feel the gray

Gender Socialization in “The Little Mermaid”

 Got to write about Disney for my last paper in Women’s Studies. Dream come true.

          My mother championed an earnest effort to raise my two brothers and me in a progressive, gender-neutral environment. But it is impossible to raise children in a cultural vacuum. One animated film franchise that became a ubiquitous cultural force penetrated her No-Barbie-No-Dress-Up shield and became one of my childhood obsessions. The Disney Corporation has produced many animated film features but is perhaps best known for its memorable line of princesses. But my favorite Disney films—The Lion King (1994), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and The Jungle Book (1967)—reflected my lack of interest in anthropomorphic toys and figures. However one princess’s fantastic undersea life spent talking to animals made me identify with her and want to live in her skin. The princess Ariel from the 1989 film The Little Mermaid broke through my indifference to tiaras and dresses with her adventurous character. But in spite of her modern spirit, The Little Mermaid, like the other Disney princess films, displays traditional gender roles including the importance of romance, beauty, the “perfect” female body, and the subordination of women’s voices.

            The Little Mermaid, like many other Disney films, was derived from classical fairy lore. Danish author Hans Christian Anderson created the original story in 1837, which had a much more macabre atmosphere and ended with the mermaid sacrificing herself for the unrequited love of her prince and dissolving into sea foam. The 1989 Disney interpretation nixed this unhappy ending and opted instead for the marriage between Ariel and her prince, Eric, thus promoting the value of receiving a man’s love and affection as evidence of a woman’s ultimate success in life. The young audience is taught through the princess-archetype that achieving the monogamous commitment of a man, and especially a powerful man, is the only sure way to gain happiness by assuming a stable status in our patriarchal society. The “heterosexual romance is the… central conclusion to the movie” and the formation of the romance promotes the idea of “love at first sight” and “against all odds” (England et all). The heroine Ariel is unlike many of her predecessors in that she takes an active command in progressing her desire for the romantic relationship, which breaks out of the traditional passive female role. However the focus of all of her energy and dreams is the love of the prince character, thus subjugating her welfare to his will. This illustrates the Principle of Least Interest as articulated by Waller and Hill that basically asserts that “women’s caring, like their openness, gives them less power in the relationship” (Henley and Freeman). The princess story arch, as employed in The Little Mermaid, promotes the notion that heterosexual romantic love is the ultimate goal for all women, and thusly that women are dependent on the return of these affections from men.

            The romantic development of The Little Mermaid for the greater part of the film is conducted while Ariel is mute, having lost her voice to the sea witch Ursula in exchange for human legs. As a result, Ariel employs traditionally feminine body language and facial expression to win Eric’s affections. The mechanisms of physical wooing, including “batting eyes,” “puckering lips,” and sexualized “body language” are referenced satirically in the film. However Ariel’s gaze and demeanor throughout her courtship with Eric follow gestures of feminine submission such as lowering eyes, remaining silent, backing down and cuddling at appropriate times (Henley and Freeman). Young girls watching this film are taught to gain affection not through the expression of their thoughts and voice but through physical affectation and coyness.

            Ariel of The Little Mermaid conforms to the beauty archetype of Disney princesses and her beauty is capitalized as one of her most important characteristics throughout the film. She has the typical “extremely pale skin tone, small waist, delicate limbs and full breasts” of the troupe of Disney princesses, and this physique is further accentuated by Ariel’s skimpy shell-based wardrobe (England et all). As she is reminded by the sea witch Ursula, Ariel can employ her “looks and pretty face” to win the affections of the prince. The promotion of beauty as a currency of manipulation is actually “an expression of power relations in which women must unnaturally compete for resources that men have appropriated for themselves” (Wolf). In her essay titled “Split Skins: Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid,” Susan White even goes so far as to liken the modification of Ariel’s body in the film to plastic surgery and the urge to alter one’s body for the purpose of outside approval. The importance given to physical appearance and its role in gaining romantic affection is another point where this modern heroine regresses into bowing to patriarchal standards.

            Ariel undoubtedly began the legacy of the new, modern princesses of Disney. She was the first to break out of certain traditional gender roles by wanting to explore and being portrayed as assertive and independent (England et all). But in spite of her adventurous spirit, her demeanor throughout her romantic courtship is noticeably traditional, as her voice is literally silenced and she employs feminine beauty and body language to win affection. Disney is undeniably a powerful cultural and social force and has played an important role in the promotion of the princess romance. Through my consumption of Disney films such as The Little Mermaid I was socialized to believe that girls should be beautiful, subordinate, affectionate and should focus on heterosexual romance as a means to achieve happiness. No matter how adventurous or independent a character like Ariel may seem, her dependence on her physical appearance and patriarchal affection promote the socialization of women as second-class.

