Let The Memes Begin

I have to admit: I've been a fan of Ryan Reynolds since he was on a show way-back-when called Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. And Deadpool is such a fun, irreverent movie...this makes me like him that much more.


Although...the first thing I thought of was, "Silly, Ryan Reynolds. The Matterhorn is in Disneyland and that is clearly Cinderella's Castle at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World."

Disney Nerd Problems.

"Disney Inspired" Dorm Room -- *womp womp*

I was scrolling through Facebook tonight when I came across this post from Teen Vogue:

via Facebook

I've seen so many posts lately about how students are taking their dorm rooms to the "next level." (Like these girls from Mississippi State. Or these girls from Texas. Or these other girls from Texas. Or any of these rooms.) IDK, maybe this happened when I was in college and we just didn't know about it because social media wasn't a thing yet. But the dorm rooms I lived in certainly weren't that nice. TBH, they may or may not be nicer than some of the rooms in my house. (Except for my kids' nurseries. We went all Pinspiration on those rooms.)

ANYWAY. Given the next-level decor going on in those dorm rooms above,  I was super excited to see the Disney room. 

Spoiler alert. It's not that Disney. 😢In most of the pictures of the room, I had to search for the Disney decor. And while I'm the first person to admit that too much Disney can border on tacky and cartoonish -- I walked that line with my wedding -- I kinda feel like if you're going to sell your dorm room as a magical Disney Wonderland, it should be a little more Disney. A color scheme of aqua/coral/white doesn't exactly scream Disney to me. 

Womp womp. 

From Engagement Session To Empowered Princess Photoshoot

This has got to be one of my favorite Disney-related stories EVER.

Cliff Notes Version: After ending her engagement with her fiancé, Brooke Lowry decided not to cancel her engagement photoshoot at Disneyland, and chose to do a solo shoot instead.

Brooke Lowry, you are my hero. I have a feeling we'd be pretty good friends. 

[No, really: if you want to talk to someone about getting a Master's Degree in Children's Literature, I am happy to talk with you about it! I highly recommend it. Oxford is my favorite place in the world, but London is a super close second.]

Longer details: According to HuffPost, "Lowry, a former Disney Television Animation employee says she has loved watching Disney redefine what it means to be a “Disney Princess” while staying true to the classics. “These remarkable female characters are put in extreme circumstances, but still display qualities that we all have- strength, beauty, compassion, and courage.” This was the perfect opportunity to practice what she preaches even when it wasn’t easy."

PC: DPark Photography via HuffPost

What I love the most about this story is the positive interpretation that Lowry has on the Disney Princesses. I know she worked for Disney, but that's not always a guarantee of a positive experience. According to Buzzfeed:

“These women are kind even when others are not,” she said. “They are loyal and compassionate, inclusive and accepting, elegant and discerning, dreamers and doers. They look for the best in others, they bring honor to their families, and they work hard and stay true to themselves.”

Another quality she said she admired was the ability to be “positive amongst tragedy.” She decided to emulate these qualities and view the shoot as a new beginning.

“So, instead of being the cutesy couple out for a Disneyland date, it became the ‘I am a Princess, long may I reign’ shoot,” she said. “Having Disneyland itself as the backdrop was symbolic, too — a place for me to begin a new dream and imagine a new narrative for myself.”

Thi is exactly the kind of narrative I wish circulated more about the Disney Princesses. Too often the focus is that they promote unhealthy images and unrealistic expectations -- and that is certainly true, to an extent -- but there's so much more to those stories. Who are we to judge and specify what someone takes away from a film? This is also a big part of the "Dream Big, Princess" campaign, 

PC: DPark Photography via Buzzfeed

And, if you need even more of a reason to love/be jealous of this, here's what Lowry told HuffPost of her experience at Disneyland during the shoot:

“I was feeling vulnerable and self conscious of course that morning, but everyone was so, so kind. My hair and makeup artist Tatiana gifted me her services, a precious Disney employee named Pearl “Jay” Wang heard me talking to the photographer and escorted me on a private tour of the Royal Hall, the princesses inside treated me so gently, I got into the park for free, I had a few guests ask me which princess I was, which made my day, and my photographer Drexelle Parkwas absolutely amazing in every way and made me feel like royalty. It honestly couldn’t have been a more beautiful experience, and I was filled with the peace and comfort that only comes from above. I’m so glad I decided to go through with the photos, and more importantly I’m so grateful for the smallest acts of daily kindness that make all the difference in a broken world."

