6 ms·

Something that has bothered me for a long time about this attitude: People don't realize that some girls, in fact lots of girls, in fact I would say most of th

by blhack 13y ago

Something that has bothered me for a long time about this attitude: People don't realize that some girls, in fact lots of girls, in fact I would say most of the girls I know like stereotypical "girly" things. They would like to have a dress that is sparkly like the one in the photo. The idea that who they are is somehow shameful is disgusting, and it's disgusting to me that the third-wave feminists, or whatever the group is that is pushing this rhetoric, seems to get a free pass on it. I have five sisters. Do you know what most of them love? Baking, taking care of my nieces, dressing in sparkly clothes, the color pink, etc. etc. One of my sisters recently took up woodworking. She went to the store, she bought a table saw, and now she makes things for one of her kids. Know what she still loves? Know which version of this princess she would prefer? Should she be ashamed of herself for that? Is she not a real woman, is she weak? Is she submitting to the evil male patriarchy every time she puts on a pink t-shirt or does something sterotypically girly? Because THAT is what people like this are making them feel like. Like they're failures as women because of the things that they like. -- And as long as we're talking about gender roles, let's reverse it. I like being manly. I like wearing flannel, I like chopping wood, I like welding, I like using a band saw, I like having a beard, I like having a big knife strapped to my belt when I'm camping, and I like building things out of wood. Can you imagine if there was a large group of people labeling themselves as progressive intellectuals who went out of their way to decry this "manly" behavior as somehow shameful? Every time I fire up a welder, I'm failing the rest of my gender for it. Every time I light a camp fire, I'm pushing my gender back. I should get rid of my stereotypically mannish flannel, and get something more progressive. A beard? What, so that people can look at me as some sort of manly object? Shave it off! Don't let them hold you down! The most jarring thing about this entire subset of discussions is that it seems to happen in communities that otherwise consider themselves intellectual. Please help me understand why. Why is okay to tell my sisters that they should all be ashamed of themselves?

