Portrayal of Gender Roles in Disney Films

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Portrayal of Gender Roles in Disney Films Gender roles are present in every Western society and culture today. One’s portrayal of gender roles begins at a young age, not only at home through parents, but also through the media. The media is one of the largest influential factors of gender role portrayal. There has been concern about the accuracy of the portrayals of men and women in media, which may not be proper depictions (England, Descartes and Collier-Meek 2011: 556). It is through these reinforced meanings of masculinity and femininity that children’s gender-role socialization is being distorted. Such distortion begins at quite a young age and this kind of exposure may be problematic (England et al. 2011: 557). A more specific medium of the media that is a powerful socializing agent in the lives of children is movies, and particularly movies by Disney. Disney is the worlds second largest media firm, and is one of the first factors that affect a child’s gender role portrayal (Martz, Bazzini, Curtin, Joslin, Regan 2010: 353). Even though children may be unaware that these views are being formed, the prince and princess characters in many Disney movies portray traditional masculine and feminine characteristics. These later on build the stereotypical gender images that are related to these traditional characteristics (Ross 2004: 55). Children start to associate certain attributes to men and women and this is how their portrayal is shaped. In many of the fairy-tale Disney movies, male and female characters are overrepresented and having such portrayals of gender roles may weaken children’s beliefs, expectations and aspirations because they cannot aspire to do something other than what is presented in the Disney films (England et al. 2011: 557). Gender role portrayals in Disney movies influence children’s beliefs and ideas about gender and sexuality, social

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