Little Girls Or Little Women: The Disney Princess Effect

Lianne George was a writer for New York magazine and Metro TV, and a reporter on the arts for the National Post. Currently, she is a senior editor for Maclean’s, in which the article, “Why Are We Dressing Our Daughters Like This” was published. Maclean’s is a popular magazine which covers national and worldwide political and social issues concerning families in the United States and Canada. The targeted audience is educated, in the higher middle class, and around forty years old with an equal men and women reader ratio. In the article, George clearly shows how in society younger girls are shifting towards dressing more provocatively from marketers introducing them to sexual trends. Although George uses generalized ideas and doesn’t seem to have a strong voice on the topic of girls being dressed more sexually, her goal to raise awareness is effectively presented by constructing a common ground with the readers, and allowing the readers to critically think about the problem by providing contradictions.

Across the world, little girls and little boys are being raised on gendered norms that determine how they will behave for the rest of their lives. Exposure to various types of media during their formative years instruct children on how they should look, feel, and behave. Consequently, adult women strive to emulate the fantasies they were exposed to through the Disney Princess films they were raised on. Disney Princesses offer a mold for what a successful woman looks like in terms of size, color, and physical sexuality. In modern society, countless marginalized groups are seeking equal representation in the media to accurately reflect how diverse the world truly is. Despite these movements, some companies seek to reinforce the traditional expectations

Teal Pfeifer in her short story “Devastating Beauty” discusses the effect of portraying skinny ladies/models that are wear dress size 0 or 1 as the ideal body size in most advertisements. The author points out the fact that,this can be damaging to most women, especially young women who view these adverts. The young women who see these adverts begin to feel displeased with their bodies, and a vast majority of them venture into different kinds of diet. She further emphasized that adult females are not the only ones affected, but also young girls (Pfeifer 2). According to Slim Hopes, about 80 percent of girls below the age of ten have either been on a diet before and have stated that they want to be skinner and more pretty. Now people equate skinny

In the article, “ Little Girls or Little women? The Disney Princess Effect,” author Stephanie Hanes educates the reader on the increasing sexualization of our younger generation of girls. Her organizational method of the article provides an easy and personal, yet factual explanation for her audience through her use of combining the appeals of ethos, pathos and logos.

When viewing advertisements, commercials, and marketing techniques in the sense of a rhetorical perspective, rhetorical strategies such as logos, pathos, and ethos heavily influence the way society decides what products they want to purchase. By using these strategies, the advertisement portrayal based on statistics, factual evidence, and emotional involvement give a sense of need and want for that product. Advertisements also make use of social norms to display various expectations among gender roles along with providing differentiation among tasks that are deemed with femininity or masculinity. Therefore, it is of the advertisers and marketing team of that product that initially have the ideas that influence

Disney as a brand has reinforced the binary view of gender. The gender binary view is “the belief that there are only two sexes based off of the biological aspect of gender, which in turn generates stereotypes and expectations based off of this binary” (Palczewski & DeFrancisco, 2014, 13). The Disney Princess films reinforce the binary view towards gender by upholding gendered expectations. This line started out as a marketing campaign for young girls to identify with the characters and purchase the associated products, but an unanticipated byproduct of this marketing strategy created a consumer market called “girlhood” (England, Descartes &Collier-Meek, 2011, p.556). Disney’s girlhood is arguably one of the biggest influences on young girls

Everyone always want or desire for something in this world. And to get their want they must somehow bargain for it; whether it was begging or persuading, they are still considered rhetorical techniques. In the story “Whose Body is This,” the author Katherine Haines talks about how society setted a certain standard of what a woman's body should look like, and it practically destroyed majority of woman’s self esteem. Haines further explains that pictures and advertisement on tv and magazines are teaching young girls that they need to look like the models in the picture. Girls don’t feel comfortable to be in their own skin, because they were not taught to love themselves for who they are, right in the beginning.

In this sincere essay, Teal Pfeifer creates an logical appeal that enlightens readers about the desperate need to boycott the magazines that use impractical female bodies, causing damage to young women.

African American rapper “Lil’Kim” publicly admitted to getting surgery and bleaching her skin, saying “really beautiful women that left me thinking, how I can I compete with that? Being a regular black girl wasn 't good enough.” This trend of women being unhappy with their bodies is not uncommon. 53% of 13-year-old American girls are unhappy with their bodies, this grows to 78% by the time they are 17 (Maine, 2011). Due to this, more women result to practices making themselves more “attractive”. One of these practices is the art of wearing cosmetics. Self-conscious women are more likely to wear cosmetics than less self-conscious women and report that they believe their social interactions are more pleasurable when they wear makeup (Miller &

Cinderella Ate My Daughter follows the life of Peggy Orenstein, a journalist as she takes on the impossible task of raising a child. As one source puts it, “Orenstein spends the 256 pages of Cinderella Ate My Daughter asking paradoxical questions and playing devil’s advocate. Despite the many questions and few answers, one thing remains clear: consumer culture has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, beginning at birth. Nearly every stage of life has been externally defined, marketed, and consequently, commoditized” (ACSD). After Orenstein explains how through marketing and media, girlhood is conceptualized, she describes the internal implications that defining girlhood can have on girls. The book ends with a chapter called girl-power.

In the article, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect” originally published on October 3, 2011 from the Christian Science Monitor, author Stephanie Hanes persuades parents that social media and advertisements are the reasons behind their daughter's wanting to mature too soon. Hanes shapes her argument by using logos and pathos techniques, and using considerate organization of the information.

Think back to the list of women that are taught in the public school system; it is not a long or diverse list of individuals. This is part of the Jason Porath’s idea behind Rejected Princesses, to expand the list. Telling stories of women too awesome, awful, or offbeat for kids’ movies. During his lecture, Jason Porath uses these women’s stories to explain the current status of the movie industry, as well as just to tell these crazy, amazing stories of these women’s lives.

Barbie is a doll that was introduced in 1959, she took the world by storm with her fashion and changing careers. She greatly influenced pop culture and the thoughts and beliefs of people. Barbie has been involved in many controversies over the years due to her body image and the high body expectations that she sets for young girls. She has had a significant impact on social values by conveying characteristics of female independence. Barbie has had positive and negative influences on fashion, interests and beliefs of a certain year, which continually changed throughout the decades.

RESEARCH QUESTION: The advertising for the Disney Princess line way of attracting little kids is by creating a character that kids identify themselves with that character and so this then makes them more likely to buy the products. Disney’s princess franchise has been recognized as a huge contributor to children's media and that also has contributed to this new “girlhood” that is explained as gender and consumption of related products.

The Call (2013) is promoting the objectification of women, because it has unnecessary underwear scenes, also they exploited a teenage girl and it contains images structured around a masculine viewer. I. INTRODUCTION: This section: * A trend that is developing in entertainment media today is the objectification of women in society. Specifically, in