To this day Zoe still doesn't understand why I wouldn't let her watch Disney movies until she was 7 or 8. I found this graphic on Pinterest which somewhat simplistically illustrates a small part of my objections. Still I thought it was worth re-posting here.
(side note: I don't censor her anymore and she loves Disney, even if I'm not a fan.)
ADDED LATER
my sister wrote this in an email to me this morning:
"OH, what I was gonna tell you was about your post. As my girls loved the Disney movies, you know I let them watch them. X's favorite was the Aristocats but I made her that Cinderella dress for Halloween when she was 2 and she wore it every day for almost 2 years! (I have kept it) anyway the thing I really wanted to say was that for the induction into the National Honor Society X had to fill out a questionnaire. there were many questions ( What would you do with a fortune, what historical character would you like to meet, how do you want to impact the world, etc.) and when the student was inducted the MC chose a couple of things from the questionnaire to introduce the student to the audience. One of the questions was 'which fictional character would you like to be and why'. They didn't use this question to introduce X but she chose Spencer Reed from Criminal Minds (because he is super intelligent and has an eidetic memory) every girl introduced where this question was mentioned said she wanted to be either belle, Cinderella, jasmine, Ariel, snow white. etc. Every one a Disney princess, and I sat there thinking REALLY?!?! at 17 an NHS student can't think of a better fictional character then a Disney princess? and I wondered about a society that indoctrinated their young women in such an inconceivably unachievable destructive way. And there wasn't one boy who said he wanted to be the handsome prince."
graphic source:http://pinterest.com/pin/56576539038645759/
7 comments:
I agree with how you feel...
but I can't fight the river when it's flowing and my granddaughters and grand niece are all into playing dress up with all these characters. They look so cute when they do it. But I sure hope to balance it with their worthiness in other areas, like baseball and other sports and of course the big ones, intelligence and self worth.
My daughter LOVED Belle when she was little. Oddly enough, she didn't really like any of the other "princesses." I've always had mixed feelings about them, just like I did when I saw this graphic. Laugh... or cry? Guess I could say that about the whole Disney Machine.
Yeah, Zoe thinks that I am trying to judge a child's experience through an adult brain and am totally missing the mark. She thinks that small children don't pick up on such subliminal messages and for all I know she's right. She definitely feels "robbed" of that part of her childhood. I think Tara summed up what I really object to which is that Disney is in a sense a "machine" not unlike so much else that shapes us as people. I guess that means it is no different than so many other influences that we have to wade through and process as we become ourselves. I have made that mistake a lot with Zoe, trying to insulate her from things when I should have trusted her to work through them on her own.
Well... this makes you think.
I've never thought about the Disney's princesses like this but...wow.
I know when I taught preschool we'd have a herd of Disney princesses for Halloween.
~ A bunch of princesses are called a herd, so Noah tells me.
What a hilarious turn of phrase!
"A herd of princesses" sounds like a great basis for a poem or pop song! :)
Noah was working props for the Twelve Dancing Princesses play... he came home and said he almost missed a prop change because he had to wade he way through a herd of princessess. I had to chuckle at that:)
Make that *his way*
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