BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
A lot of people are aware of the “Disney Princesses,” the cadre of young women portrayed in various Disney animated movies who’s likenesses are sold to the young women of the world as some form of aspirational role models. There are a lot of good qualities to these characters, qualities that are beneficial to young women. Belle suggests it is okay for women to be intelligent and urbane, Mulan is confident, Cinderella is a hard worker, the girl form Princess and the Frog is dedicated to her family, and Snow White teaches us that diminutive men can still be industrious and that we shouldn’t take candy from strangers (okay, maybe Sleeping Beauty has a little less to teach us).
As nice as these young ladies are, their portrayals are still flawed to the point that I don’t know if we should hold them up as models for children. While every one of these characters have their own personal flaws, which is good because it makes for a good story and shows that you don’t have to be perfect to be good or to achieve your goals, a few flaws that appear consistently in every Disney Princess movie that make me wonder if these characters should really be viewed as role-models. These flaws include that all the Princess’s problems are resolved through meeting the right guy, that these Princesses are generally pretty adolescent, and that they all live in an fantasy land.
Let’s face it, a Princess ain’t nothing without a prince. In all of the Disney Princess movies, the female lead is opposite a male and the male is either the focus of the story, and quite possibly the focus of the princess’s longing, and / or ends up saving the princess by the end of the story. You can’t get much more of an atavistic moral than telling young women that all they need is a man and all their problems will go away. Plus, the man usually comes off as older or more mature than the woman. I don’t know if the Beast or the prince in The Little Mermaid are actually much older than they their paramours, but they sure come off as more mature. These male roles are also usually more confident and able then the women. Take Sleeping Beauty which pairs a completely powerless title character with a man who literally fights the forces of Hell and slays a dragon for her. Even Mulan, which features the most competent female lead in the Princess series, still has the protagonist being assisted by a more competent man. Furthermore, Mulan spends a lot of the move in drag disguised as a man, but only achieves her goal once she removes her disguise and reverts to her birth gender. Implicit message to young women there: you can’t achieve your goals by playing a male role; while you do have some wiggle room, in the end you must acquiesce to the standard gender role laid out before you.
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve referred to the audience of this Princess line as young women. That’s not really an accurate description; in fact the audience for the Disney Princess line of product is preadolescent girls. Which sort of brings me to my next issue, that all of these Princesses are pretty adolescent and are not fully mature adults. In one way, this makes sense as the Princesses are more relatable as adolescents than as adults, and that’s a fine point to make. However, the youth of the protagonists raises other issues. First and foremost, it sets a pretty high bar for young girls to live up to during their adolescence. With the Princesses all solving their problems, and getting set for life, before their twentieth birthday, the movies create a subtext that tells girls that their lives should be in order by the time they hit their twenties. This of course implies that if you’re life isn’t in order when you become an adult then there’s something wrong with you or the choices you made. Plus, it suggests that one’s identity is cemented by the time your twenty. Then there’s the fact that some of these Princesses face very adult problems but attack them in adolescent fashions. I mean, sure she’s got trouble with her folks at home accepting her, but does it really make sense for Mulan to bind her breasts and pass as a man? That’s not the sort of solution an adult would generally come up with, and the fact that Disney has her half-baked idea pay off suggests to the audience that adult problems can be resolved with absurd, childish plans. Since the protagonists of these movies are themselves adolescents and the adults of their world are universally either incompetent or maleficent, the only real aspirational role given to the audience is the protagonist and her age. In other words, being 16 is the best time of your life, a theme that’s pounded into us from a lot of other corners of our society. But if 16 is best then that certainly reduces the importance of actually being an adult. To top it off, there’s the fact that a lot of these Princesses are getting married off at a pretty young age, which is kind of creepy.
Then there’s the fact that all these Princesses live in a fantasy world. Their problems are solved by singing fish, wisecracking genies, and talking teapots. That’s not the real world. Come on.
In short, the Disney Princesses send young women the wrong message. They tell them that they need a man, that they’ll never need to grow up, and that magic will sweep in and save the day. Is this really the message we want to send our young women? Why can’t we promote active adult female role models? How many young women will be trick or treating this Monday dressed as Amelia Earhart, Madam Currie, or Miss Bianca?
Who?
Miss Bianca. She was the female mouse in the Disney movie The Rescuers. You know the one where the mice have to save the girl trapped in the orphanage with the alligators? That was her. And she’s a damn better role model for young women than those “Princesses” ever were. For one, she’s Miss Bianca, which tells you right there that she doesn’t need a man to get around; that she’s a person unto herself. She does court another mouse through the movie, but it’s her active choice to do so, she is not impotent with a man as the Disney Princesses often are. She’s also portrayed as a confident adult. Admittedly, some of the stuff that goes on the movie is a little harebrained and adolescent, but she is a talking mouse so I have to give her some credit. And while the concept of a talking mouse is on the fantastic side, she actually represents a career choice that young women can actually pursue. Bianca works for an international NGO that works to prevent child abuse. Now the career openings for young women looking to play housekeeper to gold-mining dwarfs, or trying to lead an army against the Huns invading the Middle Kingdom, or for those who just want to prick their fingers on magic sewing wheels and fall asleep are pretty limited, but working in social services is actually a viable, and rewarding, career path.
So this Halloween, or whenever you are considering a gift for young women, when you see that Disney Princess nonsense think about how Bianca might be the REAL Disney princess. You might just come up with new ideas about how to inspire the young ladies in your life to grow into responsible, caring adults.
