Masculinity In Disney's Mulan

To be a man, one must be swift as a coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, with all the strength of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon. These attributes are all featured in the quintessential man in Disney’s Mulan, and represent the ideal masculinity for the people in this culture, at this time. Just as femininity has morphed to best portray the current standards, masculinity too has evolved; it is socially constructed and socially perpetuated. Many types of masculinity have been defined by society, including playboy masculinity, 50’s husband masculinity, and high school popularity masculinity. The epitome of a playboy connoisseur is composed around the idea of embodying a lifestyle. He is in the drawing room sipping whiskey on the rocks, wearing a velvet jacket while his companions puff their cigars and put on a jazz record. The men are suave and tasteful and fully manifest the idea of ‘French’ as an adjective (Ehrenreich, 44). This type of masculinity

It warns them about the females who will want to trap them and “in every issue, every month, there was a Playmate to prove that a playboy didn't have to be a husband to be a man” (Ehrenreich, 51). Playboy is an escape route. In a time when how much of a man you are depends on how pretty one’s wife is, how many kids one can afford, and how one provides for one’s family, this magazine breaks men from their social contract, and allows them pursue a different route to fulfillment without having their masculinity questioned (Ehrenreich, 51). Playboy masculinity grants men options that allow them more freedom in what lifestyle they choose to live, for the small price of spending some time enjoying a woman’s naked body splayed across a