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Gender Roles In Disney Princess Movies

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Until August 18, 1920, women were restricted rights. Throughout history, gender roles were set as women were ineligible to be educated and get paying jobs, leaving them to stay at home to cook and clean. August 18, 1920 was the day it changed for woman. The 19th amendment of the United States constitution was ratified to give women their own suffrage. After this day, women gained more equality, access to education, jobs in the workforce, and a change in domestic role. Although there was still a general prejudice against women, they had a greater chance of living a diverse life. Because of the gain in rights granted to women, it is expected society can move forward from the limitations women had and demonstrate pride. Although this may seem to be the norm, the women in the Disney princess movies take away from women's rights and move a step backwards. Shortly after women start to seek light at the end of the tunnel, Cinderella was released in 1950, which took away from the success for women. Cinderella portrays the old lifestyle of women as she not only cleans all day but depends on a prince to …show more content…

Tiana, the first African American princess, works two jobs and shows little concern of finding a husband. She does not dress in sumptuous dresses and jewels but instead wears plain clothes. Merida also does not want a husband and realizes that her happiness does not depend on a man but her independence. She is a impetuous, strong, and adventurous girl who serves as a good mentor for young girls. Lastly, princesses Elsa and Anna get through the hardships of losing both parents and a failed engagement by relying on each other rather than a man. Disney princesses started off to demonstrate poor morals for young girls, but the recent princesses do a better job of displaying that women are strong and independent and do not need to rely on

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Women were gaining more recognition and were being seen as more than just equals to criminals. In 1927, the legal definition of “persons” was opposed by a group of women called the Famous Five. In 1929, the British privy council eventually ruled that women were “persons”(121). Women were finally getting recognized as people and we're getting closer to being seen as equals to men. Furthermore, women’s rights were improving and made the lives of several women better.

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Women have always wanted equal rights and fought to gain equality. On August 1920 the 19th amendment was ratified into the Constitution. The 19th amendment stated that no one will be denied the right to vote based on your sex. This changed everything for the women in the US. Women everywhere started to work more and started to rely less on men.

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From its onset with its first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Disney has grown to become a worldwide phenomenon today. But over the years, various parent groups, scholars and film critics have accused Disney for creating shallow, stereotypical princesses whose ultimate aim was to find her 'prince charming ' and live happily ever after. In her article, “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” in the New York Times, Peggy Orenstein expresses her concern over the effect of princess figures like Cinderella on young girls ' perceptions of themselves and how they should behave (“What’s Wrong With Cinderella?”).

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In the 1920s women succeeded well but not without some struggles. Along the way with 19th amendment being so hard for them gaining the right to vote, women’s roles seeing that there not good enough for other than housework and the fashion or style movement with being able not to express yourself the way you should. The 19th Amendment better known as the women’s suffrage era 1920 of the united states

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Disney princesses have usually been shown through a traditional fairy tale concept, the damsel-in-distress in need of help and to be back but in line. These films represent the ideologies of gender which originated from the play Macbeth. However Frozen both challenges and reinforces the traits of a typical

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Women's Rights In the year of 1920 women were finally given the right to vote for office. Women's rights have had a great absence in U.S. history for as long as 1920. In The Handmaid's Tale and in history, women were never given any rights or right to vote. In the book there are many examples of what history once looked like for women and how powerless they really were. By the women not having any say or opinion it made them way more powerless then the men in society.

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From the 1800’s to the 20th century, women had gained a lot more independence than they had before. In the year 1777 when voting started to become more relevant, women were decided not to be allowed to be apart of voting, unlike now in the 21st century where women are allowed to vote. From the beginning of the 18th century, women were discriminated against until the middle of the 18th century. After the mid-1750’s, women started to gain more ground on rights and things that they were more freely allowed to do. Women slowly started to gain more ground on things to do such as being guaranteed equal pay starting from the year 1872 to current present time.

