Louise Bernikow's Cinderell Saturday Afternoon At The Movies
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Louise Bernikow states in her essay “Cinderella: Saturday Afternoon at the Movies” that the ultimate goal for a woman is to obtain a husband that will provide her with the stability and the security status that she desires and that women obtain their goal by flaunting their beauty. Today’s audiences indeed still accept this as the goal for women as we watch many movies and television shows whose plotlines consist of plane jane’s working hard to make themselves beautiful and stunning in order to attract a man. In the children’s movie Shrek, for instance, we meet Princess Fiona in the beginning of the movie fixing her hair, perfecting her flashy green dress and grabbing a bouquet of flowers in order to look beautiful and presentable for her prince charming before he walks through…show more content… Her beauty is what catches Lord Farquaad’s attention in the first place, showing, once again, that beauty is key. We see her here as the damsel in distress and the “woman trying to secure marriage” (Bernikow). She is simply lying down awaiting to be rescued by a wealthy, nobleman. As Princess Fiona is trying to secure her wealth and future by marrying the king, she wishes to be a beautiful human and not a hideous ogre as she even states herself, “this is not how a princess is meant to look” (Shrek). In Shrek, Fiona as an ogre and Fiona as a human are contrasts. Fiona as an ogre appears shorter and heavier. On the other hand, Fiona as a human is shown as tall and slim with long, flowy auburn hair. Fiona is stereotyping herself by yearning to become everyone’s perception of perfect, tall, slim and pretty, thus giving the wrong image of what perfection is. Eventually, she is