Growing up as a little girl, who did you look up to? For me, it was Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," Hillary Duff in "Lizzie McGuire" and Mary-Kate and Ashley—characters who are seemingly independent and strong until you’re 19 and realize that every character from your childhood was dependent on a man. Ariel did everything for and because of Eric. Hillary Duff spent every season of "Lizzie McGuire" pining over Ethan Craft, and she spent her entire movie in love with Paulo, only to find out that it's been Gordo all along. Mary-Kate and Ashley had a new love interest in every film they made.
Girls are made to believe from a very young age that happiness comes from finding significant others. It isn’t always done on purpose, but through fairytales and mass media, little girls are shown that a woman isn’t a woman without a man at her side. This is an issue because a little girl should not be focusing all of her energy on finding Prince Charming to come and rescue her. Instead, we should be teaching little girls that they are fully capable of saving themselves. Who saved Snow White? Prince Charming. Cinderella? Prince Charming. Aurora? Prince Phillip. Jasmine? Aladdin. Do we see a theme here? Disney has also made films where family is the key, like "Brave" or "Frozen" (even though Anna ends up with Kristoff.) But those are the minorities in a long, long list of others that center around “the kiss” or “the wedding,” and that is what sticks. That is what the seven-year-old girl sees. Eventually, she begins to wonder, “Where is my prince?”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely adore Disney and its movies, but even the Disney movies that are supposed to be about female empowerment end with the female lead getting her man. Even if she also gets several other things on her own, it’s as if she isn’t complete without her prince, and that is exactly what is being instilled in a child’s head.
Mulan fights the Huns and kicks ass and comes home to the loving arms of her family. But then, as the movie ends, Li Shang shows up...because what's a happy ending without the prince? I feel like it’s wrong and detrimental to the young female psyche to ingrain this idea of a perfect life involving a picket fence, a husband and three children running around the perfectly mowed lawn.
I am not, in any way, saying Disney movies are evil and volatile and should be banned from children because that is ridiculous, and if that is where I drew my metaphorical line, I'd never be able to watch anything that came on the television...ever. I am just stating that in order to raise young girls to be engineers or doctors, we need to remind them of their worth, separate from male counterparts. We need to show them that life is unpredictable and fragile, and that they have to be able to rescue themselves.
