on Britney Spears, Stella was based on Cameron Diaz, Tecna was based on Pink, Musa was based on Lucy Liu, Aisha was based on Beyonce and Flora was based on Jennifer Lopez which would mean that Musa, Flora, and Aisha were coded as fairies of colour. It was a common thing in media to have a group of friends from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures to appeal to a global audience as retaining the freshness of the work and offering variety.
However, with the recent changes in story and character regression as a result of the nickelodeon deal, the Winx franchise exists in a limbo where the producers no longer understand its audience and what they really enjoyed about the show. To appease original long time fans, Rainbow in collaboration with Netflix produced a spin off, World of Winx and a live action adaptation, Fate: The Winx Saga. World of Winx debuted in 2016 and while the production was acceptable, the series’ fairy couture art style meant for promotional purposes was used in this spin off to differentiate it from the actual show. Except Flora, the Latina passing character looked like a white woman, and Aisha, an African American passing character seems to adapt Flora’s old skin tone which was paler than hers. Eventually, the eight season of the main Winx Club show which was also took a different art direction to make the characters look way younger in order to appeal to a younger age demographic also has this same issue of lightening Flora and Aisha’s skin tones. Considering the eight season was released three years after World of Winx, this was no coincidence as there was enough time to properly address the issue.
Then came Fate: The Winx Saga which premiered in 2021. The series made a lot of changes such as removing Tecna, The Fairy of Technology probably due to budgetary reasons or story tone and also the magic dimension being condensed into one planet called “The Otherworld”. Apparently, the most egregious change was trying to cast Flora with a white actress. Elliot Salt, a British actress was originally cast to be the live action version of Flora, The Fairy of Nature but due to the backlash that came along with this decision, her name was changed to Terra instead and she was made to be Flora’s cousin. While Aisha, was not race swapped this time around, it was Musa who was replaced with a white actress, Elisha Applebaum, when Musa in the cartoon was Chinese coded. These decisions seem more intentional than coincidental with Rainbow trying to test just how much whitewashing they could get away with.
This decision confirms the fact that Rainbow studios has always tried one way or the other to make Flora a white girl. The preference of lighter skin tones within media is a serious topic which reflects the bias of beauty standards. Mainstream beauty standards skew to lighter skin which could symbolise status or background as people of colour are part of marginalised groups. Many actress and notable people of colour dealt with a lot of challenge to achieve a breakthrough in their respective realms of influence. So when a character’s marginalised passing background is toned down or removed as a way to show elevation of status and to also appeal to a predominantly white audience, it comes across as racist. As Winx began to gain international traction especially in the United States due to the Nickelodeon deal, the whitewashing apparently makes them more marketable and appealing. This need to seeing only lighter skin tones presented to be marketable puts people of colour in a difficult position as everyone comes in their own colour and size. It might have even been a different story if they believed a plus sized fairy would not also be globally appealing as well. Many artists of colour have worked hard in order to break the cycle and pave the way for future artists of colour who are destined to shine in the creative space. Fans seeing people who look like them being represented properly in the media increases the fanbase and global appeal.
