Growing up we all watched the Disney princess movies wishing we were as elegant as Cinderella or as courageous as Pocahontas. Young boys also wished they were going to be as lucky as the princes' by obtaining a beautiful bride. Disney movies have been in effect since the early 1900s, this is where the corruption began. Disney movies started out seeming innocent, romantic and dreamy, but when you begin to look closer into the meaning of the different Disney movies the qualities and lessons these movies teach viewers is unrealistic and disheartening. Movies that fit these qualifications are (but not limited to) Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) and Cinderella (1950). Notice the years these movies were published; they are all in the earlier 1900s when women did not have very many rights. During this time, women were beginning to try and make a name for themselves, but because of Disney movies such as the ones listed above, the name of the women population was being damaged and ridiculed. Moving into the mid and later 1900s and early 2000s, Disney began to slowly take a turn in the movies they were producing such as, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast Pocahontas (1995), Mulan (1998) and Tangled (2010). Each of these movies listed show certain negative and positive gender roles within the movies, but this paper will also show the evolution that Disney has gone through by producing movies that go along with the era.

To begin, one might ask what is a negative or positive gender role? According to Dictionary.com, gender roles can be described as "The behaviors, attitudes, and activities expected or common for males and females" (Sex roles 1). Going off of that definition, a negative gender role would be acting negatively or negatively conveying themselves which poorly reflect on the male or female population. A positive gender role would be someone acting positively and convey themselves in a decent manner which then positively reflect on the male or female population. In Disney movies there have been both negative and positive gender roles presented in the popular movies. 

The first Disney princess movie aired was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. This movie filled with happiness, singing birds and love also portrays negative gender roles to the young girls watching. When watching Snow White, the viewers see a young beautiful girl, with fair skin tone, rosy red lips, beautiful and big blue eyes and a sweet innocent voice. Not to mention the amazingly small waist with proportional size breast. Snow White is society's image of a "perfect girl", but let us just be honest, there a few to no females who look just like this. Disney is producing female characters, the princesses, as an unrealistic yet perfect person. In young girls minds they want to be just like her in order to achieve the goal, A Happy Ever After. Dawn Elizabeth England, along with other co writers, wrote an article about the stereotypes in Disney movies and the effects they have on the young viewers who watch these movies. Based on the research she has done, she discovered " ... children who recognize more gender stereotyping in cartoons had similarly gendered expectations for themselves and others" (England 557). England is explaining that when young boys and girls see this stereotyping going on in these movies they are more likely to want to become that person, and even put that "expectation" on the people around them making their lives much more unrealistic. Not a great start for Disney so far.

Moving into Disney's next big princess movie Cinderella which aired in 1950. Cinderella is relatable to Snow White in the sense of the body image that the two princesses gives off as attractive and "beautiful". These two movies also correspond in the way that the female characters both displayed domestic qualities such as chores and household duties, but the difference between the two is that in Cinderella, the movie also showed a different side of the female spectrum, the evil step sisters. When comparing the two Cinderella is glowing with blonde hair, big blue eyes and fair skin, the evil stepsisters are not as slender as Cinderella and have dark brown hair with not so innocent sounding voices. This comparison is looked at as a negative gender role because it is teaching young girls that if you are slender and blonde you are apart of a group of girls who will have a happily ever after and if you were not so slender and have brown hair you are looked at as a minority or even evil. Ashley Bispo, a writer on the matter of young girls and how the perceive themselves because of the Disney princesses' movies proves the point made above by stating, "This association teaches young girls that other people's physical appearances are indicative of their personality traits ...  this misleading message can lead to unjust assumptions" (Bispo 9). Bispo goes into more depth of the influence of Disney princesses on young girls, but overall comes to the conclusion that in the beginning, and specifically during the time of the making of Snow White and Cinderella, the gender roles portrayed were negative towards young women and gave young girls the wrong idea of how the world should work.