sp332 13y ago
If a woman is "typically" girly, that's fine. But saying a girl can't be anything else is wrong. This particular character was designed differently, and Disney is saying: no, girls can only be this way.
DanBC 13y ago
It's great that some children like sparkly princess phase type toys. The market is flooded with toys and films and characters for those children. It's great that some children like tomboy style characters. There's now one less character.
- blhack 13y ago
  Look at how this discussion gets framed. I see it every single time. It's not "oh, well now there is one less non-stereotypical character for me to idolize", it's "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!". How should girls that like sparkly things feel when they read this? Are they regressive? Should they be ashamed with themselves along with Disney?
  - silencio 13y ago
    They should just understand that other girls have different preferences and it's okay to be different and like what you want to like. > "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!" In this case it's regressive because Merida was originally a tomboy changed into the stereotype of a Disney Princess. I would not be outraged about this if Merida was originally that way in Brave.
    - blhack 13y ago
      Why is that regressive? They presumably polled a test group and found that most people preferred a sparkly dress instead of a black one. My niece will probably prefer the sparkly version of the princess. She's 10. That's not regression, that's marketing.
      - sp332 13y ago
        Why do you presume that? There's no basis to think that. Also: If Disney already has a dozen sparkly girly princesses, adding one with a different target market should expand their customer base. Adding another to the same group might just cannibalize sales of other existing sparkly princesses.
zdean 13y ago
There is a HUGE valley that separates the embraced traits you're describing about the women who surround you and the princess myth that Disney pushes on little girls (and boys!). The director is not attacking women who want to bake, dress in pink, or are nurturing. She is fuming because Disney doesn't want to allow that a female character might not want ANY of that and still be feminine.
king_jester 13y ago
> The idea that who they are is somehow shameful is disgusting, and it's disgusting to me that the third-wave feminists, or whatever the group is that is pushing this rhetoric, seems to get a free pass on it. It's not that liking girly things is shameful or bad. People should be free to like whatever they want. The problem is that this character had design and writing elements that tried to make it different from that girly princess mold, but over time those facets of the character have been removed to make a more stereotyped character. Keep in mind the original director and originator of this character, Brenda Chapman, was fired from the director role of Brave (she was the first female director for Pixar). > Should she be ashamed of herself for that? Is she not a real woman, is she weak? Is she submitting to the evil male patriarchy every time she puts on a pink t-shirt or does something sterotypically girly? Not at all. However, it is good to have diverse representations and there is a significant lack of representations of women that don't fall into a particular set of stereotypes and tropes. That a character that was created to be different from those tropes is being forced back into them by a corporation known for not having diverse representations of women is the issue.
silencio 13y ago
There is nothing wrong with liking stereotypical "girly" things, or ten of the eleven Disney Princesses being stereotypical girls. There is also nothing wrong with being a tomboy, or having one of the eleven Disney Princesses being a tomboy. While I'm sure there are some extremists out there that want to see nothing but tomboys and hate pink colored things, I think (and hope) most people are just outraged that the only tomboy Princess was changed into something that she clearly didn't want in the movie. This isn't saying that being stereotypically "girly" is bad, but that being a tomboy is. Nobody's asking for the likes of Snow White or Cinderella to become a tomboy 'cause fuck being a girly girl. As someone that grew up as a tomboy but likes baking and knitting and dressing up, I would vastly prefer a Merida that stayed true to the movie rather than yet another girly Princess because goodness knows there are enough of those. And I don't think protesting Disney for this change to Merida is saying that being girly is a bad thing.
- blhack 13y ago
  I haven't seen this movie, only the previews... Isn't the princess in the movie an archer? Why can't giving her a sparkly dress mean: "It's okay to wear a sparkly dress and do archery at the same time! Do whatever you want!" That seems...more in line with the idea of liberating people from binary gender roles.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    This movie presented a character who wanted to do her own thing, but because of societal conventions was being forced into her 'traditional' role. The movie (among other things) explores this and ultimately gives her the freedom she (and apparently you) desired. It doesn't say that not being a tomboy is shameful, it was intended to show that being a tomboy was not shameful. What's wrong with having a choice? Should all movies show men only doing manly things? Is it shameful for men to be in less than stereotyped roles? The presentation shown to many girls is precisely that they are expected to fall into certain roles. Breaking that mold is not a bad thing.
  - silencio 13y ago
    As much as I now want to see the Disney Princesses do that while in their finest dresses... In the movie, she objects to the sparkly dress because it's too confining and isn't anything like what she wants to wear. In the archery scene where she does wear the sparkly dress, she causes a mini uproar because you can see her corset and underthings as she rips the dress in the process of showing everyone up. Speaking of which, it's the same corset that her mother helps her put on in a painful scene before the archery one and she's told she has to conform to a specific set of beauty "ideals" to be a fitting princess and heir to the throne. So, seeing Merida in the sparkly dress she hated so much and without her bow and arrows is pretty distressing to me.
ceejayoz 13y ago
> People don't realize that some girls, in fact lots of girls, in fact I would say most of the girls I know like stereotypical "girly" things. They would like to have a dress that is sparkly like the one in the photo. Is there a shortage of sparkly dresses in the Disney princess stable?
thetrb 13y ago
I think you're missing the point here. The creator of Merida designed here after a real person and didn't follow the standard Disney way of how a princess looks like. Now Disney gives here a makeover and thereby removes some of the attributes that the character and the movie was about. If I were in the position of the Merida creator I would be upset as well. I also have 2 daughters who are big fans of the Disney princesses, but I would very much like it if they at least had the option to chose a princess that doesn't follow the standard formula of the previous 10 Disney princesses.
Amadou 13y ago
> Why is okay to tell my sisters that they should all be ashamed of themselves? That's begging the question. It isn't about telling people to be ashamed of themselves at all. It is about changing society to have more appreciation for people who don't fit the traditional stereotypes. This stuff is all around us, it is the cultural equivalent of the air we breath - so omnipresent that we don't even notice it. When I looked at the before and after pictures, I didn't even notice anything particularly different between them. That sort of pervasiveness means lots of people have internalized it and will take it as an attack on their person, but that isn't the intent. It may be an unavoidable side-effect though, it seems like anytime social norms are challenged - gay marriage, ERA, miscegenation, universal suffrage, school integration, etc, there are people who take those challenges as a personal attack rather than a societal reform.
Gorbzel 13y ago
Wait, wait, stop everything. You haven't seen the movie, so you have no first-hand knowledge of the relevant issues the co-director is trying to address. Specifically, the issue is not feminine identity as a whole (or the fact that Disney has 8-9 other princesses who have that demographic pretty much sewn up) but that one of the biggest themes in Brave is that Merida doesn't want to be the stereotypical princess that society says she has to be; she can and does choose to be the tomboy archer who goes her own way. BUT NO! Intelligent discussion and on-topic conversation be damned, you have something to say about your five sisters and how they like to bake in sparkly clothes while you like to be manly! GREAT! GO DO THAT! NO ONE IS SAYING YOU CAN'T. But that's not good enough. Instead, you create a contrarian strawman that has nothing to do with the OP but that riles up the internet masses who want to defend personal visions of gender identity which have never been in question. If internet comments mattered, I'd call your behavior shameful, but that'd be overselling it. Instead I'll just point out that you have no room to speak about intellectual communities if this is your modus operandi.
btilly 13y ago
Anyone who walks away from this article thinking that the above is a reasonable interpretation of what is going on here has completely missed the point. Nobody seriously objects to lots of girls liking sparkling pretty things. Or to there being lots of role models for that. The objection is to the complete lack of alternate role models for girls who don't fit into that mold. And for mutilating a character who emphatically was not of that mold. To draw an ice cream analogy, this is chocolate lovers upset that they are being offered every variety of vanilla, and nowhere any chocolate.
glomph 13y ago
No one should be saying that they should be ashamed of themselves. The problem is when people get the impression they should be ashamed of themselves for not filling these roles. This happens a lot more than the way around you are describing.
mieses 13y ago
You should be ashamed of yourself for accessorizing with flannel and other manly interests precisely because you do understand the anti-intellectualism behind it. You know better, you know you could be spending time on wiser pursuits, and yet you do it. It's not the end of the world. You're not evil. We all need to try harder.
johnbm 13y ago
Of course, the crux of the matter is that these feminists still think Disney princesses are the most important role models for girls, thus confirming their own bias, and yet provide no alternatives of their own. Are girls supposed to look up to the shrieking harpies of Femen instead?
abraininavat 13y ago
This has got to be flame bait. No one is this stupid.

