How effective has the Walt Disney Company been in
producing better role models for young girls’
development and wellbeing?
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, Introduction:
The role of women has continuously evolved throughout history. From the late 19th century, there
has been a surge in socio-political rights and conventions for women. This journey has been
accomplished primarily through the Feminist Movement, which included several phases that
enabled women to be able to vote in 1918 and be recognised as equals (Rampton, 2008). This was
especially driven by World War II, which started in 1939, as when the men went to war, women had
to maintain the workforce (Stover, 2013; Trulson, 2017). Despite this, the media's representation of
women is seemingly not equivalent to the role of women today. This issue is evident by the fact that
many films, such as Avatar (2009) and The Avengers (2012), still fail to pass the Bechdel test. This
test only requires a film to have two female characters that talk to each other about something
other than a male (Lexico, n.d.; Bechdel Test Movie List, 2020). In many, the women tend to be
portrayed in a sexist and misogynistic manner, such as being presented as obedient, fragile and
dependent (Lee, 2018). Children are young, naive and impressionable (Lohmann, 2014). Yet, these
negative images of women extend even to media targeted at children, such as The Walt Disney
Company (England, Descartes and Collier-Meek, 2011).
The Walt Disney Company is one of the biggest media organisations globally and has been described
as a powerful influence on children (Towbin et al., 2004; Wiersma, 2000). The influence Disney has is
due to the media serving as a learning space for children (Binkley, 2016). Thus, Disney can hugely
impact how children see the world, especially during such a formative stage of their life(Binkley,
2016; Bai, 2020). Hence, it is important to challenge the antiquated depictions of women in these
films because children can aspire to emulate these characters as role models. A role model is a
person who is looked up to by others as an example to be imitated (Lexico, n.d.).
My essay aims to evaluate how successful The Walt Disney Company has been at altering their
depiction of women and to discuss how their films impact the viewers watching. I will do this by
focusing solely on its full-length animated films. Primarily, the Disney Princess films, as these have
been a favoured type of children’s entertainment for more than 60 years (Towbin et al., 2004). The
main audience of these films are young girls who can personally identify with the characters, so I will
be focusing on how these films affect them (England, Descartes and Collier-Meek, 2011). The two
time periods I will consider when evaluating this are the modern animated films and traditional
films. I defined modern films as the films made in the time period between 1980-2020. Whereas,
traditional films were made between 1930-1960. These films were made at a time with more strict
social conventions. The factors I will consider when assessing the progression of characters are
behaviour, roles and responsibilities as well as physical appearance. These factors will help me reach
a balanced conclusion to whether The Walt Disney Company has been effective in producing better
role models over time for young girls.
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