Femininity in Mulan This paper wants to discuss the difference between female and femininity and how to apply the last one to the Disney character Mulan. Mulan is a film released in 1998, directed by Barry Cook and Tony Brancroft and produced by Pam Coats. Set in the Han Dynasty, it tells the story of Fa Mulan, a girl who enlists herself in the army instead of her elderly father and saves China from the invasion of the Huns. Being female does not implies being feminine. “Femaleness” has to do with genre. If you posses female attributes, you are female. But femininity is the set of attributes, physical appearance, behavior and roles culturally associated with women. Those attributes and behaviours are defined by the surrounding culture, and thus, they can change from place to place and during the years. For example, in nowadays western culture, pink colour is associated with girls and blue with boys, but before the 1900s, it was the other way around. Knowing that, the first question we should ask is the following: is Mulan female? Of course she is. She has a female body, female characteristics and female attributes. At first …show more content…
She proves that women should not be only valued by their capacity to be feminine, but by the things they can