Christensen Article

Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article and I felt like it was full of good points about the stereotypes in children's books, cartoons, and movies. I absolutely love Disney movies but when I watch them I always notice the stereotypes and sometimes it is really frustrating to watch. The movies place an emphasis on what women should or shouldn't do in order to be loved and saved by a man. I completely agree that growing up watching these movies does create a "secret education" in kid's minds, especially young girls. In the princess movies like the article discusses, the heroine waits for her prince to save her and they live happily ever after. These aren't realistic expectations and they aren't standards that we should set for relationships

However, I feel like Disney is doing a much better job at representation and coming up with plots where a man doesn't save the princess. Frozen is a great example of this. Anna desperately wants to marry Hans but Elsa doesn't allow it and says exactly what every person who has ever watched a Disney thinks, "you can't marry a man you just met." This quote in and of itself shows the strides that Disney is making with relationship stereotypes in the movie. Another amazing aspect of Frozen is that rather than a Prince saving Elsa, her sister does. This shows major growth and also shows young girls the importance of having powerful and loyal friends and family in your life and how they shouldn't just sit around and wait for a man to save them.

I also agreed with Christensen when she discussed how this topic is hard for students to dissect because they don't want to believe that their childhood was so significantly impacted, and in some cases distorted, by the way different races, religions, and socioeconomic status' are portrayed in cute little books and movies they grew up watching. I truly felt this because at first I always wanted to believe that there was nothing wrong with Disney movies. I will always love Disney movies and I will probably never pass up an opportunity to watch them but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do our best to explain to young kids some of the flaws in the system that has been set up.

While I was reading this article I thought a lot about a link I saw on twitter a few days ago. It displayed the Disney princesses as educated, successful entrepreneurs doing things on their own. They had careers in various industries that related to their movies and I thought it was adorable and funny.