Around a month ago, I saw an alarming statistic. One that initially shocked me but wore off after some time.
A recent study showed that Disney princesses on average spoke less than their male counterparts. To be fair, Ariel was mute for the majority of her movie and Aurora & Snow White were comatose for a huge portion of theirs. But still, it doesn’t excuse it.
However, surprisingly, since 1989 (the release of the classic “The Little Mermaid”), it’s gotten worse. To put it in perspective, here’s the percentage of the amount of times men spoke in Disney films. In the late 80s to 90s: 68% in “The Little Mermaid”, 71% in “Beauty And The Beast”, 76% in “Pocahontas”, and 77% in “Mulan”. And shockingly, women spoke less than 50% in both “The Princess And The Frog” and “Frozen”.
What messages are we sending our children? That girls ought to remain silent and rely on their looks while guys get to lead? But beyond that, what messages are we sending to even the adult viewers? It may sound silly but it matters what kind of messages we’re sending no matter who’s watching.
Although, there has been some improvement. During the Renaissance era of Disney films (the period in which classic like “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty And The Beast”, “The Lion King”, etc. were released), around 38% of praise directed towards female characters were about looks with only 25% of praise being centered around abilities. Recently, compliments towards female characters about their looks lowered to around 22%. And revisiting an earlier point, 52% of dialogue in “Brave” and 74% of dialogue in “Tangled” were by female characters.
How have we gotten there, you ask? Thanks to characters like Mulan (“Mulan”, Tiara (“The Princess And The Frog”), Merida (“Brave”), and most recently, Princesses Anna & Elsa (“Frozen”). These girls have proven that girls don’t have to be the damsel in distress or the sidekick. They don’t have to wait for the boy to save the day. Their lives don’t have to amount to who they’ve married or the kids they have. They can be brave (pun sort of intended) and strong. They can kick butt and save the day. They can be princesses AND queens. And the compliments they receive don’t have to be based solely on looks but on other things as well.
And isn’t that a lesson we can teach our boys too? After all, I’m a guy and a huge lifelong Disney fan. And yet at times, I found the amount of misogyny in Disney movies to be quite off-putting. But I’m happy to say that it looks like things are turning around with Disney’s recent releases. But as the statistics shows, we have a long way to go.
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