The best part about the Disney blockbuster "Frozen" is its universal message -- to be yourself.
But when 3-year-old Samara Muir, an Aboriginal girl from outside Melbourne, Australia, dressed up as the movie's Queen Elsa for a Disney-themed children’s event at a shopping center last month, she was met with hateful, racist remarks from a bystander and her two daughters, The Courier reported.
Samara's mother, Rachel Muir, shared the upsetting incident on her Facebook page, writing, “A mother and her two daughters told my daughter [they didn’t] know why [she] dressed up [as] Anna and Elsa aren’t black and that black is ugly ... Racism is alive and well in the next generation.”
Muir's Facebook post went viral, and kind messages of support for Samara started coming in from around the world, including Mexico, India and the U.K. In Adelaide, hundreds of miles away from Samara's hometown, the 3-year-old was named Queen Elsa of Australia in a Facebook competition. Samara will even get her turn to star on screen; Australian rapper Adam Briggs has invited the toddler to be in his new music video, The Courier reported.
My daughter was in tears when we were at watergardens for the frozen activities as a mother & her 2 daughters told my...
Posted by Rachel Muir on Sunday, May 31, 2015
Initially, in the days following the incident, Samara was feeling sad and didn’t want to go to her Aboriginal dance class, Muir said in an interview with The Project.
“It breaks my heart, she said.”I told her she can be anything she wants to be, and it doesn’t matter about the color of your skin.”
However, on Tuesday, Samara received a very special, personalized video from the actress who plays Queen Elsa at Disney World Orlando, Florida, telling the young girl to “always be yourself.”
“I just want to remind you to always be yourself and let it go,” Elsa says in the video.
“Her mouth just dropped to the ground,” Muir told The Courier about Samara's reaction to the video. “She kept saying over and over, ‘She's talking to me.’ We were in tears. It was so overwhelming.”