Gender Inequality In Disney Princess Movies

Disney’s princess movies produced after and despite the efforts of the Women's Liberation Movement conveyed an inaccurate and sexist message about the role of women as silenced wives in society. The Little Mermaid, released in 1989, was the first Disney princess movie following Sleeping Beauty in 1959, after a three-decade period of recess encompassing the Women’s Liberation Movement. These next set of films, including Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, were produced from 1989 to 1998, before another decade of relapse (“List of Disney Princess Movies”). Although some of the films in this batch were markedly better at providing strong female leads, such as Mulan, who saves China, and Pocahontas, who stops a war, plot lines still primarily focus on the

Unlike the relatively small, gender-balanced casts of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, these new films marked a shift towards larger, more theatrical casts and productions. With the increased characters, however, came an increase in gender-inequality as none of the added members were female unless they were a mother, wife, or lover (Guo). Beauty and the Beast stars Belle as a strong, intelligent female lead, but Mrs. Potts, the village wives and the young girls who dote on Gaston are the only other female characters, while men have a wide range of roles as bakers, servants, bookkeepers, etc. Every female character, including Belle and Mrs. Potts, is defined in terms of her relation to a man, as a wife in the village, mother, in the case of Mrs. Potts, or as a future wife for the teenage girls in society. Men are accurately portrayed in the wide range of jobs they actually work, but village women in the film are solely seen doing housework or primping which indicates, despite the changing social reality, that women should not be