For my final post of the day, in the spirit of Rachel Maddow (whom, for the record, I happen to think is one of the coolest people on the planet), I’m going to have a moment of geek with all of you. (Who doesn’t need a little fluff on a Friday, anyway?)
First, though, it’s confession time: for awhile when I was a child, I had a huge crush on Aladdin. Yes, that Aladdin, the Disney prince. I realize that won’t distinguish me much from most other gay boys who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s (and I bet you won’t be at all shocked to learn that another one of my major childhood crushes was a certain Jonathan Taylor Thomas), but the fact remains that I spent an embarrassingly significant amount of time as a gay youngster imagining Aladdin and other hunky heroes in various states of undress.
But now, thanks to the amazing work of artist David Kawena, I no longer need to imagine. He’s created sexy images of all sorts of Disney characters: Prince Eric from the Little Mermaid, Prince Phillip of Sleeping Beauty fame, John Smith from Pocahontas, Peter Pan, and Aladdin, just to name a few. They’re quite gorgeous — I wish I had posters of them when I was growing up! (That would probably have incurred even greater suspicion than the oversized JTT poster I had on my wall, though…)
Judging from the date of a couple blog posts about Kawena’s work, he’s been drawing Disney princes in their bare essentials since at least 2009; while I’m clearly quite late to the game I figured that if I didn’t know about Kawena, then at least some of you probably didn’t know about him either.
So without further ado, I present my childhood crush, Aladdin, as seen through the eyes of David Kawena. Once you’re done drooling, be sure to check out more of his work by clicking here and here. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