Never underestimate the power of Disney Customer Service -- they have the capability to go above and beyond for you, and when they do, it can make any experience magical.

PC: DPark Photography via HuffPost

The only thing that irks me about this story is the fact that "photo shoots at Disney" are an absolutely legitimate thing. As in, you can hire a professional photographer and have a photo shoot at Disneyland. Which...cool. But you can't do this at Magic Kingdom in Disney World.

Disney: please explain WHY to me. Why is Disneyland okay, but Magic Kingdom is not?!

Happy First Day of Classes!

In honor of The First Day of Fall Classes At Duke, a story of an epic school ID photo:

this is the start of a good senior year pic.twitter.com/ZKa5uR1kJJ

— juicy june♡ (@junekyraaa) August 24, 2016

This girl is my hero -- and she'll bring honor to us all. :)

Read the full story here at Buzzfeed.

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears...

...It's a world of hopes and a world of fears. 
There's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all."

One of the things I wanted to highlight today was the response of the theme park employees in Orlando -- specifically Disney, although employees at Universal and SeaWorld are showing their support in similar ways. (See guests at Universal Studios Orlando raise their wands to honor the fallen -- I dare you not to cry.)

While the response was motivated partly through a loss of several of their own, I would like to think that they're not just mourning those few -- that they're mourning everyone whose life was cut tragically short that day. Again, I don't want to delve too much into the politics of it, or my personal opinions--I just want to show the beautiful way Disney employees are showing their support and solidarity:

"Ohana"means "family." "Family" means no one gets left behind.

PC Kevin O'Brien via Facebook

Only love can thaw a frozen heart.

PC Lauren Patterson Shoemaker via Facebook

Disney World Cast Member Kevin O'Brien has been collecting and posting photos of the hearts (and similar tributes across Orlando) on his Facebook page. You can see them here, here and here. 

And, I think it's also worth noting that Equality Florida has set up a GoFundMe page for the families of the victims. They initially had a goal of $100,000 and quickly surpassed that. At my last check, they had raised about $4.4 million. (It's a record-setting crowdfunding campaign -- which gives me a little hope, in light of all the sadness.)

If you're thinking about donating (or not donating), as I did, just remember: there's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware, it's a small world after all..."

via Buzzfeed: 17 Times Disney Princesses Had No...Chill

**Disclaimer: NSFW Language**
If you're offended by that. As a child of two New York drivers, I tend not to be. (I also tend to find Bernie Sanders' accent very familiar and comforting, which I realize is probably not normal. It just sounds like family dinners and holidays to me.)

But I digress.

Anyway. Buzzfeed posted this a few days ago: "17 Times Disney Princesses Had No [Effing] Chill."

I love the subtitle: "Because crying on your bed always makes things better."

"17 Times" may be a bit of a stretch--since a large portion of the article focuses on the same scene, just different shots of it. 

But it basically is an account of every time the Disney Princesses cry.

Like Cinderella (1950):

Or Aurora (1959):

Or Ariel (1989):

Actually, Ariel cries *a lot* for a Disney princess. Most have that ONE SCENE; Ariel has like 3, maybe 4. Definitely one of the more emotional ones.

Or Belle (1991):

There's actually quite a lot of flinging oneself down on a surface -- a bed, a bench, a rock formation -- and sobbing.

The crying may decrease as we move forward in time...I can think of Rapunzel and Tiana and even Anna getting emotional, but I don't remember any super dramatic sob fests.

