Disney female representation

A look at the past negative representation of females in the Disney Studios

The 2012 Disney Pixar film 'Brave' starred a messy haired, adventurous young girl Merida. With strength, wit and refusal to adhere to society’s ideal ‘pretty princess’, she was a character that any young girl should be happy to aspire to. The original Merida toy embodied this with chubby rosy cheeks and a youthful round face; but Disney sought to transform her to a sexier, svelte body shape as shown in figure one. This sparked petitions forcing Disney to return to the original. The creator of Merida, Brenda Chapman agreed that we should be providing young girls with “a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model; something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance".

The 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Disney portrays the young woman as the epitome of purity, domesticated for the seven men in the house; singing and dreaming of a prince. She’s assigned no signs of strength, ambition or even a raw personality. The idea of being seen and not heard is depicted through her delicate spins and gasps and coy laughs of delight. But the truth is that anyone in the late 1930s would have presented a young woman in the same way so it is unfitting to compare these old films to today's standards. It doesn't mean we can't expect more of the up and coming films though.

It has been said that Disney’s construct of gender is “androcentric and dichotomies, with women and nature objectified for the benefit of the male subject”. This shows true in that Disney’s designs only positively portray one body type, which is commonly attractive to men- narrow waists, unrealistically long legs, slim limbs but ample breast and delicate facial features. In the films, male hands are often three to four times larger than the women’s when realistically the male wrist is on average about 15% larger in circumference.