Heavily inspired by Fenzel’s article over at Overthinking It.
Post script: A lot of nice things along the same lines can be said about Gadget from The Rescue Rangers, and, to a lesser extent, that-chick-that-owned-the-aircraft in Tailspin (even if she did need Baloo to help her out).
As nice as these young ladies are, their portrayals are still flawed to the point that I don’t know if we should hold them up as models for children. While every one of these characters have their own personal flaws, which is good because it makes for a good story and shows that you don’t have to be perfect to be good or to achieve your goals, a few flaws that appear consistently in every Disney Princess movie that make me wonder if these characters should really be viewed as role-models. These flaws include that all the Princess’s problems are resolved through meeting the right guy, that these Princesses are generally pretty adolescent, and that they all live in an fantasy land.
Let’s face it, a Princess ain’t nothing without a prince. In all of the Disney Princess movies, the female lead is opposite a male and the male is either the focus of the story, and quite possibly the focus of the princess’s longing, and / or ends up saving the princess by the end of the story. You can’t get much more of an atavistic moral than telling young women that all they need is a man and all their problems will go away. Plus, the man usually comes off as older or more mature than the woman. I don’t know if the Beast or the prince in The Little Mermaid are actually much older than they their paramours, but they sure come off as more mature. These male roles are also usually more confident and able then the women. Take Sleeping Beauty which pairs a completely powerless title character with a man who literally fights the forces of Hell and slays a dragon for her. Even Mulan, which features the most competent female lead in the Princess series, still has the protagonist being assisted by a more competent man. Furthermore, Mulan spends a lot of the move in drag disguised as a man, but only achieves her goal once she removes her disguise and reverts to her birth gender. Implicit message to young women there: you can’t achieve your goals by playing a male role; while you do have some wiggle room, in the end you must acquiesce to the standard gender role laid out before you.
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve referred to the audience of this Princess line as young women. That’s not really an accurate description; in fact the audience for the Disney Princess line of product is preadolescent girls. Which sort of brings me to my next issue, that all of these Princesses are pretty adolescent and are not fully mature adults. In one way, this makes sense as the Princesses are more relatable as adolescents than as adults, and that’s a fine point to make. However, the youth of the protagonists raises other issues. First and foremost, it sets a pretty high bar for young girls to live up to during their adolescence. With the Princesses all solving their problems, and getting set for life, before their twentieth birthday, the movies create a subtext that tells girls that their lives should be in order by the time they hit their twenties. This of course implies that if you’re life isn’t in order when you become an adult then there’s something wrong with you or the choices you made. Plus, it suggests that one’s identity is cemented by the time your twenty. Then there’s the fact that some of these Princesses face very adult problems but attack them in adolescent fashions. I mean, sure she’s got trouble with her folks at home accepting her, but does it really make sense for Mulan to bind her breasts and pass as a man? That’s not the sort of solution an adult would generally come up with, and the fact that Disney has her half-baked idea pay off suggests to the audience that adult problems can be resolved with absurd, childish plans. Since the protagonists of these movies are themselves adolescents and the adults of their world are universally either incompetent or maleficent, the only real aspirational role given to the audience is the protagonist and her age. In other words, being 16 is the best time of your life, a theme that’s pounded into us from a lot of other corners of our society. But if 16 is best then that certainly reduces the importance of actually being an adult. To top it off, there’s the fact that a lot of these Princesses are getting married off at a pretty young age, which is kind of creepy.
Then there’s the fact that all these Princesses live in a fantasy world. Their problems are solved by singing fish, wisecracking genies, and talking teapots. That’s not the real world. Come on.
In short, the Disney Princesses send young women the wrong message. They tell them that they need a man, that they’ll never need to grow up, and that magic will sweep in and save the day. Is this really the message we want to send our young women? Why can’t we promote active adult female role models? How many young women will be trick or treating this Monday dressed as Amelia Earhart, Madam Currie, or Miss Bianca?
Who?
Miss Bianca. She was the female mouse in the Disney movie The Rescuers. You know the one where the mice have to save the girl trapped in the orphanage with the alligators? That was her. And she’s a damn better role model for young women than those “Princesses” ever were. For one, she’s Miss Bianca, which tells you right there that she doesn’t need a man to get around; that she’s a person unto herself. She does court another mouse through the movie, but it’s her active choice to do so, she is not impotent with a man as the Disney Princesses often are. She’s also portrayed as a confident adult. Admittedly, some of the stuff that goes on the movie is a little harebrained and adolescent, but she is a talking mouse so I have to give her some credit. And while the concept of a talking mouse is on the fantastic side, she actually represents a career choice that young women can actually pursue. Bianca works for an international NGO that works to prevent child abuse. Now the career openings for young women looking to play housekeeper to gold-mining dwarfs, or trying to lead an army against the Huns invading the Middle Kingdom, or for those who just want to prick their fingers on magic sewing wheels and fall asleep are pretty limited, but working in social services is actually a viable, and rewarding, career path.
So this Halloween, or whenever you are considering a gift for young women, when you see that Disney Princess nonsense think about how Bianca might be the REAL Disney princess. You might just come up with new ideas about how to inspire the young ladies in your life to grow into responsible, caring adults.
Heavily inspired by Fenzel’s article over at Overthinking It.
Post script: A lot of nice things along the same lines can be said about Gadget from The Rescue Rangers, and, to a lesser extent, that-chick-that-owned-the-aircraft in Tailspin (even if she did need Baloo to help her out).
