Gender Roles in Disney Films: From Stereotypes to Heroines

Introduction: Disney Heroines Across the Decades

Gender roles in Disney films have changed throughout the decades, from Snow White (1937) to Brave (2012). Each film has presented female characters that are either typical of their generation or that embody idealized personas shaped by that generation's particular trends in gender awareness. In most cases, Disney films have succeeded at doing both simultaneously. Fans of Disney have argued that its movies present positive gender role models, while critics have contended that the standard Disney heroine is a composite of generational stereotypes mixed with idealized qualities that are, in turn, harmful models for gender role behavior. This paper examines the negative aspects of these claims and offers positive counter-arguments to each.

The Pin-Up Ideal and the Objectification of Disney Princesses

The first negative claim that can be made against Disney is that it has always projected false, idealized representations of womanhood. The first "perfect" woman presented by Disney appeared in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. She was the equivalent of the European pin-up Brigitte Bardot — a fantasy drawn to attract the male gaze. She was slender, tall, and beautiful. She was the first real Disney Princess, and she set the standard for all future Disney Princesses — and even for young girls who desired to model themselves after these characters, as Wohlwend (2009) has noted. The Disney Princess image has never gone away, even as newer models have replaced it — for instance, the tomboyish character of Merida in Brave (2012). Unlike other Disney Princesses, Merida is a soldier type: she carries and uses a longbow and fights for what she believes in. She is proactive, assertive, and strong. She is still beautiful, but not in the same pin-up way, and she is a far cry from the familiar Disney Princess model long equated with the unrealistic features of the Barbie doll. The Disney Princess now lives on in the Princess dolls still marketed to girls, who play with them and follow the narratives of Disney Princess home movie DVDs, games, and storybooks. They use these narratives as stepping stones for their own games and stories, constructing their own versions of the Disney Princess world in their own homes (Wohlwend, 2009). This is the first problem identified by critics of Disney.

The second problem is that the Disney Princess idealizes the woman as an object. Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, and Tinkerbell are just a few of the Disney heroines who have exuded sexuality as a means of attracting the male gaze. Feminists have denounced this objectification of women, including the influential feminist Betty Friedan. In 1963, Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a critique of the "perfect" woman idealized in Disney movies and on popular sitcoms of the time. Disney's Beauty was, without doubt, a sexpot in the sense that she reflected the sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, typified by starlets like Brigitte Bardot, whose "perfect" hourglass figure is echoed in Sleeping Beauty. In terms of sex appeal, Beauty was an idol. Yet, in terms of 1950s standards of womanly expectations, she was also the sexy, graceful "Suzy homemaker" idealized by American women on virtually all television sitcoms. She dances, she sings, she sews, she cooks, she cleans, and she chastely waits for her "prince charming" to find her, sweep her off her feet, and carry her away to a castle in the clouds. However, the evil witch, who resents Beauty's charms and virtue, casts a spell on her, thus reducing Beauty to a passive role in her own fate. The prince must break the spell, defeat the forces of evil, and save Beauty. His role is the active one — the one in which power is asserted. Friedan, in 1963, rejected this role and demanded that women be allowed to play a more significant part in their own destinies. Rather than be seen as passive recipients of male love or as representatives of male fantasy, Friedan set about articulating a new gender role — one that would ultimately find expression in Disney's Brave, whose strong female lead is no longer a passive actor but an active fighter.

Stereotypes, Diversity, and the Limits of Representation

Finally, the Disney Princess is said to have a negative impact on children because it supports rather than breaks stereotypes. Mulan, for example, is an Asian character who does not fit the mold of other Disney Princesses, yet she is a very Westernized Asian whose appearance only masks the Western Princess beneath. Jasmine is supposedly a Middle Eastern princess, but her ideals, behavior, and dress are highly revealing of Western attitudes. These heroines are meant to show diversity, but critics argue that all they ultimately show are the same stereotypes dressed up in new appearances.

Disney Films as Reflections of Cultural Norms

The response to the first negative claim is that Disney films are just that — films. Part of the reason for the controversy lies in the very nature of the film medium itself, the allure of which is based on the projection of beautiful or attractive images that will catch and hold a viewer's interest. Because Disney films are films, they depend upon portraying gender roles that both reflect societal norms and heighten them to a fantastical or idealized degree — the reason being that films, like advertisements, depend upon a "perfect" image in order to be marketable. Thus, gender in Disney films may be said to be "perfectly" imperfect. These films have, over time, presented "perfect" imperfections with respect to female gender models, often blurring the line between generational female gender norms and harmful generational stereotypes.

In fact, several strong female leads appear in Disney films beginning with 1989's The Little Mermaid. However, as that film and subsequent films show, the gender role depicted was still highly idealized and stereotypically geared toward the "male fantasy," even as the female lead began to assert a growing sense of autonomy. Sexuality became not something to suppress, but something to utilize. Ariel was sexuality personified — a fantasy (a red-haired, big-bosomed mermaid who turns human), a rebel (she disobeys her father, rejecting masculine restraint), and yet still traditional (she runs from one male, her father, into the arms of another — the charming, handsome Prince Eric). There is an obvious mixture of intentions at work in the gender role filled by Ariel. She is at once meant to attract with features that are even more idealized than Beauty's of some thirty years earlier. This quality of Ariel suggests that despite the Women's Movement led by figures like Friedan, an opposing current still catered to the male gaze, and Disney — like a successful advertising agency — gave the male viewer what he could be expected to want. The problem is that for young girls who flocked to the film, this presented an unreal role model: the "sexy" Ariel who, like Beauty, exists in the realm of the fantastical, the virtuous, and the chaste — these characters never engage in anything like sexual intimacy before marriage. The sense that Ariel is a liberated woman because she flees her home and embarks on an adventure outside familiar confines is in tension with the sense that she is still confined by "sex-kitten" stereotypes that reduce her to an object and encourage young girls to see themselves as objects of the male gaze.

That these narratives were being absorbed by little girls and transformed into their own fantasies has been thoroughly documented by researchers like Wohlwend (2009), who noted that when "girls played with Disney Princess dolls… they animated identities sedimented into toys and texts" — in other words, they reenacted the roles given them by Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast. However, that is the nature of children's play, and it is natural for them to mimic what they see. Films and television are not the only forces shaping young girls' consciousness.

Conclusion: Blurring the Line Between Norms and Stereotypes

Throughout the decades, Disney films have perpetuated stereotypes that have appealed to both sides of the socio-political gender debate. On the one hand, they have presented the myth of the pin-up model with a heart of gold, a love of the home, and a need for male heroism. Sleeping Beauty was the first of this sort. She disappeared during the Women's Movement but reappeared by the late 1980s — revamped, in a sense, with a new independent spirit (represented by Ariel, Jasmine, Merida, and others) and in some cases by a tomboyishness that completely broke the mold (as in Mulan). The complexity of the Disney heroine shows that the line between gender norms, expectations, and stereotypes has long been blurred by Disney, which has, in most cases, followed the dictates of advertising and produced female heroines designed to appeal to the mass audience.

References

England, D. E., Descartes, L., & Collier-Meek, M. (2011). Gender role portrayal and the Disney Princesses. Sex Roles, 64, 555–567.

Friedan, B. (2001). The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton.

Jones, E. M. (2000). Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control. South Bend, IL: St. Augustine Press.

Stover, C. (2013). Damsels and heroines: The conundrum of the post-feminist Disney Princess. LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University, 2(1), Art. 29.

Wohlwend, K. (2009). Damsels in discourse: Girls consuming and producing identity texts through Disney Princess play. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(1), 57–83.