Visual Communications

Gender stereotypes in cartoons

By Begimai Sataeva JMC -111

In the Disney films, representation of gender roles, is unconcealed.

In this pictures girls performing tasks such as cleaning, baking, or simply sitting in “ladylike” manner. The last way is portrayed princess. These are the activities that young girls watching the films are admiring.

This make a significant affect on the young viewers gender expectations.

Gender representations

The same situation with the male representation for the young viewers.

In Disney pictures the young man are presented as muscular, strong and tough.

This stereotypical male alter gender expectations.

Male representation

Body stereotypes

Full body shots of the princesses.These shed being shown to shed some light on the skewed body proportions that are represented to viewers. Microscopic waist Medium or large chest Long legs and hair Tiny feet.In fact the proportions are not dissimilar to the Barbie.

Some princesses shows maturity in their clothing and movements as well. Tiny tops, swinging of hips.On the other hand they demonstrated nice elegant style and good manners.

Over sexualization. Clothing

Disney Cartoons is the representing of patriarchy. Patriarchy is the system of society in which the father is head of family. Essentially a male dominated existence. Females should be obedient and calmness.Man’s duty to bear arms, woman’s duty to bear sons.

PATRIARCHY

Role of fathers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag_RXlSOi8E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py5nWHVdZWs

The stereotype that stepmothers are wicked has existed for thousands of years, popularized by “Cinderella,” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” fairy tales collected by the Grimm brothers. These folktales serve a greater function than merely entertain children; they reinforce the moral lessons that a society wants its members to learn. Unfortunately, the message that stepmothers are “the bad guys” still persists in the 21st century, despite the fact that there are approximately 15 million stepmothers with stepchildren under the age of 18 in the U.S. When adult children are included in these estimates, there may be as many as 36 million stepmothers. How can so many women be wicked?

Evil stepmothers, if any mothers

Commonly each of the images seemed to have either fireworks, sparkles, or other means of making the characters in the center appear enveloped by the moment. This seems to be an artistic way of triggering emotions and making the scene appear magical and fairytale worthy. This is done by connecting parts of nature to the naturalness of romantic love, but hetero-romantic love specifically.

Fairytale, magic love.

It is certainly easy to see that expectations of gender roles are transparently present throughout the Disney princess films.Considering that some progress has been made when comparing the early films to the recent, hopefully with time Disney films can continue to progress in their elimination of excessive gender role representations.

And they all lived happily ever after…