Charlotte might be the exception -- and this is like a textbook Ugly Cry:

And, as the Buzzfeed article does point out, these are all teenage girls. And puberty & hormonal changes are hard enough without having to deal with learning your entire identity is a lie or realizing that you just gave up your freedom and dreams to save your father's life.

So, yeah. They cry. 

You know who else cries a lot? Hermione Granger -- the anti-Disney Princess if ever there was one.

I remember reading an article once about Rowling's depiction of Hermione as constantly crying -- and it infuriated me:

"Yet throughout her role development thus far, Rowling allows Hermione to lose sight of her own strength and revert to stereotypic behavior and she facilitates this by employing gender-related stereotypic words to Hermione's behavior again and again. Repeatedly, Rowling has Hermione "shriek," "squeak," "wail," "squeal," and "whimper," verbs never applied to the male characters in the book. [...] Throughout the books, Hermione often bursts into tears.... [...] Her hysteria and crying happen far too often to be considered a believable part of the development of Hermione's character and are quite out of line with her core role in the book. They add nothing to an understanding of her persona or its individual caricature nor, for the most part, anything to the story. Thus, they can only be interpreted as "how [silly, weak] girls act," which is unfortunate from the viewpoint of feminist analysis." --Lana Whited 

As someone who is a self-professed Crier, I find this really insulting. I'll admit it -- I cry. A lot. I cry when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm stressed. It's just how I, personally, deal with emotions -- in part, I think, because they usually run fairly close to the surface. I can compartmentalize and suppress with the best of them, but, as a general rule, I'm very easy to read emotionally.

Does this make me any less feminist? I hope not. Just as not crying doesn't make a person any or more less feminist. Showing a character has crying or displaying emotions -- and like Hermione, many Disney princesses don't just cry -- they show quite a range of emotions, particularly the later we go, chronologically -- shouldn't be a reason for criticism.

Life is, for lack of a better phrase, going to suck every once in a while -- and I think it's okay to show that you don't have to maintain a preternatural level of optimism and cheerfulness when you encounter it. It's okay to falter, to stumble, to be "down." (Look at women in the 1950s -- when they were expected to be cheerful all the time, it did not end well for them.)

#ShareYourEars

In honor of Disneyland's 60th Anniversary -- and their long history of granting Make-A-Wish Foundation wishes -- and in the true spirit of "when you wish upon a star / makes no difference who you are / anything your heart desires / will come to you" -- Disney has started a new campaign.

Upload a photo of you in your Mickey Ears to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and share it with the #ShareYourEars. For every photo shared, Disney will donate $5 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation -- up to $1 million. 

I don't remember wearing ears when I was little -- although I do remember my dad had a pair of Goofy ones -- but when my husband and I went on our first trip together, we each bought a pair. (We did it right, that first trip!)

c. October 2011

c. October 2011

c. October 2012

Daily Dose of The Giggles

Thursday Afternoon LOLZ. 

In Response To: "That Major Problem" With Disney Movies

When you teach the course that I do ("Decoding Disney"), you come to expect the question that I usually get asked around the start of each semester. A student will shyly, hesitantly, tentatively raise his or her hand and ask, "Will I hate Disney by the end of this course too?"

It's the "too" that always surprises me -- the implication that, since I teach a course focused on analyzing Disney movies, I must not be a fan of the company or the films.

And that really couldn't be further from the truth:

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

I'm a firm believe that you can love something and look at it with a critical eye -- that's part of what makes my job so great. I get to teach something I enjoy -- everyday I get to stand in front of a classroom full of intelligent young minds and talk to them -- with them -- about something I truly love.

Am I objective all the time? Of course not. I'd be lying if I said my knee-jerk reaction to a lot of Disney criticism wasn't something along the lines of, "OMG Y U HATE DISNEY?!?!" But initial reactions fade -- and I'm left with ideas marinating in the back of my mind, ideas which I'm constantly thinking about as I go about my day.

So a few days ago, when a friend shared this Washington Post article with me -- "Researchers Have Found A Major Problem With 'The Little Mermaid' and Other Disney Movies" -- my initial reaction was, yes, an eyeroll of epic proportions.

