Some Sort of Fairy Tale...

OK, let’s play a quick game of word association. I’ll “say” a word, and then you say out loud the first thing that comes to your head. Ready?

Television! [Insert your word here.]
Girl! [Insert your word here.]
Children’s Movie! [Insert your word here].

Now, you’re probably wondering why you just played that game, right? Well, if your brain works like mine, then we probably came up with some similar responses. Here are mine:

Television! [Shows]
Girl! [Boy]
Children’s Movie! [Disney]

Four recent, ground-breaking studies conducted by Dr. Stacy Smith (University of Southern California) and a team of student researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication found that there is a major problem with children’s programming (i.e. film and television). Even though females are half (actually slightly more than half (51%), according to the 2006 U.S. Census) of the world’s population, they are highly under represented on the small and silver screens.

[Click here to see a breakdown of the studies.]

As if that weren’t enough, the study also shows that females are characterized as being either hyper-sexual (Britney Spears a là “Slave for You”) or traditional (Stepford Wives)—neither of which is particularly healthy for young female viewers.

Joining with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, Dr. Smith presented her team’s findings at the 2008 Conference on Children and Gender in Film and Television, hosted by USC. [To see pictures from the event, click here.]

Examining the G, PG, PG-13, and R rated movies of the last 16 years, Dr. Smith and her Annenberg team examined 12 different leading ladies in 13 different G-rated, animated and live-action films (most of them produced by Disney).

Smith and her coding crew “assessed the protagonists’ aspirations, romantic inclinations, and appearance norms within the context of the plot” (p. 16, GDIGM conference brochure).

Are you curious about how these films were coded to reveal such detailed information? Well, Dr. Smith and Marc Choueiti, one of the team leaders of the Annenberg coding team for this study, explain how the coding process works.

Now, even though Dr. Smith mentioned that the study found no particular culprit of these hyper-sexualized / traditional images, I can’t help but see the part that Disney films have played in my own formation of gender identity. I mean, as a child of the 80s I basically grew up singing along with Ariel, dreading midnight with Cinderella, and sleeping beautifully with Aurora.

These images of Disney princesses have been commodified and sold to girls of all ages. There’s a whole line of Disney-themed clothing. There are Facebook quizzes asking college students, “Which Disney Princess are you?” In fact, I just saw a commercial the other night for a Disney Princess doll whose crown lights up when you brush her hair. The slogan: “You never forget your first Disney Princess.”

So in my quest to get to the bottom of this Disney Princess takeover, I came across the “official” website of the Disney Princesses. Yes, they even have their own website.

By clicking on the images below, you can catch a glimpse into the “About Me” sections of some of the princess’s web pages featured on the website (and a quick commentary of my own).

**If you want to know what these princesses are singing about, click here**

After perusing this website, there is no doubt in my mind that Dr. Smith and her students hit the nail on the head with their study. As long as Disney’s female characters sing songs like “Some Day My Prince Will Come” and are praised mainly for their beauty, girls are going to grow up being deceived.