Preview

Little Mermaid Gender Roles

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
552 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Little Mermaid Gender Roles
Ashley Bialek

Gender Roles: Past, Present and Future

As a child growing up, I can always remember watching every cartoon, film, or television show and wanting to be princess of girly character. The particular film that stands our most in my mind is the Disney film, The Little Mermaid. The film is about a young mermaid that has always been daddy's little girl, but wants to run away to have a life that she has never been able to. The you mermaid, Ariel, ends up running away to the human world, marries a prince, becomes a princess, and ends up saying goodbye to her dad. I think that Ariel portrayed the typical girl gender role. She sang and danced around and wanted to be a princess and do all and any "girly" type things that she could. I found this film to relate and impact the way I though about particular gender roles, between boys and girls because, it portrayed boys as masculine princes, who take care of girls and treat them like princesses. It portrays the girls as, girls that are close with their daddy's, and grow up to marry princes and become
…show more content…
When baby boys are born they are bought trucks and dinosaurs and everything is blue. When baby girls are born it is the exact opposite, everything is pink, and the toys they are given consist of dolls and ballerinas. When you walk through a toy store the girls are drawn to the toys that are wrapped in pinks and purples and have frills and daisies. The boys on the other hand are drawn to the toys that are in blues and greens and feature goo and dirt. Typically the toys that I girl plays with encourage caring for babies, and cooking and cleaning. The toys that boys are given to play with are trucks and construction type vehicles and tools, which encourage very masculine type behaviors. Toys that I believe are geared towards both boys and girls are typically only toys that encourage learning, or one that motivate one to better

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    This author, Peggy Orenstein talks about and argues that the isolation of boys and girls are pretty relevant through the commercialization of Disney films and toys when all is said in done. Disney and toy organizations are promoting gender roles as a hidden topic in the matter of what boys and girls ought to partake and be. The view of Disney films creates what girls and boys should and shouldn't make strive toward in the public eye. Orenstein demonstrates that gender roles are made through the utilization of Disney motion pictures. The one point I might want to grow and remark on is the commercialization of the Disney princesses Orenstein discusses with her friends.…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The passage "Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls" by Katha Pollit is mainly about society and stereotypes. Which include how girls tend to ne feminine and usually play with dolls, clothes and pink shoes that are usually for girls. Others find this hard to believe that boys might not understand that their toys consist of just trucks and action figures. Others fail to see that there was a women’s movement and many people were against it. People are not just born with the connection to a certain color or even to a certain toy; it is something that we are taught by our parents and even by society.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender Neutral Toys Dbq

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Source 1 (scholar article): Auster and Mansbach claim that girls have a greater variation in color choice of toys compared to boys. They are open to choices compare to boys too. It might be caused by “locational gender crossing strategy” used by some retailers to encourage girls to accept “boy’s toys.” For example, Toy R Us stores attract attention of girls to masculine toys by arranging boy’s toys department before girl’s toy department so girls must always pass by boy’s toys in order to get to their own…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the Disney film “The Little Mermaid” we first meet Ariel as an independent, 16 year old looking for an adventure. Ariel has grand feminist goals to explore the world and has talent as well as beauty. However, she has a stubborn and aggressive attitude that always gets her into trouble; resulting in constant supervision. This is the reason why she disobeys her father and ends up falling in love with a human – which is strictly forbidden. Ariel changes herself for a partner of the opposite sex and gives away a precious talent just so she can walk on land to lust over Prince Eric. Her voice is the most important thing to her and she trades it all for a man. These aspects show that Ariel needs a man to be happy and more importantly than men…

    • 323 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In many movies that Disney has recently come out with, as well as previous movies, have examples of this gender role. Movies like Tangled, Princess and the Frog, and Mulan. Giroux states “The construction of gender identity for girls and women represents one of the most controversial issues in Disney’s animated films.” (pg 98) What Giroux means is that we, parents, should not be showing little girl children that you should be underneath a man and not being independent. This is a big issue in the world of Disney because in almost every movie you see from the start, women are portrayed as less than men or some say weaker. For an example in the 1989 movie The Little Mermaid Ariel, the mermaid, appears to be struggling for independence with her parents to go out on her own and explore the human world. When she meets handsome prince Eric from up above she instantly falls in love and her main reason changed from being independent to falling in love. To young girls, they see that along with choice and dreams is tied with finding true love with a handsome man. When watching movies like this you tend to not notice these hidden controversies and by taking a second look you realize how negative these films can be towards young girls and their…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Transitioning on from the perspective of a communications graduate, we move on to see how gendered roles are portrayed in Disney Princess movies and how they affect young children, from the perspective of a psychology graduate. Katie Lopreore, the psychology graduate from Middle Tennessee State University, writes about how the influences of the Disney Princess films shape children through their gendered characteristics, in her journal Gender roles portrayals of modern Disney royalty: stereotypical or androgynous? Lopreore starts off with an evaluation on how many children are exposed to the Disney Princess culture, she writes “Disney brand, found that 97% of children they surveyed between ages 2-11 years old were familiar with Cinderella, one…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I do agree that Disney does follow a lot of the Gender stereotypes. In Disney, Women have to be really skinny and white to be beautiful, which is not true they focus on outer beauty and not inner beauty. They are teaching little girls beauty is being white and skinny that is resulting in an image and standards set for girls. I totally disagree with that and think Beauty should vary and not be just be white and skinny. In "The little Mermaid" many stereotypes are involved involving Ariel and her prince. They teach the idea of changing who you are to be with someone and not following the idea of "being yourself". They teach the idea that women are submissive. I think symbolically it even goes deeper to say that women give up their voice to be…