Moving into the 80s, Disney took a long break but came out with The Little Mermaid in 1989.  Disney had to keep up with how women were evolving in the United States, during this time woman were becoming more outspoken and straying away from the approval of men. This concept is easily seen in the movie The Little Mermaid when Ariel goes against her father and leaves the ocean to become human. Although Ariel does have the "ideal qualities" of a beautiful girl such as the pretty face and slim figure, Ariel is somewhat independent and adventurous. Jeff Guo wrote a blog called 'Researchers have found a major problem with 'The Little Mermaid' and other Disney movies' explaining his opinion on the Disney movies with an emphasis on The Little Mermaid. In Guo's opinion the movie " ... represented a backward step in the princess genre. For a film centered on a young woman, there's an awful lot of talking by men" (Guo 1). Guo presents an interesting point because though Ariel can be seen very different from Cinderella and Snow White, she still shows that she wants to alter herself to appease a man, which honestly is almost worse than how Cinderella and Snow White are. The evolution here is the princess is acting out more than the princesses before her, but she is also trying to change herself in order to have a "happily ever after", so Disney improves the characteristics of the princess, but the girl is still having to use her image and physical appearance to show she is worth a male's time, which is not how it should be.

Just two years later, a new Disney princess movie came out, "Beauty and the Beast" where the actions of women seem to improve, but at the same time still be negative. Belle is the princess that is into books and learning, which compared to the other princesses, is very different but a positive quality that a young girl should learn. Belle still displays the overall idea of a 'beautiful' girl by her appealing attributes, such as her tiny waist and beautiful hair, but as mentioned before she begins the era of princesses with a brain. She is also the princess who takes care of others, such as her father, rather than needing to be taken care of. Disney movies are now showing their evolution through how they characterize the princesses. Brianna May, an undergraduate at Saint Mary's College, wrote a paper pertaining to the Disney corporation, and researched what it is that Disney movies are portraying in their princess movies. Further into her paper, she explains in further detail the characteristics of Belle. May explains that Belle can be described as passive, which is how she believes the women during those times acted (May 18). With May's assumption about Belle, the way that these females are portrayed throughout the movies has to do with the time period that the movies are made.

Disney followed the motives similar to The Little Mermaid when making Pocahontas in 1995. The movies when being compared are actually quite similar in plat also, the young girl sees a man that then she becomes infatuated with, then that girl goes against her father and her father's wishes making the young girl seem rebellious and adventurous. Young girls seeing this rebellious action gives two different outlooks. In one way, a young girl could take this as 'oh well I can go against what my father or other adult says so I can ultimately get what I want'. In another way this could be seen as I am a young woman who should start making my own decisions and deciding my own destiny. K Giordano is an English student who writes a blog/article on the Feminist Analysis of Pocahontas. When viewing Pocahontas one would see a young uneducated female who is dressed in a very revealing outfit who falls in love with a man who her family does not approve of (Giordano 1). This Disney princess is similar to the princesses in the early 1900s mainly because they do what they want because of a man, and this is ultimately what is negative about the movies, they are teaching the young girls that it is okay to go against your family or self morals to have a happily ever after.

Three years later, Disney makes Mulan in 1998. Though this film is not quite as popular as the other Disney movies it is one of the few Disney movies that portrays women as strong, honorable and courageous women. In the late 1900s women were being recognized for their great achievements and were further realizing that they did not need a man to complete them. This way of thinking is portrayed in Disney's Mulan. Mulan is a young girl who decides to take her father's place in the war because he had already been severely injured from the last war. Unlike most of the other princesses, Mulan did not act the way she did for love, though she did love her father, she pretended to be her father in order to save him and not to have a 'happily ever after'. It can also be noted that Mulan was not dressed provocatively such as the previous princesses, she is portraying a male so she obviously has a lot of her areas covered. In a way, Mulan is one of Disney's best movies because the gender role portrayed is positive to young girls and teaches them that they can do anything a male can do, such as join the army or go into the war. Mulan is the beginning of Disney's positive evolution for gender role portrayals.