by blhack 13y ago

sp332 13y ago

If a woman is "typically" girly, that's fine. But saying a girl can't be anything else is wrong. This particular character was designed differently, and Disney is saying: no, girls can only be this way.

DanBC 13y ago

It's great that some children like sparkly princess phase type toys. The market is flooded with toys and films and characters for those children. It's great that some children like tomboy style characters. There's now one less character.

blhack 13y ago
Look at how this discussion gets framed. I see it every single time. It's not "oh, well now there is one less non-stereotypical character for me to idolize", it's "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!". How should girls that like sparkly things feel when they read this? Are they regressive? Should they be ashamed with themselves along with Disney?
- silencio 13y ago
  They should just understand that other girls have different preferences and it's okay to be different and like what you want to like. > "look at this regressive stuff! How dare they!" In this case it's regressive because Merida was originally a tomboy changed into the stereotype of a Disney Princess. I would not be outraged about this if Merida was originally that way in Brave.
  - blhack 13y ago
    Why is that regressive? They presumably polled a test group and found that most people preferred a sparkly dress instead of a black one. My niece will probably prefer the sparkly version of the princess. She's 10. That's not regression, that's marketing.
    - sp332 13y ago
      Why do you presume that? There's no basis to think that. Also: If Disney already has a dozen sparkly girly princesses, adding one with a different target market should expand their customer base. Adding another to the same group might just cannibalize sales of other existing sparkly princesses.

zdean 13y ago

There is a HUGE valley that separates the embraced traits you're describing about the women who surround you and the princess myth that Disney pushes on little girls (and boys!). The director is not attacking women who want to bake, dress in pink, or are nurturing. She is fuming because Disney doesn't want to allow that a female character might not want ANY of that and still be feminine.

king_jester 13y ago

> The idea that who they are is somehow shameful is disgusting, and it's disgusting to me that the third-wave feminists, or whatever the group is that is pushing this rhetoric, seems to get a free pass on it. It's not that liking girly things is shameful or bad. People should be free to like whatever they want. The problem is that this character had design and writing elements that tried to make it different from that girly princess mold, but over time those facets of the character have been removed to make a more stereotyped character. Keep in mind the original director and originator of this character, Brenda Chapman, was fired from the director role of Brave (she was the first female director for Pixar). > Should she be ashamed of herself for that? Is she not a real woman, is she weak? Is she submitting to the evil male patriarchy every time she puts on a pink t-shirt or does something sterotypically girly? Not at all. However, it is good to have diverse representations and there is a significant lack of representations of women that don't fall into a particular set of stereotypes and tropes. That a character that was created to be different from those tropes is being forced back into them by a corporation known for not having diverse representations of women is the issue.

silencio 13y ago

There is nothing wrong with liking stereotypical "girly" things, or ten of the eleven Disney Princesses being stereotypical girls. There is also nothing wrong with being a tomboy, or having one of the eleven Disney Princesses being a tomboy. While I'm sure there are some extremists out there that want to see nothing but tomboys and hate pink colored things, I think (and hope) most people are just outraged that the only tomboy Princess was changed into something that she clearly didn't want in the movie. This isn't saying that being stereotypically "girly" is bad, but that being a tomboy is. Nobody's asking for the likes of Snow White or Cinderella to become a tomboy 'cause fuck being a girly girl. As someone that grew up as a tomboy but likes baking and knitting and dressing up, I would vastly prefer a Merida that stayed true to the movie rather than yet another girly Princess because goodness knows there are enough of those. And I don't think protesting Disney for this change to Merida is saying that being girly is a bad thing.