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In today's society, the issue of gender roles has always been divisive and is still a source of contention for many. Remarks made about women in the media and even in person have always presented difficulties for women. Isabelle Gill writes about the prejudice that women still experience today and how it affects how princesses are perceived. Her article's goal was to highlight the distinctions between men and women in Disney tales. Isabelle talks about how princesses in movies receive unfair criticism and why they should be given more credit.

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Tiana’s mother is a hard working seamstress, instead of playing the traditional wife’s role of staying at home, cooking and cleaning. Her father is the one who cooks for the family and teaches Tiana how to. Her mother makes the main source of income for the family, while it is implied that her father works several different jobs occasionally. In previous Disney movies, “Sleeping Beauty” for example, the father was the one who ran the kingdom while the woman appeared to just be there for show. Charlotte, Tiana’s best friend, is shown as a young girl with the more “traditional” views of being a female.

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The Little Mermaid which was produced in 1989, was the first Disney movie to challenge the traditional gender roles, for the fact that Ariel wanted to explore, and was more independent and assertive in her desires than the earlier princesses of the 1930’s and 50s films. Also the prince in The Little Mermaid went against traditional gender roles as well, simply because he was more affectionate and loving than his prince counterparts in other Disney films. “Both the male and female roles have changed over time, but overall the male characters evinced less change then the female characters and were more androgynous throughout.” (Descartes & England, pg.566). Disney movies have been for a long time a strong media target for children, and can serve as a way to address stereotypical gender roles (Leaper, 2000).

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There is nothing inherently wrong with the old princesses, it’s just that they lack the individualism that makes up the princesses today. As one can see in the princesses’ goals, Cinderella marries a prince to escape her torment, while Elsa ultimately regains the love of herself and her sister. The older one teaches the audience that one should not have to live in awful conditions, encouraging getting away from the problem. However, while that is a plausible solution, often times in life you have to face those problems instead of running away from them. The newer one teaches just that, when Elsa is forced to put aside her own conflict to ultimately save her sister and herself.

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Cinderella is also portrayed as a young woman suffering silently, without taking any action and waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her from her horrible life. This is as much a fairy tale convention as it is a gender expectation for women to be beautiful and silent. However, this wasn’t as much as a gender expectation in the 1800s as it is today. Cinderella’s father does not appear to be home as much as the stepmother, and this illustrates the type of work and expectations for women’s and men’s jobs in the 1800s. The father is probably commuting to work, and this is evident through the fact that he never sees the cruelty experienced by Cinderella.

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Before she is able to meet with the Matchmaker, she must dress up and apply makeup on herself to make herself look beautiful and strong-willed. Critic, Nandini Maity, states in her article, Damsels in Distress: A Textual Analysis of Gender roles in Disney Princess Films, that Disney uses the princesses or heroines in each princess movie to demonstrate how women should act, dignified and beautiful. By doing so, it portrays how Disney has a set purpose to make society understand that women should always act this way in society, that they should be helped out by men. While Mulan is being washed and dressed, the women helping her “sing to Mulan a song called Honour us all, a song that imposes the traditional roles onto Mulan. They say that women should have tiny waists, be calm, and obedient.

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Q: Disney has effectively altered its representations to empower women Women have been portrayed as inferior to men, with Disney undermining their agency and power since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). The stereotype of a beautiful women made to become a domestic servant is shown during the golden era of Disney which lasted from 1937 to 1959, containing movies such as Cinderella (1950), and Snow White, both of which demonstrate a white female lead whose only aspiration is to find true love. Following Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the renaissance era of Disney brought forward multiple films such as Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas (1995) and Mulan (1998) from 1989 to 1998. These films present racially diverse female leads who don’t aspire

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We all know that women didn 't have as many rights as men, and they still don 't. Women can now do more than they used to, but they still aren 't equal with men. They have had to fight for so many things like the right to vote and to be equal to men. The 19th amendment, the one that gave women the right to vote, brought us a big step closer. The Equal Rights Movement also gave us the chance to have as many rights as men. Women have always stayed home, cleaned the house, and didn 't even get an education.

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