Gender in Disney films

This topic has been covered a lot, by a lot of people, but I came across two good pieces this week that I wanted to post. First was this image (found here);



This image emphasizes the importance of women being pretty and reliance on men within Disney films, in some of the characters that little girls idolize most.

This film (found here) shows masculinity in disney films.



My favorite piece from it was this quote.

It's much more a question in creating a certain environment of images that we grow up in and become used to and after a while those images will begin to shape what we know and what we understand about the world... it's a slow accumulative affect and it's much more subtle.

I don't blame Disney for sexism by any means, but I think this quote is very true. These images become seen as normal and gendered practices that exist throughout the media become entrenched in our thinking as naturally gendered behaviours based on real biological differences, when in fact, many (if not all) of these differences are social constructs.

What concerns me most is when I watch television programming that is currently geared towards young children... the gender stereotyping on the Disney channel, which airs sitcom-like television programs for kids is way more blatant than in any of these movies, in my opinion.

Constructions of gendered differences in perceptions of colour

My brother sent me a link from a joke website that plays into a few stereotypes about men that I thought would be interesting to look at a bit closer. Here is the image

It is a poster from a paint store that reads "Notice Husbands choosing colours must have a written note from their wives"

I am assuming that readers have all seen the commercials or TV shows where men are depicted as not knowing how to coordinate colors, whether it be paint, home decor, or dressing themselves (especially when it comes to picking out ties to match their shirt). It is a way that men and women are constructed as different from each other. It also makes women look as though they are actually the boss in the home, as men cannot make a purchase without a written note from their wives, like a child needing permission to go on a class trip or something. See, we don't need feminism because women can decide what color goes on the wall. And if women are naturally better at seeing colors, then there must also be things that men are better at, like everything more important than picking out paint.

That link reminded me of these two charts showing gender differences in color. The first is a joke depicting what some people think about how men and women view colors.

Next is a more realistic look at how men and women actually view colors, according to one study conducted at xkcd (the article itself at is interesting too). They found that "men and women tended on average to call colors the same names."

There are still some differences between people who identified as male and those who identified as female in the study, but not nearly as many as the many jokes suggest. There was even at least one color that men said and women didn't, being salmon.

I should also point out that I would not have come up with aqua, hot pink, or probably even magenta... and I would have called one of the purples blue. I guess I shouldn't be picking paint colors or dressing myself.

Facebook and the regulation of women's bodies

I have seen a trend in facebook groups lately that is meant to show that curvy women are beautiful too, but what they actually do is shame skinny women. Instead of trying to spread the message that all body types are beautiful, they have titles like

"Real women have curves... not the body of a 12 year old boy" and "Curvy girls are better than skinny girls"

Both groups contain photos of "plus sized" models that I believe prove that curvy women can fit in to dominant standards of beauty (complete with airbrushing to make the curves look as Marilyn Monroe-esque as possible).

The profile picture for the second group is of Kim Kardashian in a bikini. With a waist measurement of 26 inches and weighing 117lbs (according to skinny vs curvy), she hardly fits into the plus sized model category, but yes, she does have curves. This presents an image that even fewer girls can hope to fit than before, as the rarity of her curves is a large part of what has made her famous.

Also, the bikini shots change nothing about the way women's bodies are objectified within the mass media. The message presented within these groups is no different than the one that I grew up with... women are supposed to have curves, but with a thin waist... unless you are a runway model. Growing up with a very small chest, I got this message loud and clear beginning in sixth grade.

Both groups are rife with hate-filled content about skinny women. How we all whine about being fat all the time, how we never eat, how we cannot fill out clothes. The thin women that I know eat normal healthy diets (and sometimes even tons of junk food), and believe me when I say that women don't like shopping in the children's section to find clothes that fit properly. It seems to me that they are taking stereotypes about a real disease (anorexia) and assuming that every skinny person must have it, which is no better than saying that all larger women eat tons of junk food- it just isn't true. What about the role that genetics or a person's metabolism plays in all of this?

I would just love to see similar groups, but where one type of body isn't placed as better than the rest, one that values the diversity in women's shapes and sizes, and where women's bodies were not being regulated or on display for (male) viewers to criticize. Maybe that seems too idealistic or too romantic for the real world, but would it be a bad thing to actually accept women's bodies without needing to starve or operate on them first?

