Disney Movies and Notions on Women

The female has always been submissive, the "weaker" one and the "rescued" one. This kind of mindset was forced to us as early as two years old. The culprit: those overly commercialized Disney movies.

Two years old. During this age, we were introduced to the idea of fairy tales. We built our basic sense of justice, fairness, goodness and conscience from fairy tales. Or local folklore. Fairy tales have been part of our lives. We will always cherish our favorite fairy tales and can tell them and retell them with a smile. Anyway, let's take a closer look at the following fairy tales. The following observations consistently show the woman as a visual feast, and the rescued sex.

Cinderella
She was abused by her stepmother and stepsisters BECAUSE HER DAD WASN'T THERE. She was, by the way, rescued by her prince.

Snow White
She had male dwarves to help her keep the house. She was also rescued by her prince. Duh.

Sleeping Beauty
She slept for a hundred years until her prince kissed her awake. Notice that she did not age while she was asleep. What if she aged and the “beauty” faded? Would the prince still love her?

Beauty and the Beast
In this case, the woman kind of rescued the prince from being a beast forever. However, I actually believe that she was only used by the prince so he can get his homo sapien-ness back. The Disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast showed the furniture friends of the prince/beast talking about Beauty and how she could break the spell. These furniture friends even arranged the whole falling-in-love shebang just so the spell would be broken. Sure, it talked about love and living happily ever after. But only after the woman was USED. Love was just the by-product.
It's just the same pattern. Woman starts to feel very wretched, as all protagonists start out, and then men come to rescue them. The handsome princes come and they live “happily ever after”.
Another Disney movie pattern is the recurrence of overly celebrated beauty. All the protagonists are always beautiful, or overly pleasing to the eyes. It creates a mindset that only the beautiful women have a favorable place in this world and thus, they are the “protagonists”. Remember that Cinderella and Snow White were for their beauty, Belle was already tagged as “Beauty”. Even Mulan and Pocahontas were implicitly exposed as beautiful women because they have men fighting over them. This empowers the notion that women will always be “prizes” to win or damsels to rescue. Either way, the woman loses social value.

Last of the losing streak for women also includes women being portrayed as the villains in most of the Disney movies. It’s weaving a cloth of hatred for women among women. This is also reflected in a lot of chick flicks, which feature women who hate other women and try to bring each other down. This notion came from most Disney movie portrayals, where most of the villains are jealous mothers or ugly wart-filled witches.

Love or hate Disney, tell me what you think—live_out_loud@ymail.com.