Introduction: Growing up watching Disney movies and shows, and stumbling upon this journal article was a very intriguing event for me. I have never realized how Disney princesses and princes have a great effect on gender roles until after I read this article. The research paper that I will be discussing in this paper is “Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses.” It was publish on February 10, 2011, and the authors were Dawn Elizabeth England, Lara Descartes, and Melissa A. Collier-Meek. The authors focus on nine Disney movies starting from 1937 to 2009, and how the main female and male characters from those Disney movies affect the gender roles deception. Methods: The authors used a coded content analysis technique …show more content…
The authors have divided the Disney movies based on early, middle, and latest showing years. The early Disney movies are from the years 1937 to 1959. The mid-Disney movies are from the years 1989 to 1998. The latest Disney movie was on 2009. Throughout the films, they collected quantitative information about the main female and male characters’ behavior, and how their behaviors are portrayed and connected to their gender roles. The authors coded the prince and princess separately, and they have specific regulations for coding. One code will be added every time the prince and/or the princess a possess specific characteristics or show any masculine and/or feminine characteristics in their behavior. In addition to their …show more content…
The first hypothesis was the main female and male character gender role portrayal would differ. It did differ significantly based on their feminine and masculine characteristics. The second hypothesis was the rescuing actions variation based on their genders. The main female characters were rescued more than the main male characters while they both had the same numbers of rescues. The third hypothesis was the changes of their gender roles depicted based on their characteristics and resolutions. As stated in my previous paragraph, the princesses have increased their masculine characteristics and decreased their feminine characteristics. The princes did not change that much, however. They were fifty-one percent masculine in the early movies, fifty-four in the middle movies, but was more feminine in the latest movie by sixty-eight percent (England et al., 2011). Over the years, Disney had improved their gender roles portrayal by decreasing their gender-based stereotyping. In the early movies, the prince was rarely shown in the movie yet they were portrayed as the very strong and masculine type. Whereas the princesses were shown throughout the film and were portrayed as the weak and vulnerable characters. Then, in the middle movies, the princesses started having more masculine characteristics (i.e., Mulan and Pocahontas) and the princes started showing more in the film (i.e.,