PARALLEL INK - ESSAYS
Essays expository excellence Fairy Tales and Gender Stereotypes Emma Breber Everyone’s seen Disney’s fairytale movies - “Sleeping Beauty” and “Ariel” are recognizable faces and fun movies - however, how is watching these movies affecting how you see the world and the people who inhabit it? All those fairytales have the same structure: the poor, weak woman gets whisked off her feet by a strong, handsome man. This perfect man rescues her at various points throughout the movie and she is basically only there to be a pretty face and to give him something to do. How do these movies, watched from eager, impressionable eyes at four or five years old, change how we view women and men and their differences? We’re beginning to live in a much more tolerant world, yet we still consider women as the weaker sex if we compare the two. Women are supposed to be tender and loving and men are supposed to be the ones who are strong and powerful. That may be how it works in the movies, however the real world isn’t like that. So why do we continue to believe that men are stronger then women? Why do we continue to prioritize what gender people are in things like job applications? Why do we continue to care after it’s been proven time and time again that women can be just as proficient as men? This leads us into talking about how the world works with these ideas about the differences between female and male. If men are considered better than women, how does that affect jobs? If you believe that a man can do a job better than a woman can, and you have to choose between a man and a woman for an important position, how are you going to choose? The man of course, if you think he can do the job better you’re obviously going to pick him. But what if that’s not true, what if the woman would have been much better in the job but you didn’t pick her because of an incorrect prejudice? What if because you didn’t give her the job, her family lost their house? And now she and her children are living on the street? That doesn’t seem very socially just. Especially if you would have given her the job had she been male. Now she’s in a horrible situation because you couldn’t look past something she can’t even change. This type of social prejudice can be used in all types of situations. And that’s not to say it can’t go both ways. If you’re looking for a babysitter for you kids, you’re probably going to look for a woman first, right? That’s the time where a man looking for a childcare job is in trouble. So, pretty much, these gender stereotypes that we’ve created and have been spurred on by popular culture (not just Disney movies or the Twilight books, there are so many types of media that play in the stereotypes) hurt everyone involved, and we need to dispose of them. Overall, I think that we first need to notice this prejudice in ourselves. Once we are aware of it we can start trying to get beyond it. We also can’t let this idea of women and men being so different affect our everyday lives. The fact that women sometimes won’t be chosen for a job based solely on the fact that they are women and that they get paid less then man in the same exact jobs, has to stop. We need to stop making these fairytales a reality. We accept that dragons and magic aren’t real, why can’t we accept that the women and men in those movies aren’t real as well? The idea of the prince and the damsel in distress, it’s not something that happens to the majority of women. It’s not like we, as students, sit at our desks, taking notes, and whenever we don’t understand something we scream for the guy sitting next to us and cannot calm down until he has comforted us and explained it all. We laugh at that image in our minds, how crazy would a girl like that have to be, right? Then why are we trying to make that a reality with these ideas? Women and men are being treated differently, the blame of which can be partly shouldered by fairytales, and it needs to stop. Bio: My name is Emma Breber. I live in Bangkok Thailand. I was born on October 31, 1999 therefore I am 12. I LOVE reading and writing. I am passionate about them both and also love music!
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