And then -- as these things inexplicably do on the Internet -- the story went viral.

Well, maybe it's not so inexplicable: it's a news story purporting to have uncovered some sinister quality of Disney movies (more on that key word, "purporting," later).

And the majority of the media outlets reporting on this story do focus on the negative. A cursory glance of the stories I've saved from Facebook posts reveals that:

i09 says that researchers are trying to "figure out how harmful Disney Princesses are to kids"; Disney still has a "princess problem"; even the Huffington Post says that "a disturbing trend" has been  uncovered. 

Okay. I'll bite. What exactly is this "disturbing," "harmful" trend? The original source is The Washington Post article, the major points of which are:

• Jeff Guo starts with a brief history--essentially pointing out the "Waves" of princesses. The First Wave (Snow White, Cinderella & Aurora) are passive and antiquated, dreaming of love and waiting for Prince Charming. The Second Wave (Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas) were supposed to be more progressive -- spunkier.
• Then we get to the "why this matters" -- the "so what" of this study conducted by Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhower: girls watch princess movies, and "it's worth examining what the films are teaching about gender roles."
• Guo does point out that this is still preliminary research and that the initial findings were presented at a conference.
• According to Guo, the goal of the research is to "shed light on how the male and female characters in these films talk differently." 
• In the First Wave films, men and women speak "equally" -- in Sleeping Beauty, they even speak more than the men.
• However, when you get to the Second Wave films, this decreases: the films are male-dominated and there are fewer women speaking. 
• When you get to the Third Wave films, there seems to be a return to egalitarianism -- but not with Frozen, where women speak only 41% of the time. 
• Guo includes a quote from Fought, who states that, "There's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her, but there are no women doing any other things...Everybody who’s doing anything else, other than finding a husband in the movie, pretty much, is a male."
• Guo then shifts gears, pointing out that it's not only who speaks, but what they say, drawing attention to the aspect of Fought and Eisenhauer's research that focuses on compliments: namely, that over time, the number of appearance-based compliments has decreased and the number of skill-based compliments has increased. 
• The last line of the article is a quote from Fought: "That’s fine, but are these movies really so great for little girls to watch? When you start to look at this stuff, you have to question that a little bit."

The "disturbing" trend that the media is picking up on and regurgitating most likely refers to the fact that, even in movies with female protagonists*, the males out-talk the females: they don't get a voice in their own movies.

[*Aladdin should be an outlier in this discussion; while Jasmine has been officially inducted into the Princess line-up, Aladdin most definitely has a male-protagonist. It is not Jasmine's story.]

What isn't being reported -- because it doesn't make for as good a news story? doesn't make for as salacious a headline? -- is the research on the compliments, as the UPenn post is quick to point out. 

As I've read each of these news stories, here's the pattern my thoughts have taken:

1. The implication -- not necessarily from Fought and Eisenhauer; more from the media -- is that this revelation (that Disney Princess movies are harmful to the girls watching them) is new. The last line of the WP article seems to attest to that: Guo quotes Fought as saying "When you start to look at this stuff..." -- as if scholars haven't been studying and criticizing Disney for the past 30 years. Henry Giroux's "Animating Youth: The Disnification of Children's Culture" first appeared in 1995, urging parents and educators to critically engage with Disney films. Jack Zipes' widely circulated chapter, "Breaking the Disney Spell" appeared in From Mouse To Mermaid in 1995: while Zipes focuses less on gender and more on the distortion of the original literary source material, the antipathy and skepticism of Disney is clearly there. Fought and Eisenhauer's focus on language may be an original avenue into the discussion, but the conversation is by no means new.