Works Cited

England, Dawn E., Lara Descartes, Melissa A. Collier-Meek. “Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses.” Springer Science and Business Media. February 2011.       

Henley, Nancy and Jo Freeman. “The Sexual Politics of Interpersonal Behavior.” Women: Images and Realities, McGraw Hill. 2008.

White, Susan. “Split Skins, Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid.”Collins, J & Radner, H. “Film Theory Goes to the Movies”. 1993.

Wolf, Naomi. “The Beauty Myth.” Women: Images and Realities, McGraw Hill. 2008.

Best Pick-up Line Someone Told Me Last Night at Havana Club, Atlanta

Him: ”I am Iraqi. But I’m not a terrorist.”

Me: ”… Haha and I’m not a fucking Republican.”

Well look at the way she dressed, what do you expect?

Since I’m terrible at tumbling and a poor poster I’m going to be lazy and just post a journal entry I did for Women Studies on sexual violence against women.

Here is the Broad Street Review article mentioned in the essay:
http://www.broadstreetreview.com/index.php/main/article/male_sex_abuse_and_female_naivete/

Here is the blog article by Scott Adams, author of Dilbert. Even if you don’t read my silly essay READ THIS BLOG POST and the subsequent comments: it will INCENSE you if you have any sense of justice.
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/pegs_and_holes/

The ubiquitous mindset of privatization and individualism that has led to greater shaming of the losers of our society has not confined itself to issues of socio-economic status: the current dialogue on sexual violence continues to inflict blame and shaming on its victims rather than its perpetrators. In the spirit of the American Dream, we want to believe that one person can make their own destiny and that people who do good will only receive good fortune and accordingly bad things only happen to bad people (Lerner, 1980). Those who divert the blame of sexual violence to the victims often cite the circumstance, situation, or habits of the victims while asserting that they were just inviting this crime. They will also claim that sexual violence is part of the nature of the male sex, and that women should censor their lives to accommodate this threat. We desperately need a paradigm shift away from these slogans that perpetuate a society of male domination and require half the population to live in shame and fear of violence.

            Dan Rottenberg, in his 2011 article for the Broad Street Review titled “What Should Women Do?” details exactly that: how women should accommodate their every move to ward off the pervasive threat of male sexual violence. Part of the article discusses the gang rape of CBS journalist Lara Logan while she was reporting in Egypt in 2011. Coupled with the article is a photo of Logan in a low-cut top with the caption “A journalist, or a sex symbol?” Rottenberg says in the article that having seen that photo of Logan made him think “…that women also need to take sensible precautions before they’re victimized.” Although it is unlikely that Logan wore that same outfit while reporting from a volatile nation already harboring animosity toward the United States, regardless of the situation Rottenberg made the presumption that a woman’s body will cause a man to leave his senses. Gilmartin says the following of the struggle women suffer in the environment of sexualization: “While the societal expectation is that women are supposed to make themselves attractive to men and are rewarded for doing so, they simultaneously are blamed if these same men view them as sex objects and/or attempt to sexually assault them.” What Rottenberg ignored, as he pointed out in his later mea culpa, was the fact that while some people do send out signals to attract sexual partners, no one wants to be raped or sexually assaulted. A woman should be granted the autonomy to dress attractively for the partner she chooses and not have strangers on the street assume that her body is an object “up for grabs.”

            Even more offensive that Dan Rottenberg’s article dictating to women how to avoid being victimized is Scott Adams’ blog post nearly lamenting that society doesn’t allow men to fulfill violent urges. Adams, the author of the popular Dilbert comic, suggests that “In general, society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires.” Certainly sex is a natural desire, for women as well as men, but violent sexual acts are a different issue entirely. As Lanette Fisher-Hertz points out in her article Protecting Male Abusers and Punishing the Women Who Confront Them male abuse of young women has been eroticized to the point of normalization in our culture. Sexual violence, likewise, has been called a crime of passion, as if it is a normal part of sexuality. But sexual violence, like other forms of violence, is a crime of power and especially hegemonic masculine power.

            Our society needs to cease treating these incidents of sexual violence like isolated events resulting from individual pathology. We need to be honest about the double bind created by the over-sexualization of women and girls and the culture of violence we have come to accept. It is an insult to our humanity that we continue to accept the victimization of women and predation of men as part of our sexual nature.