Although men are increasingly objectified in the mass media, I have yet to find a facebook group with so many hateful comments describing just how men are supposed to look.

I wonder how many of the 1,407,000 and 132,000 people who have joined or "liked" these groups has ever read any of that content...

Eyelashes and moral regulation

Nicole gave me the box for this "Bad Gal" mascara, which came with a sample pack of make up that you get for shopping at a specific store.



What I want to know is whether "bad girls" have different eyelashes than "good girls." What makes one a "bad girl?" Long eyelashes is supposed to be alluring, so does being alluring and seductive make a woman bad? It plays into the Madonna/whore complex, in which there are only two types of women- good women and bad women.

Madonna (a biblical reference, not to be confused with the popstar) represents "good" "pure" and "well-behaved" women. These women do not have sexuality, and therefore, do not need alluring eyelashes. The "whore" is supposed to represent sexual women. What is most problematic is that within this dichotomy is that all women that do not follow the "good girl" rules end up being seen as bad, as is evidenced in the double standards imposed on women's behavior.

Like this product, a general theme throughout pop culture involves playing into this stereotype rather than trying to change expectations regulating women's behavior. As a result, women (and, increasingly, young girls) want to conform to standards of beauty and behavior that are imposed on them by this norm- for more on this, see the book "Female Chauvinist Pigs". As women's sexuality becomes less taboo, it is less stigmatizing to be a "bad girl" but it I don't like that the category still exists. A lot of TV shows and movies portray female characters as either "good," meaning asexual, motherly, or if they are sexually active, it is only within the bounds of a long-term monogamous relationship or "bad" women, meaning sexually active, deceptive, generally seducing poor men who can't help but fall for them.

Despite the name of this product, I think that long and thick eyelashes have become a beauty standard that women are expected to have regardless of their behavior within this dichotomy. Eyelashes that are "inadequate" by dominant standards are now considered a medical problem requiring prescription medication! At very least, needing medication to "fix" this "problem" seems to break away from the previously mentioned dichotomy, but it does so because there is money to be made by drug companies who want as large of a consumer base as possible (as do companies selling mascara). This medication also has side effects, such as the permanent darkening of the iris, which sounds a bit dangerous to me.. if you had blue or green eyes, they could turn brown, and if you had brown eyes, they could get darker. It entirely blurs the distinction between beauty aids and health care.

I wonder how many men have felt as though they needed a medication to thicken their eyelashes... or have purchased products which labelled them as "bad" because of a desire to conform to dominant standards of beauty.

Some Assembly Required...

Usually, in the context of this blog, I find negative images and criticize them because of an aspect that I find discriminatory in some way. Today, I thought I would post a positive image, and talk about why it is good instead of why it is bad.

I was out trying to price a new desk for my daughter (and of course that involves going to every new and used furniture store because I don't want to pay a dollar more than I have to) and I found this tag attached to some of the products at one of the stores...

Notice that it is a woman with a tool box next to the caption "this item requires assembly!" First, I think it is great that they don't go to the default male for such "manly" jobs as building furniture. And secondly, I think it is really great that they don't try to sell the woman as an object (yes, they often do that even with cartoons). She is still thin and whatnot, but she is not overly sexual- actually, at first I thought it was a man in the picture.

Although, I wonder if putting this type of tag on, where a woman is capable of building the furniture, serves to sell more products by making the build seem like a less daunting tasks to potential consumers... especially female ones..

Either way, I happen to like this picture, at least in comparison to images of women that are often present in advertising.

Quick note to Ryan Seacrest

It is not called babysitting when Mike is carrying his infant son in a newborn carrier, it is called parenting. Father's do not babysit their own children. It would never be called baby-sitting when it is a female contestant with children.

"Man Hungry"

According to the author, who was on Canada AM this morning, "mad hungry means they [men] are very hungry, so you have to feed them to make them happy, then you have to teach them how to feed themselves"

As we all know, men are very hungry (but women and girls aren't), and they are only happy when fed (but girls can be happy while starving, somehow). And you have to teach men to cook, because they obviously don't know how, however, it is assumed that girls will know how, naturally, as opposed to having to teach them.

I, for one, came from the womb knowing how to cook. Anyone that has ever tasted my cooking will understand how outrageous that statement is- i have set a pot of water on fire.