2. There is one very valid and under-represented point being made, rather buried in the article (understandably, since it's not the focus of the research): Fought is quoted as saying "...there are no women bonding in the tavern together, singing drinking songs..." -- there's actually little female bonding depicted in the Disney princess movies period. Disney princesses aren't typically afforded female friends -- they prefer animal companionship. After all, Cinderella's relationship with her stepsisters -- even if she doesn't have her birds pluck out the stepsister's eyes at her wedding, as she does in the Brothers Grimm version -- is fraught with hostility, at least on their part. Ariel barely interacts with her six sisters -- probably to emphasize her "difference" from them. Pocahontas may be the first princess to have a female friend -- Nakoma -- but even then, the friendship isn't foregrounded. Even when the princesses are all grouped together on the official Disney Princess merchandise, they are all looking in different directions: Peggy Orenstein learned that "Disney had never marketed its characters separately from a film's release...That's why, these days...[e]ach stares off in a slightly different direction, as if unaware of the others' presence. Now that I have told you, you'll always notice it. And let me tell you, it's freaky" (13-14). 

Luckily, as Guo also notes, that is something which seems to be changing though: Tiana has Charlotte (however historically inaccurate that friendship might have been); Brave focuses on the relationship between Merida and Elinor; and Frozen is, above all else, about Elsa and Anna's relationship. 

[*This also carries over into some of Disney's non-animated, princess-related products: Maleficent focuses on the relationship between Aurora and Maleficent and, I would argue, the relationship between Emma and Regina is one of the strengths of Once Upon A Time.]

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

3. Real quick: I take issue with Fought's claim that "there's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her" -- as that seems wildly inaccurate to me. Yes, the princess movies may end with marriage or romance, but that doesn't mean that's the end-game of the whole movie--

--Snow White is just trying to survive; the prince finds her at the end of the movie

--Cinderella just wants to go to the ball and wear a pretty dress -- she doesn't even know she's dancing with the prince

--Aurora is the most problematic, because she wants to meet the boy from the forest -- but I'd almost argue that Sleeping Beauty isn't actually about Aurora -- that the fairies are the protagonists

--Ariel wants to be human and see Eric, not marry him (initially, at least)

--Belle wants to save her father and see the world -- then falls in love with Beast

--Jasmine is actively trying to avoid marriage -- at least on someone else's terms

--Pocahontas may fall in love with John Smith, but as many critics have pointed out (1) she's also trying to save her people and (2) she doesn't actually marry him

--Mulan is trying to uphold her family's honor by taking her father's place -- like Jasmine, she runs away from the life that would be dictated by marriage and the matchmaker

--Tiana wants to open her own restaurant

--Rapunzel wants to see the "floating lanterns gleam" -- and only once she has done that does Flynn become her "new dream" (a dream that is inextricably connected to reuniting with her biological family and creating a happy, stable family unit)

--Merida, like Jasmine and Mulan, also firmly rejects marriage (for now)

--Elsa is completely unconcerned with marriage/romance, which leaves Anna as essentially the only princess who actively seeks out marriage (and look how well that turns out for her)

To say that each princess's goal is "trying to get someone to marry her" is misleading: very few of the princess protagonists are shown to have marriage on their minds. In a study on language, I'd be interested to know how many times the words "marriage" and/or "wedding" appear -- love, of course, is something different. 

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

(4) I'm very curious as to whether Fought and Eisenhauer's study includes the songs/music of the films. Their abstract -- reprinted here by The Language Log of UPenn -- isn't clear: in fact, the research on the compliments -- relegated to the last 1/3 of the article by Guo -- is given center-stage. 

Because here's the thing: Disney movies -- especially the princess movies -- are musicals. This is a point which Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario emphasizes in her article, "The Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney Princess" (one of my favorite pieces of Disney scholarship, because it actually articulates the view that the Disney princesses are important and central to their stories, moreso than the males). Do Rozario notes that the "success of The Little Mermaid took many by surprise, but the reasons for it are manifold. One of those reasons lies in the musical itself" (47). 

And the songs and soundtracks are just as important, if not more so, than the dialogue and plot. As Guillermo Avila-Saavedra argues, "the rhymes make lyrics memorable and therefore the message is more influential." Consider Frozen Fever: how many covers of "Let It Go" were there? how many viral videos of couples singing "Love Is An Open Door"? And what about those epic show-downs and collaborations between the Broadway casts of The Lion King and Aladdin?

