Revisiting Disney: If Disney Princesses Could Give Their Younger Selves Advice

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

If Disney Princesses Could Give Their Younger Selves Advice

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alivelez/these-grown-up-disney-princesses-have-some-solid-life-advice#.siWYwx9vP

This is a pretty great idea. The princesses do make mistakes and do have insecurities and it's really inspiring to see them give their earlier/younger selves advice on life that would've made their lives even better in the movie. Recently, I've started wishing I could've done the same. I was a really nervous/subdued middle-schooler and it fed into my high school years. Rather that being my real, quirky self I tried to conform to the interests of people I never really meshed with. I saw this quote on Pinterest that said "Die with memories not with wishes" and that is basically my mantra since getting to college: I want to be myself and experience everything so that I don't ever have the regret of never having tried something. If I regret doing something, I can move on. If I never gave something a chance, all I'll do is languish. Each person faces these kinds of regrets, of not doing something or of not being someone, and each of the princesses did, too. This'd be a nice addition to the princess-vien of Disney if it were targeted to middle-schoolers. A nice, positive, self-love type message to help them get through some of the toughest years of their young lives.

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Disney's as a Boys' Toy Too

I rarely remember that little boys, as well as little girls, watch Disney movies and look up to some of the characters. In many of the earlier films, the men/princes aren't really a significant piece of the story, but more recently males are playing a greater and greater role in Disney and Pixar movies. Males like Chang, Sebastian, and Wasabi serve as role models for young boys just as the princesses do for little girls. Because of this, it's just as important that little boys of all appearances and personality types appear in animated films. The Feminist community has been more outspoken about female representation than the male community, perhaps because women tended to be placed in a subservient position to the men of the stories in earlier Disney movies. However, if you try to closely examine the character of the men or male characters in the early Disney movies, they tend to just be place holders that allow the princess to achieve their happily ever after. In later films they are hyper masculine and tough, even sometimes emotionless, if they want to be attractive to the females in the story. The non-human characters like Sebastion, Timone, and the like can be more sensitive because they aren't the male protagonist trying to win the girl and save the world. If we're going to work to build up strong, independent girls, we should work equally hard to help develop sensitive, thoughtful boys. This begins with providing more complex characters for them to look up to and more representation in the male characters in Disney films.

Identity and Disney

Disney Characters' Race Breakdown

Although Disney is often criticized for its lack of diversity in the characters in its animated and live action films, the statistics are fairly close to those of the US census. Although in Disney, about 75% of the characters are White, and so minorities are somewhat underrepresented, the statistics are fairly close to the true proportions. In America, about 62% of the population identifies as White, while 17% of the population is Hispanic, 13.2% is Black, 5% is Asian, and 3.8% of the population identify as multiracial, Native American, or Native Hawaiian. While more diversity would be nice, especially regarding Latinos considering they are 17% of the US population and only one single Disney character is identified as Latino, the statistic is less drastic that I would have anticipated.