INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of 20th century, Disney movies transferred us to the land of beautiful princesses, charming princes, and wicked witches. Through the years, Disney movie became one of the most popular children animated films, influencing kid’s lives all around the world. Most successful turned out to be movies about enchanted Princesses, who many girls and young women started to look up to. That is why, for many years, the portrayal of women in Disney movies, was a subject of a fierce debate. First Princesses depicted stereotypical feminine gender roles, with behaviors like: being helpless, emotional, dependent, and charming. They were mainly involved in house chores, and finding true love. It was a must for a princess to have
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The first period starts in 1937 and ends in 1959, and is described as the birth of Disney Princesses. It includes films, such as: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty(1959). The characters from this period’s Princess movies exhibit traditional feminine roles, like domestic work, and passivity, and encapsulate stereotypical beauty (Davis, 2006). The second era from 1989 to 1998 represents a rebirth of Disney with the release of The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995), and Mulan (1998) films with leading female roles. In accordance with Davis’ (2006) work, the second period of Disney princess movies presents a shift, which allowed for more female characters to have leading roles. The Princess started to become more heroic, and athletic, but still possessed classic beauty characteristics (Do Rozario, 2004; Meek, 2011). The third era (2009~) including movies: The Princess and the Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), Brave (2012), and Frozen (2013) present bigger changes in gender roles and beauty standards. The princesses became more independent than ever, and new body images have been introduced (England et al. 2011; Chrismanna,
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and many other Disney movies all have one thing in common, they feature a female lead who needs a male figure to save them. However, things started to change after the release of Mulan in 1988. Movies that were only representing female leads as weak and always needed to rely on someone, started to feature females who showed off their more masculine side. Mulan was one of the first animated films that had started to dive into that, not to mention it was based on a true story, making it even more powerful. In the article “Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Pixar/Disney”, authors Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden explore Pixar movies show male characters who were not afraid to show their emotions
Media is a powerful agent in entertaining children. It also influences and teaches the youth of society the suitable and appropriate gender roles that they inevitably try to make sense of. The power of media is very influential especially in the minds of the youth. Disney movies target the youth and plant certain ideas and concepts about social culture into the vulnerable minds of children. Media uses gender to its advantage, just like Disney productions. Humorous caricatures reveal some harsh realities about the portrayal of Disney Princesses in many movies made by the Walt Disney Company. Disney mixes innocence with the ultimate form of fantasy to capture an audience. Predominantly, Disney helps highlight the gender roles by showing the audience simply what they want to see. In the attempt to stick to the norm and portray stereotypical female characters, Disney created Princesses. Presented as damsels in distress and inferior beings to men, Disney Princesses give children an inaccurate portrayal of gender roles at a young age. Through Disney’s social success and intriguing films, such as The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney Princess movies portray stereotypical representation of gender roles through the denigration of the female image, targeting and ruining the perception of youth today.
Since Disney’s Snow White appeared in 1937, Disney princesses have been a present in pop culture. With the release of new movies frequent and re-release of decades old movies inevitable, a continuous stream keeps Disney princesses in the foreground of adolescent society. It is with the value of entertainment they have been created and as entertainment they should be viewed.
The Classic Years, movies that were made during this time: “Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), 101 Dalmatians (1961).” (Amy M. Davis 2008) was describe as the binning years of Disney. The gender roles were typically for a male would be a tall, handsome and strong while the female, was the damsel in distress. When a female was shown, it would show her in a traditional role in doing house work, cleaning, and gardening, etc. The middle Era, Movies that were made during this time: “The Rescuers (1977), The Fox and the Hound (1981) and The Black Cauldron (1985).” (Amy M. Davis 2008) Took a deeper turn especially when Walt had past leaving Roy Disney to continue his work. The company started to go into debt and there were not many films that had been made. The women roles remained the same. Then there was The Eisner Era, the movies that were made during this time: Belle (1991), Mulan (1998), and Jane (1999).” Which was when Disney ramped up by creating more Disney films. Although, the turning point in these films in which allowing a leading female roles. When Walt Disney past away, Disney (the business) started to change with the times in allowing female have leading roles and releasing them to the public. During this time, Disney allow women to become dependent unlike the women from the Classic
Despite the tremendous steps that have been taken towards reaching gender equality, mainstream media contradicts these accomplishments with stereotypes of women present in Walt Disney movies. These unrealistic stereotypes may be detrimental to children because they grow up with a distorted view of how men and women interact. Disney animated films assign gender roles to characters, and young children should not be exposed to inequality between genders because its effect on their view of what is right and wrong in society is harmful to their future. According to Disney films, it is important for women to achieve the stereotypical characteristics of a woman, such as maintaining their beauty to capture a man, and being weak and less educated than male characters. The women in Disney movies are always beautiful, which helps them to find a man.