blhack 13y ago
I haven't seen this movie, only the previews... Isn't the princess in the movie an archer? Why can't giving her a sparkly dress mean: "It's okay to wear a sparkly dress and do archery at the same time! Do whatever you want!" That seems...more in line with the idea of liberating people from binary gender roles.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  This movie presented a character who wanted to do her own thing, but because of societal conventions was being forced into her 'traditional' role. The movie (among other things) explores this and ultimately gives her the freedom she (and apparently you) desired. It doesn't say that not being a tomboy is shameful, it was intended to show that being a tomboy was not shameful. What's wrong with having a choice? Should all movies show men only doing manly things? Is it shameful for men to be in less than stereotyped roles? The presentation shown to many girls is precisely that they are expected to fall into certain roles. Breaking that mold is not a bad thing.
- silencio 13y ago
  As much as I now want to see the Disney Princesses do that while in their finest dresses... In the movie, she objects to the sparkly dress because it's too confining and isn't anything like what she wants to wear. In the archery scene where she does wear the sparkly dress, she causes a mini uproar because you can see her corset and underthings as she rips the dress in the process of showing everyone up. Speaking of which, it's the same corset that her mother helps her put on in a painful scene before the archery one and she's told she has to conform to a specific set of beauty "ideals" to be a fitting princess and heir to the throne. So, seeing Merida in the sparkly dress she hated so much and without her bow and arrows is pretty distressing to me.

ceejayoz 13y ago

> People don't realize that some girls, in fact lots of girls, in fact I would say most of the girls I know like stereotypical "girly" things. They would like to have a dress that is sparkly like the one in the photo. Is there a shortage of sparkly dresses in the Disney princess stable?

thetrb 13y ago

I think you're missing the point here. The creator of Merida designed here after a real person and didn't follow the standard Disney way of how a princess looks like. Now Disney gives here a makeover and thereby removes some of the attributes that the character and the movie was about. If I were in the position of the Merida creator I would be upset as well. I also have 2 daughters who are big fans of the Disney princesses, but I would very much like it if they at least had the option to chose a princess that doesn't follow the standard formula of the previous 10 Disney princesses.

Amadou 13y ago

> Why is okay to tell my sisters that they should all be ashamed of themselves? That's begging the question. It isn't about telling people to be ashamed of themselves at all. It is about changing society to have more appreciation for people who don't fit the traditional stereotypes. This stuff is all around us, it is the cultural equivalent of the air we breath - so omnipresent that we don't even notice it. When I looked at the before and after pictures, I didn't even notice anything particularly different between them. That sort of pervasiveness means lots of people have internalized it and will take it as an attack on their person, but that isn't the intent. It may be an unavoidable side-effect though, it seems like anytime social norms are challenged - gay marriage, ERA, miscegenation, universal suffrage, school integration, etc, there are people who take those challenges as a personal attack rather than a societal reform.

Gorbzel 13y ago

Wait, wait, stop everything. You haven't seen the movie, so you have no first-hand knowledge of the relevant issues the co-director is trying to address. Specifically, the issue is not feminine identity as a whole (or the fact that Disney has 8-9 other princesses who have that demographic pretty much sewn up) but that one of the biggest themes in Brave is that Merida doesn't want to be the stereotypical princess that society says she has to be; she can and does choose to be the tomboy archer who goes her own way. BUT NO! Intelligent discussion and on-topic conversation be damned, you have something to say about your five sisters and how they like to bake in sparkly clothes while you like to be manly! GREAT! GO DO THAT! NO ONE IS SAYING YOU CAN'T. But that's not good enough. Instead, you create a contrarian strawman that has nothing to do with the OP but that riles up the internet masses who want to defend personal visions of gender identity which have never been in question. If internet comments mattered, I'd call your behavior shameful, but that'd be overselling it. Instead I'll just point out that you have no room to speak about intellectual communities if this is your modus operandi.

btilly 13y ago

Anyone who walks away from this article thinking that the above is a reasonable interpretation of what is going on here has completely missed the point. Nobody seriously objects to lots of girls liking sparkling pretty things. Or to there being lots of role models for that. The objection is to the complete lack of alternate role models for girls who don't fit into that mold. And for mutilating a character who emphatically was not of that mold. To draw an ice cream analogy, this is chocolate lovers upset that they are being offered every variety of vanilla, and nowhere any chocolate.

glomph 13y ago

No one should be saying that they should be ashamed of themselves. The problem is when people get the impression they should be ashamed of themselves for not filling these roles. This happens a lot more than the way around you are describing.

mieses 13y ago

You should be ashamed of yourself for accessorizing with flannel and other manly interests precisely because you do understand the anti-intellectualism behind it. You know better, you know you could be spending time on wiser pursuits, and yet you do it. It's not the end of the world. You're not evil. We all need to try harder.

johnbm 13y ago

Of course, the crux of the matter is that these feminists still think Disney princesses are the most important role models for girls, thus confirming their own bias, and yet provide no alternatives of their own. Are girls supposed to look up to the shrieking harpies of Femen instead?

abraininavat 13y ago

This has got to be flame bait. No one is this stupid.