Meghan Leuschner

10/16/13
IDIS 205
Disney Sneaks Gender Roles Behind Musicals
Crowns, evil witch, damsel in distress, and prince charming to the rescue can almost be used as
an outline for every Disney princess movie. For the past 50 years, children have been growing up with
Disney movies. Thousands of little girls pick their favorite princess to be for Halloween every year and
pray that maybe one day it will be more than just a costumethey will become a princess too. It is
easier to look at the friendly cartoons and and overlook the stereotyped gender roles that sneak in and
hide behind the fun musical hits. To discover this relationship between gender roles and Disney movies,
an in depth study was conducted. Some key findings were discovered, such as: Disney movies
portrayed females and males very stereotypically, and most of the time used the extreme of those
stereotypes. Females are told they have to have a small waist, a big bust, and rely on a man to save
them. Men are told that they need big muscles, always act tough, be the hero, and to always be
confident. Not only does Disney tell what we should look like by our gender, but also how we should
interact with each other and what we should look for in a spouse. From the survey of six Calvin
College students and a movie analyzed, it was found that there is an association between negative
gender roles and Disney movies.
Methods that were chosen to conduct the research were to administer a survey and analyze an
online movie clip. Six random college students at Calvin Collegethree girls and three boyswere
asked to fill out a survey that contained six questions. The first question asked them to circle if they
were male or female. No name was included to eliminate any fear of being judged, as well as to
encourage truthful answers. The next question asked, In your opinion, how do Disney movies portray
girls? (character traits). The third question asked In your opinion, how do Disney movies portray
boys? (character traits). The fourth and fifth questions dove into lessons and subplots they have

learned from the movies. The last question asked, Who is your favorite Disney character? How do you
relate to that character? After all six surveys were filled out, common themes, patterns, and repeated
words were looked for and recorded. Next, the internet was searched for quality sources regarding
gender association and Disney. A movie clip that was shown in IDIS classDisney Cartoons Gender
Representationwas found and also analyzed by themes, patterns, and repeated words. Both sets of
data would be used to determine if there was a relationship between portrayed gender roles and Disney.
In the study conducted, many observations were made. Between the surveys and the movie clip,
some themes, patterns, and strong words came up repeatedly. For Disney princesses, the girls were
very beautiful, but to an unrealistic extent. The movie clip, Disney Cartoons Gender Representation,
talked about how the body of the girls had extremely small waists, large busts, and even act as a
seductress (Disney Cartoons Gender Representations). One male commented on his survey, It seems
to create an unrealistic unattainable image for young girls in our society.
Another theme found that, even if the princess was independent, she still either needed to be
saved or was waiting on her prince. In the movie clip, it states no matter how strong or independent
the female may seem, she still needs to be rescued by a male (Disney Cartoons Gender
Representations). Many of the survey participants wrote down that they thought the female was strong,
but maybe slightly different from society so they stand out. Yet, in every story each girl does at some
point need to be rescued by a handsome prince. The movie clip suggests that, to keep up with todays
modern society, Disney allows the women to be slightly powerful: Ariel runs away, Mulan goes to war,
and Belle educates herself with books. But in reality they all end up submitting to males, since that is
their role (Disney Cartoons Gender Representations).
For boys, the observations were similar in that the gender role being portrayed was very
stereotypical. Some of the words to describe the men were: jokesters, manly, heroes, confident,
handsome, and buff. Not many observations besides physical ones were recorded by the surveyors. The
movie clip went over these physical stereotypes, but also discussed how the man was always in control

and at the end the princess submitted to him (Disney Cartoons Gender Representations). In Ariel,
There isn't even a thought if the prince would go grow gills and live with her, because its the female's
role to submit to the man (Disney cartoons Gender representations). Even if the man is abusive, if he
is just persistent he will get the girl and live happily ever after. The movie clips comments on Belle's
relationship with the Beast: Overlook the abuse, overlook the violence. There is a tender prince
lurking within and it's [the female's] job to kiss that prince and bring it out, or to kiss that beast and
bring it out (Disney Cartoons Gender Representations).
These roles demonstrate the lessons that Disney is teaching children. One male survey
participant wrote, I've learned that you have to follow your dreams no matter what obstacles are in
your way. Then a another male participant wrote, Everything seems to turn out ok in the end. A
female participant wrote, I have learned not to wait for my prince, and to give anyone, whether a thief
or whatever, a chance. Another commented, My prince is out there somewhere! It seemed that the
males were more interested in what they believed and the result of going after their goals, while the
females tended to focus more on the relationship lessons that the movies taught them. These answers
demonstrate that the men are taught to focus on their goals, while women are taught to focus more on
relationships. When asked, Have any subplots (lessons not on the surface) surprised you after rewatching the movie as an adult? some of the participants answered they had not watched any Disney
movies lately, while others agreed that they understood more jokes, especially the sexual jokes. It
seems that Disney is feeding every audience this image of gender roles. Even if young children do not
understand the words given by these sexual jokes, they still understand the body language. The movie
clip, Disney Cartoons Gender Representations, discusses how young girls look for flashy images of
what a woman is supposed to look like (Disney Cartoons Gender Representations). When they see
seductive body language, even if they don't understand the jokes, they are still receiving that message.
The last question on the survey was, Who is your favorite Disney character? How do you
relate to that character? Female survey participants named off various princesses: Rapunzel,

