Do You Follow The Disney Standards?

towards the girly girls. This escalated into a long period of time in which girly girls were hated in the media and made fun of. Many teenage girls felt like their duty was to stray away as much as possible from this stereotype, given that the male love interest in movies never ends up with the mean popular girl. Regina George never got Aaron back, instead was hit by a bus; Sharpay didn’t end up with Troy; Heather Chandler was murdered. The upside of this new wave was that hope was restored to the lives of girls all over the world who felt like they didn’t fit into societies because of their differences. Katniss Everdeen came in as a beloved female protagonist, admired and pursued by both Gale and Peeta despite her masculine characteristics, similarly to Bella Swan, caught between the love of the mysterious vampire and feisty werewolf. Katniss has trouble expressing emotions and has a powerful personality and sense of justice, while Bella dislikes shopping, doesn’t pay attention to her appearance and is a shy introvert. All these characteristics being accepted and glamourized by the media industry had a positive effect on the self-confidence of girls who stopped trying to be what society expected out of them and started embracing themselves as they were. But of course, like everything with social media involvement, it escalated into something just as bad.

Currently, the media has started to shame the ‘not like other girls’ girls, labelling them as ‘pick me girls’. This started as a way to call out the ignorant behaviour of girls that were putting others down in their attempt of appearing excessively unique and special: the internet was flooding with pictures making comparisons of ‘other girls’ versus ‘me’, in which liking food and hating pink were considered personality traits.

However, the term ‘pick me girl’' gradually became used widely enough to be harmful to the girls who were initially excluded by societal expectations. Although the original intent was to raise awareness about the negative behaviour of people dragging down the concept of the girly girl and turning it into something basic with bad connotations, it actually ended up completing the vicious cycle of making less feminine girls feel bad about themselves.

The sad truth of movies is there is always going to be a character that fulfills a harmful stereotype, for humor, or even just because of lazy writing. In the case of female characters, there will always be something to shame them for: a blonde girl can’t be smart because men’s attention is more concerned with her body, an edgy girl who dyes her hair can’t stand up for her friends because then she's a “feminazi” who hates all the male characters, and the second two girls are on screen together they immediately despise each other, because naturally they both like the same guy, and are willing to throw hands over him.

The fact is that girls will be put down for being tomboys, will be put down for being girly, and will be put down for doing just about anything in-between. There is rarely a film about women that hasn't been accused of being made for social justice warriors, even when it's just about celebrating women (consider: Ghostbusters 2016, Birds of Prey, Ocean’s Eight, etc). The only way we can remind ourselves that these stereotypes are nothing more than stereotypes is awareness.

Awareness of what we are watching, and awareness of diversity. People are never going to be like your initial assumptions of them, despite what you've seen on TV. The next time you catch yourself judging someone because they fit into a stereotype, consider where that stereotype came from in the first place.

CULTURE

ILINCA & BRIONY - WRITERS VEDANGINI, RAFAEL & DANIEL - EDITORS

My first exposure to the medium of animated storytelling was classic Disney and their many tales, back when I was still so frightened of the villain I would curl up to hide from them. Still, I was so in love with their narratives that I’d have my grandma read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to me over and over again with a voice so gentle that drew me into the world of this princess and the seven dwarves she meets along the way. But I also remember that to the mind of my 3 year old self, the barrier between what was real and what was just imagination was often blurred. The charm of fairytales is their whimsical feel, absent of the jarring taste of reality, but this is also what makes it so difficult to understand that these are stories and will always remain just words on paper and nothing more.

I imagine that adults are aware of how much of an impact these movies have on children with their young, impressionable minds processing everything around them. So, is there a reason for the way these fairytales usually play out? And how much of an impact did they have on us as a society, given that they must have been responsible for moulding our ideologies to some extent?

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” There’s quite a high chance that young girls will almost instinctively respond, “I wanna become a princess.” There’s something about the way they look, their pretty dresses, pure hearts, angelic voices, long hair and slim waists, that makes us want to love them, definitely, but also worship them. It’s almost like they’re too perfect. Without factoring their appearances too much, they still exist at an unattainable level, because they were never meant to be constructed as a human. And with little girls aspiring to be them, setting their goals somewhere where they are unlikely to reach and labelling everything else as bad, these oh-soperfect princesses seem to cause more harm than good.

So doesn’t this have an effect on children’s confidence? It convinces us that we are not good enough until we behave like princesses. Looking flawless every second of the day and night. Having only positive thoughts. Casting no judgement in our midst towards anyone, only fighting evil with more kindness, no display of anger, jealousy or frustration. So put together at all times. It’s clearly what we all want for ourselves. I remember I used to be obsessed with the idea of being unrealistically kind, just like Snow White, which was good to some extent, until it led to me repressing stronger emotions.

The fact remains that the most venerated princesses, the ones perceived as the most beautiful as in fitting the societal standards, are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel and Belle: chronologically the first five princesses to appear, starting as early as 1937. Are they models we should set as a standard for ourselves, considering their seemingly flawless facade? What reinforces the struggle to imitate the princesses is the easiness with which they stumble upon “true love” and “love at first sight”, principal themes in most Disney movies. While we idolize the relationships between the princes and princesses, the fact is that this ‘true love’ is neither true nor deep. Prince Phillip supposedly “falls in love” with Aurora after watching her dance in the forest for a few seconds. Ariel is head over heels for a handsome prince she rescued from a ship. In real life, we would call this falling in love with the idea of someone, which is a very damaging way to start out a relationship, unlikely to last.

In the early Disney movies, the princesses had little personality traits to call their own. Snow White being a housekeeper, but not particularly strong willed nor intelligent. Aurora being asleep for a hundred years, yet not particularly grieving over her long dead relatives. Even classic Cinderella, who the prince falls in love with at first sight, despite the two sharing only one dance together. The lack of characterization for these girls make them two dimensional, and hard to relate to.

Disney later started to create more diverse personalities in the heroines: with Mulan being strong-willed and courageous, then Rapunzel who’s adventurous yet chaotic and Ariel who's reckless and fun. The funny thing is, these are the traits that I love in princesses the most. Mulan was introduced among the princesses in 1998, when her movie came out, and was a big step forward in attempting to break the impenetrable image that the original princesses had created, their enforcing of only one proper way of being. She was followed by strong characters such as Merida or Moana in recent years, normalizing ‘flaws’, such as Merida’s gruffness, or Moana’s rebelliousness and mistakes.

The way Disney princesses are presented is often what children correlate beauty to, and in turn, people who look like Disney princesses are seen as beautiful. This extends to personality as well. Disney's expansion of personality types, and inclusion of different types of people, enables children to see themselves as beautiful, and this carries on into adult life. The influence that the old disney princess had on the perceptions of beauty cannot be erased easily, but with more inclusion and diversity, it certainly can be improved.

Another one of the most prominent debates ongoing about inclusivity in modern fairytales, especially in todays ‘politically correct’ modern climate, is that most of the time, diverse representation isn’t seen as valued or present in mainstream fairy tale movies or books.

Racial representation has long been the subject of controversy when it comes to Disney’s fairy tales; of the 12 ‘official’ Disney princesses, 8 of them are white. And when Disney attempts this representation, more often than not is the effort extremely lacklustre. In the Princess and the Frog, (the first movie featuring an African American Disney Princess) Tiana’s time on screen was roughly 40 minutes, out of which she spent only 16 - 17 minutes as a human and was reduced to a frog for the rest of it.