Disney

Disney Fairy Tale Women

Disney has made many traditional fairy tales popular. The effect of how women are portrayed in these tales is tremendous. Good examples are Snow White, the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. 

The stereotypical Disney heroine is beyond beautiful but passive until they get rescued and chosen by a handsome prince. Heroines are always helpless, submissive, good behaving, and victimized by someone for their good looks. All the powerful women are evil, ugly and wicked; almost always only part human as in Sleeping beauty, the Ogress queen and in Snow White the Queen. The beautiful, fairest of them all, girl always ends up with their prince charming, and they will get married without even knowing each other, usually day after they meet. Heroine always wins in the end, and marriage and wealth is not so surprisingly always the prize. 

Marcia R Lieberman points out the image of women in fairy tales in her essay “’Some Day My Prince Will Come’: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale.” As we have seen with all the Disney books and motion pictures one specific characteristic in a girl, woman matters as they “focus on beauty as a girl’s most valuable asset, perhaps her only valuable one.” (Lieberman, 385) Beauty is all there is, all one needs and life will be lived happily ever after.