Walt Disney: The Evolution Of Body Image In Disney

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The Walt Disney Company is extremely accomplished in many areas due to its creative ideas along with their successes, but one thing that they are lacking in is the evolution of body image that has become more prevalent over the past sixty years. Disney’s Princess, “In many films, both human and animal female characters are portrayed as overly sexual; they typically have unnaturally small waists, large breasts, big eyes, and batting eyelashes” (Bispo), which are very unrealistic body traits for anyone to obtain (Photo 6). The main root of why these ideas still exist is due to the popularity and attention that Disney has received from these beautiful, yet unrealistically thin protagonists. To continue to retain their multi-billion dollar empire, the Walt Disney Company decided to stick with their original ideas. Because there was no change to the way the protagonists and princesses were portrayed, Disney continues to portray that the only way to be beautiful, one must be thin, which sends a deceitful message to young viewers (“Body Image.”).
A great example of Disney presenting this very …show more content…

These villains “possess traits culturally defined as unattractive”, including their physical beauty and body appearance ("Body Image."). Ursula’s appearance is an obvious contrast from Ariel, as Ariel is a beautiful, thin-waisted, graceful mermaid (Photo 7) while Ursula is a giant, ugly octopus (Photo 8), and both represent unrealistic extremes. The message that Disney is projecting through their representation of villains is just as bad as how they display princesses. Disney is distributing the idea that those who are plus-sized or ugly are negative because they are different from the social norm, while those who are beautiful and thin are positive, sending a distorted idea of the

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