You probably know their smiling faces like the back of your hand. Their cheerful, sparkling eyes likely smiled from posters and DVDs in your childhood playroom, and you probably spent at least one Halloween wrapped up in scratchy costume tulle, trying to imitate your favorite out of the 8 original heroines.
For many American college students, Disney princess mania was just a standard fixture of early childhood. For some, a love of Disney princesses has carried over well into adulthood (looking at you, Disney lingerie).
Between the nostalgia and the continued obsession, feminism has worked its way into the modern Disney discussion. Today’s feminism can look at the set of traditionally feminine heroines and see several once-overlooked feminist attributes. Princesses like Ariel and Jasmine wanted love according to their own terms, and weren’t afraid to speak their minds. Belle wanted “something more” than what her provincial neighbors envisioned for a woman her age. Mulan and Pocohantas had a larger impact on society than simply marrying the most eligible royal within a fifty-mile vicinity. Additionally, many of the princesses are more independent than the average women would have ever been during their film’s historical setting.
This is all peachy keen and honestly feminist. However, this doesn’t take Disney princess movies entirely off the hook. Those that proudly praise the Disney films for their girl-power attributes sometimes misunderstand Disney’s pre-tween audience when discussing the feminist merits of Disney films.
Little girls in 2017 are not generally being told that they can’t make their own decisions. They don’t have the historical knowledge to know that women during the time of Cinderella typically did not choose who to marry, so any empowerment that they could have derived from this tidbit is lost on their young age. Additionally, even though more independent princesses such as Mulan have been introduced, this does little to negate the fact that in each and every Disney princess movie prior to the release of Mulan in 1998, the main heroine’s entire struggle is heavily focused on securing the man of her dreams.
As a feminist, I openly admit that if a woman wants to focus her energy on finding a husband, it is certainly her choice and she should be supported in her endeavor. However, I do have a problem with an overwhelming majority of the media being presented to little girls focusing on love and marriage as the primary goal of female life.
So much of the media that is marketed to young girls focuses heavily on teaching them the value of love and romance. Even in 2017, many of the narratives little girls are being fed are still heavily focused on the value of love and marriage (and love structured by traditional, patriarchal gender roles, no less). And even after little girls outgrow Disney, the influence of Disney magic remains. Disney movies become books for middle schoolers where the 12-year-old heroine has her awkward first boyfriend accompanied by an even more awkward first kiss (the book-sale special l Candyapple books come to mind, as well as the Clique series), Taylor Swift songs about crushes gone awry, Nicholas Sparks movies and Meg Ryan rom-coms and any movie labeled simply as a “chick flick” … a flood of media selling the idea that female life needs to be heavily focused on love and marriage.
Never mind that in 2017, the message we are verbally teaching our daughters is often very different from “find a man.” In 2017, we are teaching our daughters about the importance of pursuing an education, participating in hobbies that they enjoy, and appreciating their bodies. And it’s not the appreciation of “love story media” that’s a problem. It’s the fact that love and romance are the main themes of a lot of the media we are presenting to young girls. By the time we’ve shown our daughters Mulan and taught them that a woman in early dynastic China saved her country, we’ve told them six or seven other stories about what Princess A did to meet Prince B. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says it best in her famous TED talk: “…Marriage can be a source of love and mutual support…but why do we teach girls to aspire after marriage when we don’t teach boys the same?”
With the introduction of newer, more empowered Disney heroines like Tiana and Merida, we are making strides in creating media for young girls that shifts the conversation away from just love and romance. If you Google search “movies for little girls” and “movies for little boys,” you are presented with articles that are trying to present boys and girls both with narratives outside of the traditional gender stereotypes. It seems we are slowly but surely straying away from the “action for boys, romance for girls” stereotype. Hopefully by the time we are raising our daughters we have a variety of narratives to share with them – minus the plot focused on Prince Charming.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(1950_film)
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7534428/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-beyonce-flawless-interview