Saturday 19 October 2013

There are a lot of implications for girls in society that come from this representation of women in Disney movies. Setting such high standards of how women 'should' look impacts girls negatively and affects the way they view themselves. It gives them an unrealistic image to live up to and we as humans can't live up to that image. None of us will ever be as perfect as a Disney Princess because they aren't even real, they're cartoons! Self esteem is negatively impacted, especially when girls start to believe the idea that their worth and happiness depends on whether they are beautiful or not. This can lead to problems such as eating disorders and depression. I'm not saying that Disney is to blame for eating disorders and depression, but I'm saying that their unrealistic representation of women is a factor that can contribute to these problems. There are a lot of representations of women in the media that negatively impact us, but the modern day fairytales is just one of them. No girl is happy about the way that they look, Disney Princesses aren't the sole blame for self esteem issues in society, but if there were Disney Princesses who actually resembled a normal woman then maybe they could be someone for girls to be like. Children, girls in the case of the Princess movies, are Disney's target audience and children are very impressionable. So from an early age young girls are seeing these images of beautiful women that are being set for them as models of what they should want to be like. But the impossibility of ever being able to look like that them gives this negative effect. Girls will never be as thin as Cinderella, our eyes will never be as big and bright, we will never look like her. So does this also mean that we won't get our happy ending? Does it mean we will never find out Prince Charming? Of course not, but these are the messages that we can take from 'Cinderella' and other Disney fairytales.

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