Disney Stereotypes

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As a child, many people grew up watching Disney films including myself. The magical world Disney took many girls and boys led them to want to be like their hero, girls wanted to be like Cinderella and boys wanted to be like Hercules. However, a magical world wasn’t the only place Disney took us. Disney also took us on a journey through a mishmash of racial and gender stereotypes that as children, we didn’t realize were present. As a child, we believed that Disney and all of his creations were pure magic. We would have never thought that someone who was wonderful enough to have imagined the Beast’s enchanted dancing dinnerware, a talking loveable mouse, and the magic of Tinkerbell could have been so flawed and discriminative. By looking further…show more content…
Those people also argue that Disney’s creations are all about bringing joy, laughter, and a little bit of magic to children (Mullins, 2014). I am not try to dispute this, in fact I believe that is exactly what they do for children, but they also set unattainable standards for those children who watch them; this is especially true for little girls. The people who say that Disney has no underlying/subliminal messages believe this because they think that Disney is all about “good clean family fun”. They also seem to believe that if Disney did create unrealistic standards for their children, that it was unintentional. They say that the reason why Ariel’s waist is so disproportionate to the rest of her body is because it was drawn that way to make her look better. They also say that Cinderella’s need of a fairy godmother was to bring the magic of hoping and dreams to life for small children. In reality, Cinderella needed a fairy godmother because she could never have gotten the man of her dreams without the fairy godmother’s complete makeover. Cinderella, with the flick of a wand, was completely changed from what she looked like to what she dreamed of looking like. This again, teaches children that if they wish hard enough and believe with all of their heart, that they can have anyone or anything they want. The motto in Cinderella is “a dream is a wish that your heart makes”, I feel that this from the very beginning is misleading to children (Walleston,

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