Society cements certain roles for children based on gender, and these roles, recognized during infancy with the assistance of consumerism, rarely allow for openness of definition. A study conducted by Witt (1997) observed that parents often expect certain behaviors based on gender as soon as twenty-four hours after the birth of a child. The gender socialization of infants appears most noticeably by the age of eighteen months, when children display sex-stereotyped toy preferences (Caldera, Huston, & O’Brian 1989). This socialization proves extremely influential on later notions and conceptions of gender. Children understand gender in very simple ways, one way being the notion of gender permanence—if one is born a girl or a boy, they will stay that way for life (Kohlberg 1966). “According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable” (Orenstein 2006). The Walt Disney Corporation creates childhood for children worldwide. “Because Disney are such a large media corporation and their products are so ubiquitous and wide spread globally, Disney’s stories, the stories that Disney tell, will be the stories that will form and help form a child’s imaginary world, all over the world, and that’s an incredible amount of power, enormous amount of power” (Sun). Because of the portrayal of women in Disney films, specifically the Disney Princess films, associations of homemaker, innocence, and dependence are emphasized as feminine qualities for young children. Thus, children begin to consider such qualities normal and proceed to form conceptions of gender identity based off of the movies that portray the very specific and limiting views of women (...
In the article Construction of the Female Self: Feminist Readings Of the Disney Heroine, Jill Birmie Henke, Diane Zimmerman Umble, and Nancy J. Smith are looking at the female self and how it was developed based on two theories: Standpoint by Parker Follet and the psychological development of girls by Gilligam. That by examines gender identity especially girls and how media exposure affects them through analyzing five of Disney movies: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. They segmented the article into three titles: The Oxymoron of Power and the Perfect Girl where they introduced the two theories in which they built their critic on, Construction of the Female Self where they talk about the evolution in the female character from Cinderella to Pocahontas, and Construction of Self in Relation to Others where they talk about the evolution of the self in relation to others from power-over to power-with until power-to. Finally they concluded that even if the female character in Disney’s movies was changing to become more
Disney has portrayed women in movies by the use of animation characters for over a century since the 1900s. There has been a very big change since the early 1900’s to modern day in Disney’s depiction of the personalities of the women, their attitudes and ideologies towards men, and the way they are portrayed in the movies. This progression has had a distinct development, from passive damsels in distress in need of the help of men, to being superheroes. Therefore, the evolution of women in Disney movies will be analyzed through the use of university level feminist essays, as well as a research paper written about gender roles in Disney animation. The evolution will also be analyzed through examination of the clips of the movies themselves.
While focusing on the use of female characters in Disney films from 1937 to 2004, this book shows that Disney incorporated the opinions of most people in society when developing the character roles. In doing so, popular culture had a large effect on the feminist side of the movies. Although Disney portrayed this maneuver as incorporating the opinions of the people, this text suggests that Disney did so to increase sales. However, when compared to modern Hollywood films, Disney’s films contain more stereotypical content while trying to reach a comprehension level from younger kids. Because people are raising awareness for this issue within Disney, Disney is attempting to reach the younger generations by incorporating all sexualities, religions, genders, and ethnicities into the films.
Disney princesses are fun for all ages, but their target audience is young children and “as children grow and develop, they can be easily influenced by what they see and hear”. Therefore, what they see and hear in Disney movies leaves an impression on them. The first princess, Snow White, was created in a time where each gender and race had a specific role in society. Recently, many believe that Disney has come a long way in regards to gender and race since Snow White, as several multi-cultural protagonists have been introduced subsequently, and gender roles do not appear to be as stereotypical as they once were. However, many of the apparent innocent messages about race and gender in these movies, can be exposed as otherwise. Despite their mask of progression, Disney princesses still have the potential to corrupt the minds of young children through sexism and racism.
Disney promotes sexisim by forcing young girls to live in a patriarchal world. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The little mermaid, Aladdin, and Snow White are all examples of popular Disney movies that encourage young viewers that they need a man to save the day. Yes, it’s true that there are recent movies such as Moana and Frozen that prove otherwise, but how long will it take to completely get over the fact that women are mainly viewed as secondary citizens compared to the men? There are countless examples of how Disney movies influence this theme, and how much the female characters’ actions, ideas and thoughts are not included in a Disney movie.
"Disney Princesses: Classic Fairy Tales Or Gender Stereotypes?" Hartford Courant, 27 Aug. 2012. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
England, D. E., Descartes, L., & Collier-meek, M. (2011). Proquest. “Gender role portrayal and the disney princesses”. Sex Roles, 64(7-8), 555-567.
Disney and old fairytales threaten gender politics and ideal women roles by giving certain stereotypes for domestic and personality traits. Fairytales that have turned into Disney productions have sculpted domestic roles for women that consist of cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. Disney has also created these princesses with personalities that are shy, passive, and vulnerable. The cause of these stereotypes are making individuals obliterate their own identities and becoming clones from the mold that was prepared for
In society today, there is pressure from all sides to conform to a certain ideal of beauty. People are overwhelmed with the different types of images and media forms that are telling people how to act and what to look like. Media is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. It has the power to educate, affect social change, and much more, but if taken incorrectly people will take drastic lengths to change something about themselves. There have been many attempts to empower women through different types of media, but many have failed miserably. Over the last couple of years, Disney has struggled greatly with the representation of women throughout Princess movies because young girls are hounded with images of princesses,