Monday, July 19, 2010

Advice to Young Girls from The Little Mermaid


(link via Boing Boing)

9 comments:

  1. Heh heh heh! There you have it.

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  2. The Seven Most Sexist Disney Characters
    http://lasoubrette.blogspot.com/2009/01/6-most-sexist-disnney-characters.html

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  3. Unfortunately, this spoof isn't that far removed from the trend we're seeing in Disney's own Consumer Products division. A lot of the merchandise tailored to Tinker Bell as well as the Disney Princesses has exuded that spoiled little rich girl mentality. There were some pretty abhorrent captions on kids' T-Shirts I was seeing in The Disney Stores for awhile. The Disney cartoon girls are being marketed just the same way as Disney's live pop princess, Miley Cyrus, sad to say.

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  4. I actually went back and decided to watch The Little Mermaid again.

    Unfortunately, this pretty much summed up my impression of Ariel's character. I cannot stand her now. :|

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  5. I don't believe that the Disney characters promote a 'spoiled little rich girl' mentality. Young girls playing princess are exercising their developing understanding of control and independence. To a little girl, being a princess is having it all, including exercising power in daily life. It’s not about girls being snobbish, haughty, sexist or slave drivers.

    The video here is not about how young girls react to the information presented to them by Disney films, but a comment on how sexist the characters and plots often are in children's films. Actually a lot of modern 'chick flicks' are pretty sexist these days too.

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  6. Hi Andrea,

    To be sure, the Disney Princess line of merchandise is quite benign, but there were some T-shirts and coffee mugs being sold through The Disney Stores at one time that had some captions that were pretty snarky. They seemed to have an attitude of "It's all about ME!" to them, which I thought went against the innocent charm of the characters. Sometimes Disney marketing types just don't see the damage they're doing in trying to be too clever and hip.

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  7. Mark... Never thought I'd say this but... it's official. You are spending too much time online! ;)

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  8. Reminders of why I couldn't stand Ariel as a character. :(

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