As Good As a Woman

Think back to your favorite Disney movie as a child. Was the main character male or female? Let’s take it one step further; how was the character depicted? Did the girl act feminine? Was the boy strong? And, how did the story end. Did the boy save the girl?

Media depicts males and females in certain ways. At a young age, children are beginning to be influenced by the media. Movies, books, and television shows are forms of media that children are immersed in at a young age. Thinking back to movie I’ve seen, many movies have the same story lines. There’s a helpless girl who ultimately needs to be saved by the strong boy. No matter how intelligent the girl is, she will need to be helped by a male throughout the plot. This is an example of how gender roles are represented in media. Gender roles are norms that tell society what behaviors are acceptable for a person based on their sex. A major part in the making of gender roles are stereotypes. People stereotype the roles that each gender should live up to. These stereotypes start being developed at a young age.

Children are exposed to media that shows gender roles when they are young. Disney movies are an example of media that expose children to the influence of gender roles and their stereotypes. Over the years Disney characters have many similar qualities. Women are represented as seductive; they are the character that needs to be saved most of the time. Disney princesses have tiny waists and big eyes. To get a male’s attention the female character will bat her eyelashes. Males are represented as always being strong and masculine. These are stereotypes for the way that men and women should be acting. At a young age girls and boys are watching these movies and believing that they need to act a certain way.

Looking back on movies that I used watch when I was younger I’ve noticed some common themes among how males and females are represented. The first movie to look at is Hercules. In Hercules there are two main characters to think about, Hercules and Meg. Hercules is depicted as a strong man. He starts the story as a young boy with very little muscles. As the story goes on, he gains muscles and becomes a strong man. Meg is a seductive woman. She is being help captive and needs to be saved. Hercules ultimately saves Meg from dying. She wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for Hercules coming to her rescue. Another popular Disney movie is The Little Mermaid. The whole movie is about how Ariel would give up everything she had to be with a boy. In Sleeping Beauty, Aurora wouldn’t have lived if it weren’t for the boy that kissed her back to life. These examples are showing young girls that they’re going to need a boy in their lives if they are in trouble. Also, it shows boys that to be a man you should be physically strong. Even if children don’t understand the term “gender roles” they are surrounded by media that influences they way they think they need to act.

The last example I’m going to talk about is Beauty and the Beast. Belle is seen as unique because she is a woman who can read, and likes to. She is a beautiful woman. Gaston is a big, strong man who wants to marry Belle. He looks physically strong, but he isn’t strong mentally. Throughout the movie, Beast is cold and rude to Belle. She over looks his poor behavior and falls in love with him. In a video I recently watched, young girls are asked to finish the sentence “if Belle was my friend.” The first nine-year-old girl responded “I would be happy for her because she found someone she likes, but I would feel bad for her because she got yelled at.” The second girl answered “I would tell her to keep being nice and sweet like you are and that will probably change him, and in the movie it does.” There are a few things that I see wrong with this. The first girl sees value in being in a relationship. Also, she sees the verbal abuse that is happening to Belle throughout the movie by Beast. The second nine-year-old girl thinks, after watching this movie, that being nice can change a person’s behaviors. It’s not healthy for young girls to think that by being nice to a boy that is mean to her, he will start acting nice. Even young girls see the gender roles. They may not know the exact term, but the media they are exposed to can impact the way they think they should act.

Disney and other sources of media have been changing over time. Now we are seeing a change in the plot of some movies. The message in the Disney movie Frozen is about how love can “fix a broken heart.” Instead of a boy coming in and saving the day, two sisters save each other. There is a new way to look at love, besides just a girl falling in love with a boy. Children need to be exposed to different relationships. Love isn’t only a boy and a girl. Teaching children look love their families is an important lesson. Other television shows, like Modern Family, are exposing children to non-traditional family styles. There’s an important lesson that children can learn from these shows about gender roles. Your gender shouldn’t prohibit you from becoming what you want.

Children should be able to make decisions about who they are and what they want to become, without the influence of the media. Society shouldn’t make decisions on the way that people have to act. It’s important to children and teens to feel comfortable pursuing whatever they want. Over time I think people have become more accepting to a change in typical gender roles. We are seeing women going out and having a career. We also see men who are stay at home dads. When children are young it is important for them to understand that their gender shouldn’t hold them back from what they want to do. Gender roles and stereotypes shouldn’t prohibit children, teens, and even adults.

Authors Note:

In this essay I was inspired by a few aspects of Virginia Woolf’s writing style. In chapters two and three of A Room of One’s Own, Woolf looks at evidence to prove a point. I looked at various examples of media to show my stance on the matter of gender roles and the way they affect children. Woolf uses numerous examples, and I tried to look at multiple sources of media show my stance on the matter. In W2 I tried to make my opinions clear to the reader. I used evidence to do this, but I also talked about personal experiences with the sources of media. Lastly, I asked questions directly to the reader like Woolf does in chapter two. “anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there?” I tied these aspects together and ended the essay explaining my stance on the matter.