We all have seen animated Disney movies. Most of us have grown up watching them. So, do you think that there is a slight possibility that it could have had a role to play in how we view women? Okay, so let me elaborate. In most of the animated movies by Disney, the princesses look very beautiful, their faces glow, they don’t have any skin issues, and most importantly they are all slim with thin waists. Isn’t that what we as women really want? Isn’t that exactly how the society expects us to be? Now, let’s talk about the villainous women characters in these movies. The women are either too thin, or are too fat. And their faces are just ugly with wrinkles, moles, crooked noses and so on. Have you seen pretty villains in the old animated movies?
In Albert Bandura’s famous experiment with bobo dolls, two groups of kids were made to sit a room with a tv. In one room, the kids were repeatedly shown a clip of the bobo doll being beaten up and the other group of kids were exposed to the bobo doll being treated gently. They then brought the same dolls into the rooms. The kids who exposed to violent content portrayed violent behaviours and the other group treated the doll with care. So why I am talking about this experiment right now?
What if, the kids who are exposed to these extreme beauty standards of the princesses in the Disney movies, grow up wanting to be like them or start to show hate to people who are very thin or very fat or have skin issues or moles, like the villains in such movies. So, in a young age, the kids learn what is beautiful and what is ugly, and then they might start to treat people differently. But now the world is progressing, we have Disney characters like Moana for a change. And hopefully that continues, because I don’t want my future generation to think that being thin makes them a princess and being healthy is ugly and villainous. I want every girl child to feel that she’s a princess no matter how she looks.
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