Disney’s New Gendered Directions

Sorry, guys – no time for a real post today.  Why don’t you tell me what you think about the following posts from Ms. Magazine:

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Disney’s Male Execs To Stop Making Movies Starring Girls : Ms Magazine Blog by Margot Magowan

At first it seems like possible good news. Disney/ Pixar announces: no more fairy tales, code for princess movies. Great! No more damsels in distress who end the movie by landing a man.

Now we’re going to have a slew of new movies with cool girl heroes who bravely rescue boys from peril, exuding power and beauty by performing all kinds of risk-taking tasks and challenges. But, no.

First of all, the reason the fairy tale movies are stopping is because Disney/ Pixar executives have decided that little girls aren’t worth making movies for at all.

The Los Angeles Times reports the fairy tale movies “appealed to too narrow an audience: little girls. This prompted the studio to change the name of its Rapunzel movie to the gender-neutral ‘Tangled’ and shift the lens of its marketing to the film’s swashbuckling male costar, Flynn Rider.”

Can you imagine if Disney decided to shut down a genre because it only appealed to little boys? Or if they switched a movie title so it wouldn’t risk highlighting a male star?

Read on!

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Disney’s Gender Roles Remain Un-Tangled by Natalie Wilson

The good news is that Disney’s new animated feature Tangled is funny, fast-paced and visually stunning.

The bad news is that it re-hashes the same old story: As a woman, you can either be a princess awaiting her prince or an evil stepmother/witch; as a man, you get all the action (in many senses of the word). And beauty, of course, equals white, blonde, thin and young.

Keeping in mind Disney’s recent announcement that after Tangled they won’t be making any more princess films, one can see Tangled as a transitional movie, an indication of where Disney’s future is headed…

To this end, Disney brought in a new directorial team in 2008 to overhaul the planned Rapunzel and “wring the pink out of it,” as the Los Angeles Times aptly put it.

The resultant Tangled, with a non-heroine title, more action and a platoon of mega-muscular-man characters (in contrast to only two key females–Rapunzel and the evil Mother Gothel), bodes ill for Disney’s post-princess era.  While one blogger has called this a “gender neutral makeover,” it seems to me more of a masculinist makeover.

Read on!

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Strawberry Shortcake and Dora the Explorer Sexed Up

So I babysit a lot.  Which means I normally have to watch a lot of children’s television.  However, a fate worse than death is being forced to watch commercials during children’s shows.  It’s sensory overload: your eyes glaze over with colors abounding, really excited children, quick-moving toys.  And it’s all over in about 15 seconds, meaning you watch about twice as many children’s toy advertisements than normal commercials.  Don’t look up that fact.  I made it up.

But either way, I’ve always noticed that children’s commercials use noticeably older children than the age group at which the toy is marketed.  And I always assumed the reason was because older children equated Awesometown on the coolness Richter scale.  Who knew self-esteem issues started so young?

After reading this blog post on Marge’s Playboy cover which mentions the new sexualized Strawberry Shortcake doll and Dora the Explorer, I began doing some exploring of my own.  Could this be true?  Could Dora have traded in her awkward bowl-shaped do for layers and makeup?  Her map for a Cosmo?

Now a poster-child for the immigration debate, Dora the Explorer has inadvertently fostered pride among Latino children and familiarized English speakers with Latino culture while exploring with her monkey friend Boots.

Take a gander at the new Dora:

How much exploring can she do in ballet slippers?

How much exploring can she do in a dress and ballet slippers?  On an obviously slow news day, ABC News interviewed Mattel and Nickelodeon who stated, “As tweenage Dora, our heroine has moved to the big city, attends middle school and has a whole new fashionable look.” (Is she really going to go exploring in the “big city”?)

“Girls really identify with Dora and we knew that girls would love to have their friend Dora grow up with them, and experience the new things that they were going through themselves,” wrote Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing for Mattel.

In searching for a photo of the new Dora I stumbled across this madness – Dora perfume.

To which Mom-101 blogger responded, “Because evidently, if there is one problem three-year-olds have, it’s that they just don’t smell like bergamot orange.”

So I remember this Strawberry Shortcake from the 90s.  She was fun.  She played outside.  She wore jeans.  You can tell that the 90s were a good time for feminism.

But now look at her!  She’s one hot babe!

Is this even a marked improvement from her frumpy origins?  I’m undecided.

Here’s a description of her Shortcake’s new makeover from StrawberryCentral.com:

“So her owner, American Greetings Properties, worked for a year on what it calls a “fruit-forward” makeover.  Strawberry shortcake, part of a line of scented dolls, now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard.”

It’s like trying to escape from a batting cage.  Just when you think you couldn’t take any more, here’s another, now more mature, 80’s favorite: Rainbow Brite!

Do you remember what they used to look like?

At least they’re still rainbow-tastic.  Just you wait.   The little infant glow worm that used to keep you company in the crib will soon be adorning fake eyelashes.