Pocahontas, and Megara from Hercules. The women all thought these girls were the most adventurous
or had characteristics that they could relate tosuch as being sassy. The men chose Flynn Rider, Peter
Pan, and Woody. They did not go into detail of why they chose that character besides the idea of shoot
for what you believe in. Each obviously chose a character with the same sex as themselves because
each could better relate to that character due to having similar gender qualities.
One can learn a lot from this study. It seems that society pushes a particular image of women
even to a young age group. For girls, it's almost as if Disney tells us you can only get your prince if you
are unearthly skinny, submissive, and need to be saved. For men, it tells young boys that they need to
be big, buff, in control, and persistent in pursuing their princess to get the girl of their dreams. It also
tells them that the girl of their dreams fits that Disney princess ideal, and it tells the girls that their man
is made from the same Disney Prince mold. If Disney is sending the wrong message of what both
females and males should be like, and also what they should be looking for in each other, then this
leads to very unrealistic ideals in our spouse searching. Girls will always be looking for that prince and
boys always looking for that princess, when in reality the image that Disney portrays doesn't exist.
Girls and boys will then also be constantly trying to obtain those ideals for themselves, leading them to
a horrible self image.
So why, then, do we let our children still watch these films? Easythey are just harmless
cartoons that have fun musical hits. Nothing about Disney is supposed to convey real life, right? It is a
cartoon and has talking animals as well as groups of people bursting out in musical hits with their
emotions. This would be quite strange if any one of these things happened in a grocery store one day.
Even though this is true, is it still possible that the sub-lessons and ideas that the characters strive for
are passed to our children anyways? Can they understand that not all of the things in movies are
possible for them? When your two-year-old daughter tells you she wants to be a princess when she
grows up, all parents will tell them that they already are. In the end what matters is how the movies are
handled.

If little girls and little boys also had an example of what love is supposed to look like in their
parents lives, would that not overpower what society is telling them? Perhaps having conversations
with their parents after watching these movies could help children process the positive and negative
messages being portrayed. Maybe if fathers demonstrate healthy relationships and invest in their
daughters, little girls wont go looking for unrealistic love. Maybe if mothers show their sons their own
determination and goals in life, little boys wont seek after submissive and helpless women. Parents
also need to invest in their own marriage; it is the most influential example of real life and real gender
relationships that exists for a child. The unfortunate truth is not all that many parents are willing to take
the time with their kids, or the kids don't have positive role models for parents. Until young children
can find a more realistic place to explore gender roles, they will keep relying on things that aren't very
realistic, like Disney movies.
In class, gender association was defined as the process of learning the social expectations and
attitudes associated with one's sex or gender. Sociologists explain through gender association why
human males and females behave in different ways and learn different social roles (Bryant). Not just
in Disney do kids learn from society of how their gender is supposed to behave. In class we discussed
that they also learn to define their gender roles from parents, schools, education, peer interactions, and
mass media (Bryant). Disney is just one pop-culture phenomenon that children use at a young age to
watch and learn how the genders interact. Then, even if unconsciously, they take on parts of what they
learned as part of how they define their own gender.
In conclusion, Disney does have an effect on gender association, whether its how we are
supposed to look on the outside, how we interact with each other, or what we look for in the ideal
future spouse. It is the role of the parents to try to help guide children toward more realistic ideals than
those of Disney, because even if the movies seem like just fun cartoon musicals, they can send a much
deeper message of how kids should relate and behave within specific gender roles.

Works Cited
Disney Cartoons Gender Representations. Adapt. Murray Shaw. 2009. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW0CXsHWHeM>.

Bryant, Ashanti. Class Lecture. IDIS 205. Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI. 2 Oct 2013.