News flash: [Girls Gone Mild]

The media portrays gender stereotypes everywhere, including in children’s films. Douglas would argue that movies “tell young women, repeatedly, which behaviors to model, and which ones will get you the admiration of men” (181). So these animated children’s films subtly tell our daughters the “proper” ways for women to act: they need to be “like a prop that needs to be rescued” (Calautti, 2010). Is that the message we want to be sending our children from a young age?

Too often we see the “damsel in distress” on the big screen that remains helpless until she gets since she can’t do it herself. And the body type is always the same: looking like a Barbie doll wearing clothes that shows off some skin. So the message is pretty clear: “your body is your central, crucial resource in establishing your net worth as a female” and it should be used, along with helplessness, to get the guy (Douglas, 215-16). I don’t think this is something that we want to have our children grow up into. But what else is there? Either way, our children will eventually fall into the stereotypical norms that surround them on an everyday basis.

Katie Calautti’s article Girls Gone Mild gives examples of children’s movies that portray these gender stereotypes. She uses movies like Megamind, Aladdin, and Snow White. Just by looking at these examples we can see that this has been going on for a long time. And it’s always the same story: girl is beautiful, boy is handsome, girl gets in danger and becomes helpless, boy must rescue girl, and finally the boy becomes hero and gets the girl.

“Overlooked and subservient” is what Megamind teaches girls to be (Calautti, 2010). Which is what we even see today. Society doesn’t like women who are ambitious; to be ambitious is to be unfeminine. We don’t see this in Aladdin. In this movie, the female lead is ambitious, revolting against her dad and an arranged marriage. But Aladdin takes it a step further with Jasmine’s clothing: belly shirts. So what does this say? Does this mean that it is ok to be ambitious as long as we reveal a lot of skin? The messages are conflicting.

In Snow White we see women as being either beautiful and doing housework or evil and plotting. The evil queen is shown as being wicked and unfeminine in her beauty and attitude. But because of society’s values and norms, “’female’ is still equated with being nice, supportive, nurturing, accommodating, and domestic” – everything the queen is not (Douglas, 273). Snow White on the other hand, is everything that a female should be according to Douglas. She even cleans the house for her stepmother the queen as well as seven bachelors and only desires to find love.

Is there a way to get around it? I don’t think so. I don’t think Douglas would think so either. Everyday, everywhere we go, we are bombarded by depictions of gender stereotypes. What are we supposed to do, not watch or look at any media? It seems impossible to escape the norms that society pushes on us.


works cited:
1. Calautti, Katie. "Girls Gone Mild." Newsweek 04 Nov 2010: n. pag. Web.

2. Douglas, Susan. Enlightened Sexism. 1st. New York: Henry Hold and Company, LLC, 2010. 181-273. Print.