The Role Of Women In Disney Films

Another expect to contribute to the role of a female character is also the visual representation. “Disney artists sketched the flesh and blood on these folktale templates with contemporaneous popular images of feminine beauty and youth, their sources ranging from the silent screen to glassy pin-ups.” (Bell, 1995, 109) What Bell is saying here is that the character designs for the Princesses are based on the beauty expectations of women at the time. It could be said that this is so that they look more appealing and stylized with the curves and body proportions. And she also mentions that “Disney’s early teenaged heroines were constructed on the bodies of professional dancers.” (Bell, 1995, 110) Also to add to this, Paul Wells has also stated that “women in Disney animated features perpetuated (and still …show more content…
It can almost seem like there is this negative message being sent out to young girls that you must only look this certain way, while male character are given variety in their body and face. “It’s ultimately not the lack of different faces that’s troubling, it’s the fact that this trend is so clearly applied to one gender and not the other, especially when one factors in the limiting beauty standards already imposed on women.” (Seide, 2015) There is also the controversy behind the character Merida when Disney had redesigned her. The Guardian film writer Ben Child talks about this and highlights the main problem behind this. “She now appears slimmer, older and somewhat sexualised, in comparison to the teenage tomboy from last year’s Oscar-winning animation.” (Child, 2013) This really does highlight the main issue that society has with limiting the beauty standards for women, and emphasises the negative message to young girls that in order to be pretty you must only look a certain way, which can easily be damaging to most that don’t necessarily fall under the ‘typical’ beauty