I'm not ashamed to admit that I listen to the Disney station on Pandora radio almost every day: there's something about belting Disney songs while driving to work and running errands that's just fun. But as I think over the songs I butcher in the safety of my car, and as I think over the songs that I associate with each film, I come up with female-dominated music. 

Sure, there are some notable exceptions: Scar's "Be Prepared" and the Gaston-led "The Mob Song" are some of the best villain songs Disney produced, and I'm a sucker for "I've Got A Dream" from Tangled. But I have to wonder...if you looked at just the songs, or if you included the songs with the spoken dialogue, would the results of Fought and Eisenhauer's study change? Negligibly? Significantly? (After all -- Phil Collins' beautiful lyrics for Tarzan as well as Elton John and Tim's Rice music for The Lion King don't fall within the scope of this study: they're not princess films.)

Let's look at the Frozen soundtrack -- if a movie about two sisters only has women speak 41% of the time, does the music match up? And let me add--this is by no means a scientifically valid study; just some personal musings and observations:

• There are 9 lyrical songs on the soundtrack -- excluding the background score and Demi Lovato's cover of "Let It Go" -- totaling approximately 23 minutes and 4 seconds of singing time. (At a total running time of 1hr42min, that's a little more than 22.5% of the movie devoted to singing dialogue.)
• Of those 9 songs, 6 of them have a female vocalist credited as the lead: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, or Maia Wilson (who leads the trolls in "Fixer Upper").
• Of those 6 songs, 4 are exclusively sung by women ("Do You Want To Build A Snowman," "For The First Time in Forever," "Let it Go," and the reprise of "For The First Time in Forever.") -- together these songs total about 13 minutes and 26 seconds -- about 58% of the singing dialogue. 
• Three songs are sung exclusively by males: the opening song "Frozen Heart"; Tony-nominee Jonathan Groff's only song is the :50 second "Reindeer Are Better Than People"; and Josh Gad's "In Summer" -- together, these songs total 4.5 minutes -- about 19.5% of the singing dialogue.

So, they may only speak for 41% of the film, but they sing for at least 58% of the musical interludes -- and that's not counting their roles in "Love Is An Open Door" or "Fixer Upper."

I'm not saying this would hold up for every Disney Princess movie but, especially if the songs/music aren't included in the study, it might be worth investigating more. (And again--with movies like Aladdin, I don't anticipate it holding up.)

(c)waltdisneyconfessions @ Tumblr

(5) Finally--even though Guo points out that it's "of course incomplete to judge a film just by the number of words women say," I think it should be emphasized that reducing anything -- any Disney film, any film, any book -- to one piece of numerical data runs the risk of oversimplifying the situation. 

This is not to say that quantitative studies aren't relevant or important -- they absolutely are. But sometimes, things can't be nicely reduced to objective, numerical data. For instance--Guo cites Dawn England in the Washington Post article: in 2011, England co-authored the study "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses," a widely cited study that attempts to objectively look at and code the behaviors of the princes and princesses in the Disney princess films. The complicating factor is that the behaviors are coded based on gender stereotypes: for instance, "assertive" and "independent" are seen as masculine behaviors while "shows emotion" and "nurturing" are seen as feminine behaviors. However--some behaviors are coded in ways that don't make sense: for instance, "curious" is seen as a "masculine" behavior while "fearful" is seen as feminine. "Being afraid" doesn't seem to be a particularly gender-specific characteristic to me -- and I'm curious as to why "curiosity" is seen as masculine, since the dangers of "feminine curiosity" seems like a well-worn trope (for example, Eve and the apple). 

But again--when you reduce the films to numerical data, you run the risk of ignoring many extenuating factors. 

For instance--women may have spoken more in the First Wave Princess movies, but:

(1) the villains were often female -- the Wicked Queen; Lady Tremaine; Maleficent -- which led to accusations of promoting female binaries (good girl vs. femme fatale) and female-on-female violence;

(2) the heroines in these first movies may talk more, but critics often lament their lack of agency and activity -- they're the passive, damsels-in-distress. 