Finally, in 2010 Disney came out with a new movie Tangled. A newer version of the old Disney movie Rapunzel. Natalie Wilson wrote a blog Disney's Gender Roles Remain Un-Tangled where she discusses the movie Tangled. According to Wilson, Disney announced that after the making of Tangled that there would be no more Disney princess films made. This is one of the smartest things that Disney could have done. As mentioned before Disney took a 360 when making Mulan because they portrayed her out to be strong, independent and brave, well Disney got back into the old habits again when making Tangled. Wilson explains this perfectly by stating "As a woman, you can either be a princess awaiting her prince or an evil stepmother/ witch; as a man, you get all the action (in many senses of the word)" (Wilson 1). This explanation correlates perfectly with the movie Tangled, there is a young beautiful girl trapped in a tall tower by her evil "mother", who actually kidnapped her from her royal family, and the action is based around the male, Flynn Rider. Another negative gender role is that once again, Disney creates this young girl who is extremely thin, has beautiful big eyes, long luscious blonde hair and a sweet voice. There is a difference however in the movie Tangled when compared to the other Disney princess movies, this movie begins the transition into the more male dominant movies. This male dominance brings up the 'opposition' to the paper.

The negative and somewhat positive gender roles are most commonly seen by the females in the Disney movies, but some argue that it is not only the females that portray certain gender roles to the young viewers. Ken Gillam and Shannon R. Wooden wrote an article Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar which explains that, though many like to criticize the females in the earlier Disney movies, since 1990 there has been a change to the masculine protagonist. Throughout the article Gillam and Wooden specifically mention three movies that pertain to this new masculine era, Cars (2006), Toy Story (1995) and The Incredibles (2004). When Gillam and Wooden compare the princesses to these masculine movies they state "Unlike many of the princesses, who remain relatively static even through their own adventures, these male leads are actual protagonist; their characters develop and change over the course of the film (Gillam 3). Throughout these films Gillam and Wooden also point out that each of these male protagonist has overall goals, in Cars the goal is for Lightening McQueen to become the King of the race track, in Toy Story Woody and Buzz Lightyear want to prevent themselves and their friends from being sold off and Buzz becomes the hero when he has to save Woody from a buyer, and in The Incredibles the goal is for Mr. Incredible to save the town and his family from his evil nemesis. It is also noted that even though these movies are male dominated, there are still females incorporated into these movies, Sally in Cars, Jesse in Toy Story and Mr. Incredibles wife in The Incredibles. Gillam and Wooden are showing that Disney has created a new era when producing these movies because they are not female dominant and these male protagonists " ... still retain their authority and accomplish their various tasks, but with new values and perspectives acquired along the way" (Gilliam 7). Though this article creates an opposition, it also describes the evolution that Disney has made and where they are going with the Disney movies.

Disney's movies have been around since the early 1900s and have been giving off different gender role portrayals to young viewers. Disney has evolved in many different ways such as how the princess or lead female character is perceived and how she acts, but there are still negative portrayals from these lead females. Each movie mentioned contributes to Disney's way of either negatively or positively portraying young women, and though it is mostly negative the influence that Disney has on the young viewers should have been more thought out when making these popular movies. Many of these negative gender roles in these movies can be seen in the YouTube video "Female Stereotypes in Disney Films" by Jonesyy217 where each movie has a segment and shows a negative portrayal. This is just one of many ways that viewers have showed their opinions on how Disney is negatively impacted the young viewers. In contrast to this point, there has recently been the era of the masculine Disney movies such as Cars, Toy Story and The Incredibles. Though these movies oppose the point of the evolving Disney princesses it also contributes to the point that Disney movies are continuing to evolve and will continue to affect the young viewers in a negative or positive way.

 

 

 

 