    • 338 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This paper is based on Disney and sexism (n): prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex .In this paper it will discuss the time this movie was written and in this case the remake vs original .Den Lille Havfrue (in English The Little Mermaid) was a fairy-tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen in the 19th century (1837 to have an exact year).The remake by Disney The Little Mermaid (same name) was rewritten by John Musker ,Ron Clements, Howard Ashman,and Gerrit Graham,Sam Graham,as well as Chris Hubbell, this time 20th century in 1989 .Both stories are very similar ,but there are also various differences.…

    • 111 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is said that girls generally gravitate towards the toys labeled as girls’ toys and young boys always choose trucks over dolls. This way of organization makes it easy to find the right plaything for each child. When given the choice between a doll and a truck, female infants are most likely to choose the doll, and male infants choose the opposite (Cherney et al., 2003). Girls seem to be attracted to pastel colors and role play toys such as dolls. Boys automatically want to play with guns and toy soldiers, things that are aggressive in nature. The separation of toys has never had an effect on children or their future. They have been marketed in this way for years without trouble, so why change these…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gender roles are a perceived set of behavioural norms usually associated with males and females in a given social group or system. They allow individuals to refer to certain attitudes or behaviours that class a person’s stereotypical identity. Cinderella is a well known Disney character that had gone through some things in her life that certain people can relate to. Disney portrays women through several “princess” stories. There are similarities in the princess stories that Disney has created. Although with the story of Cinderella, they seem to portray women in a certain way.…

    • 309 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the earlier days of animation, much like most media, female characters were given the stereotypical role of always needing to be saved by the male hero of the story. Like how most early Micky Mouse cartoons that involve Minnie, usually involves her needing to be saved by Micky in some form. However, a very good example to look at when looking into the role of female characters, is Disney’s Princesses. They tend to have a huge impact on the younger generation, mostly with how they are aimed towards that audience. One of the main jobs that a Disney Princesses can be considered to have is to act as a role model and someone that young girls can look up to and inspire to be. They are also very easy to market and is one the biggest marketing products out there when it comes to Disney’s merchandise. Despite the idea of a Disney Princess being role models, they have been accused of not being the best of role models with people claiming that they don’t really do anything. Which can be true in some cases, but at the same time isn’t. An example of character not doing much is Aurora from Sleeping Beauty (Walt Disney, 1959). Even though the story is all about her, she doesn’t actually do much in the film itself and only has roughly 18 minutes of screen time. There is the argument that each character is a product of its…

    • 2015 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    english 1c paper

    • 1491 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In our society, it has always been a given that colors like pink and purple are girly and blue and green are boyish. Through the use of colors, toys can be identified as either girl toys or boy toys. Doll houses, Barbie, and other toys specified for girls are commonly decorated with different shades of pink and purple to emphasize the femininity of the toy. In contrast, hot wheels and action figures like power rangers or superman are dressed in shades of blue and green to address their masculinity. Even when babies first come out of their mother’s wombs, baby boys receive blue clothes while baby girls receive pink garments. Genders roles influence children at a very young age and expand with age.…

    • 1491 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The little mermaid displays that the beauty of the body is the most important trait a woman can have when trying to catch the attention of a male. When she decides to change herself by becoming a human, she gives up her perfect voice and the ability to ever to see her family again. This is all done to for the attention of a male which is not right. The prince did not have to do anything to obtain the love of the little mermaid. The little mermaid is the female and must earn the attention of a man. This is only done through being pretty because other traits do not matter in this…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mickey Mouse

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages

    5. I have noticed examples of gender stereotyping in The Beauty and the Beast and in Cinderella. In beauty of the Beast, the beast is meant to be the man who is in control and tells the woman what to do. In Cinderella, Cinderella tries to seduce a man to better her living conditions and find a better life. I find that gender stereotyping is more pronounced in depictions of female characters. Most of the Disney films I have seen show the female characters to be overly…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sex, Gender and Toys

    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages

    • Shell, R., and Eisenberg, N. (1990) The Role of Peers’ Gender in Children’s Naturally Occurring Interest in Toys. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 13, pp. 373 – 388.…

    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays