Beauty Ideals Appearances And Body Images In Disney S Feature Films

Disney films reflect the current values and beliefs of society and have the power to influence their audiences in the perception of what is beautiful, and whether appearance does or does not matter. This book gives an overview of beauty ideals, body images, and appearances in Disney’s feature films. Seven main films are chosen for this analysis to allow for a comparison across time: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Cinderella (1950), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Frozen (2013). The survey determines to what extent Disney films make use of the beauty-goodness stereotype – the equation of appearance and personality. The characters are analyzed as to which bodily features they exhibit, and how these features are in tune with dominant beauty discourses during the times the films were made. Furthermore, the narratives are examined to find out how they topics ‘beauty’ and ‘appearance’ are rendered within them, demonstrating that earlier films frequently rely on traditional and stereotypical depictions and notions of beauty, whereas more recent productions represent more ambiguity and diversity.

Over the last century, the medium of animation has served as an expression of childhood as well as a method of subverting the expectations of what society has promised for the future. Separated into three parts, this work assembles various explorations of taste, culture and passion through animation. Section I features essays that outline the historical changes in art and society that gave rise to an outsider culture that found a home in animation. In the second section, essays examine the practical use of animation as a voice for the underserved. Finally, in Section III, essays analyze the ways in which animation has reshaped the acceptance of outsider status to embrace otherness. Featuring everything from feature-length films to self-produced YouTube videos, the essays in this text reflect a shared love of animation and its unique ability to comment on society and culture.

The media plays an essential role in determining people's schemas of the real world, assumptions about cultural ideals, and perceptions surrounding body image, gender roles, and the idealization of love (Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2008; Herbozo, Tantleff-Dunn, Gokee-Larose, & Thompson, 2004). Children in particular are vulnerable to these messages due to their high consumption of media and their cognitive development (Agarwal & Dhanasekaran, 2012; Herbozo et al., 2004). Disney is one the most powerful aspects in children's media and their princess phenomenon plays an essential role in perpetuating stereotypes by having their heroines embody submissiveness, being young and thin, and attracting love interests (Do Rozario, 2004; England, Descartes, Collier-Meek, 2011). There are three different eras of princesses: the first one includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty; the second one includes The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Mulan; the most recent era includes The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Brave, and Frozen. Research has shown how the Disney princess has evolved over time and is breaking certain stereotypes; however the most recent era lacks scholarly research (England et al., 2011). Given the power these films have on children's psychological and physical health, this is an area that must be examined. This project researches body image, gender roles, and the portrayal of love in the most recent era of princesses. Research was done by exploring newspaper articles, magazine articles, websites, blogs, and scholarly articles to discover how this era is portrayed. It was found that these five princesses represent progress in the Disney franchise by encompassing both masculine and feminine traits (Rome, 2010). The portrayal of love is also revolutionized in this era by going beyond the romantic type and incorporating familial love and self-love (Law, 2014; Rome, 2013; Saladino, 2014). Body image, however, is the one frontier that seems to lack progress. The Disney princess still seems to encompass unrealistic body features and is often sexualized in her movements. In order for Disney to continue their progressive movement forward, it is recommended that they create more realistic and well-rounded female characters.

“[Beauty Sick] will blow the top off the body image movement…provocative and necessary.” — Rebellious Magazine An award-winning psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Peggy Orenstein and Sheryl Sandberg. Today’s young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don’t want to be Barbie dolls but, like generations of women before them, are told they must look like them. They’re angry about the media’s treatment of women but hungrily consume the outlets that belittle them. They mock modern culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make videos exposing Photoshopping tricks, but feel pressured to emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a "skinny arm." They understand that what they see isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. Yet these same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about. They are ready to fight back against their beauty-sick culture and create a different world for themselves, but they need a way forward. In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance on their emotional and physical health and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we must break free from cultural forces that feed destructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.

This expanded and revised edition explores and updates the cultural politics of the Walt Disney Company and how its ever-expanding list of products, services, and media function as teaching machines that shape children's culture into a largely commercial endeavor. The Disney conglomerate remains an important case study for understanding both the widening influence of free-market fundamentalism in the new millennium and the ways in which messages of powerful corporations have been appropriated and increasingly resisted in global contexts. New in this edition is a discussion of Disney's shift in its marketing strategies towards targeting tweens and teens, as Disney promises to provide (via participation in consumer culture) the tools through which young people construct and support their identities, values, and knowledge of the world. The updated chapters from the highly acclaimed first edition are complimented with two new chapters, 'Globalizing the Disney Empire' and 'Disney, Militarization, and the National Security State After 9/11,' which extend the analysis of Disney's effects on young people to a consideration of the political and economic dimensions of Disney as a U.S.-based megacorporation, linking the importance of critical reception on an individual scale to a broader conception of democratic global community.

What happens when white people look at non-whites? What happens when the gaze is returned? Looking for the Other responds to criticisms leveled at white feminist film theory of the 1970s and 1980s for its neglect of issues to do with race. It focuses attention on the male gaze across cultures, as illustrated by women filmmakers of color whose films deal with travel. Looking relations are determined by history, tradition, myth; by national identity, power hierarchies, politics, economics, geographical and other environment. Travel implicitly involves looking at, and looking relations with, peoples different from oneself. Featured films include Birth of a Nation, The Cat People, Home of the Brave, Black Narcissus, Chocolat, and Warrior Marks. Featured filmmakers include D.W.Griffith, Jacques Tourneur, Michael Powell, Julie Dash, Pratibha Parmar, Trinh T. Min-ha, and Claire Denis.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Relationships and Family, grade: 75.0, Keele University, language: English, abstract: This study offers an examination of gender representations present in the Disney feature-length animations incorporated into the Princess Collection. The import of such films has become increasingly relevant in recent years due to the increased anxiety around media representations and the development of the Princess franchise into a dominant aspect of Disney. In an attempt to test the claims of the existing debate and update the discussion through the inclusion of male protagonists, as well as female, the method of content analysis was adopted to conduct an in-depth analysis of: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Frozen (2013). This choice of films enables us to trace how these representations have changed over time to reflect the changing attitudes of gender in mainstream society, to answer the question of; to what extent do Disney princes and princesses represent traditional gender stereotypes? After data was collected the results of the content analysis were interpreted by drawing on literature and situating them within their historical context. The findings have shown that these princesses have evolved from passive damsels in distress to much more active, dynamic heroines. Whilst the male characters were found to have experienced less change but have become more feminised. However, both were found to still be influenced by traditional stereotypical ideas.