So, if you the villain can't be female, the villain must be male, which increases the male presence in the supporting cast. 

But then what about the fact that these movies depict women existing in a male-dominated world? And not only existing but, arguably, triumphing in a male-dominated world? One of my favorite points that Do Rozario makes is that, yes, Disney movies often kill off the mother but "largely unremarked is the absence of a brother or other male heir" (52). At the end of the movie, the "father celebrates his daughter. Not one Disney father wishes for a son or remarks on the absence, implicitly condoning the disruption of patriarchy by a daughter" (53). Do Rozario is looking a select group of the princess films -- namely the ones where the heroine is born a princess rather than marrying into the title as do Belle and Cinderella -- but her point is valid: in terms of gender, the female ascends to a position of power. (Again--we'll leave discussions of race and class for another day.)

****

The responses to this story's viral nature are interesting, to say the least. While internet comments aren't exactly a reliable barometer, there does seem to be an outcry of "Who cares?" (And also lots of hopes that this isn't government-funded research, because it seems a waste of money.)

This is always a question I grapple with throughout the semester: there's always the person who claims that "watching Disney movies isn't a good use of college tuition money." But we're not just watching Disney movies: we're discussing them, examining the ideologies underlying them and, perhaps most importantly, gaining a sense of media literacy. That's what I try to emphasize to my students: I'm not asking you to hate Disney; on the contrary, I'm asking you to form your own, educated opinion about these movies -- which, like it or not, do reflect and effect the ideas we hold as a society. 

To that end, I think Fought and Eisenhauer have a really interesting research study going on -- and I can't wait to read the finished study. It's an interesting topic -- not just about Disney, but about what society believes and the media teaches about gender in general -- and I don't profess to have all, or even any, of the answers. But their study isn't important just to see what little girls are learning from these movies -- it's not only girls who consume Disney Princess movies. They may be the ones who wear the dresses and buy the dolls, but boys watch them too -- and discussions of masculinity are often left out. 

I'm going to end on a somewhat personal note: I think it's really important to note that, as academics and scholars and researchers, we can analyze these movies -- objectively and subjectively -- all we want. But it remains very difficult to say, with absolute certainty, that these films are "harmful" or "damaging." In the Washington Post article, Fought points out that girls aren't "born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls." 

So, yes. We can study the Disney Princess movies and draw conclusions about them. But, as Peggy Orenstein reluctantly concedes, "I have never seen a study proving that playing princess specifically damages girls' self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. And trust me, I've looked." 

Who knows what children pick up on when they watch Disney movies? Who knows how their families, friends, other media they've seen, the toys they have affect what they pick up on? After all, my favorite Disney movie as a child was The Little Mermaid--I went through a Snow White phase when I was really little, I liked Belle because she read books too, and I have vivid memories of making my little brother be Maleficent-as-dragon so I could play the triumphant, dragon-slaying Prince Philip. 

But Ariel? She was my favorite. After all, she was a swimmer (well, technically a mermaid, but still) and as someone who has always been very klutzy on land (much like Ariel when she first gets her human legs) but at home in the water, that mattered to me, who swam competitively throughout middle and high school. I also liked that Eric was an animal-lover -- it was very important to Mini-Me that Eric not only had a dog (Max) but that he clearly cared for him. But Mini-Me didn't focus on the relationship between Ariel and Eric -- it was part of the story, sure, but it wasn't why I loved the story. What resonated with me was that Ariel and her father were two stubborn people who bumped heads and disagreed and didn't understand each other -- but in the end, they worked it out. If Ariel and Triton could overcome his speciest view on humans and reconcile, then gosh-darnit, my father and I would be alright. I knew I wasn't a mermaid, and I knew my father wasn't an omnipotent ruler of the sea, and I didn't run away from home to seek escape from a sea-witch with a vendetta. This was a movie and those characters and problems weren't real: I was savvy enough to know that. But the resolution? The reassurance of the happily-ever-after between father and daughter? That was more real to me than singing crabs and magic spells ever could be -- and more important.