Mallory Six
Body Image vs. Reality Paper 1
October 2, 2009
Disney Princesses
Beauty vs. Ugliness
Walt Disney Princess movies are wonderful and enjoyable at any age. Even with their predictable plots of forbidden romance, a trial that a princess has to overcome to be with their one true love, or a villain trying to destroy the princess, children of all ages, as well as adults, are able to watch these movies countless times with a joy brought to their hearts. One thing that every Disney Princess movie has in common is that the princesses are always beautiful women and their villains/enemies are always portrayed as ugly. Why is it the ugly or average girls always finish last? Why do the beautiful princesses always get the prince? These are questions that nobody thinks about asking, because that is just the ways it is. By analyzing three Disney Princess movies, the reader will see the comparison and contrast between the beautiful princess and ugly villain and why society has these physical features for such roles.
In general all Disney Princesses are beautiful. With their perfect hair, like Belle, flawless face, like Snow White and ideal physical shape like Cinderella. They remind audiences of Barbie and show that beauty “become[s] the defining criteria for our status and out worth” (Gilman 16). But why do all the collection Princess and Barbie’s depicts these image? One idea is that this is the way reality truly is. Disney teaches children the harsh reality of life, beauty rules. Movies, commercials and advertisement shows audiences that if you are beautiful then that is all you need to succeed. In The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, she says that “women serve as aspiring beauties” (Wolf 66). Disney reinforces this ideal by making these looked-up-to princesses ideally perfect. Not only do they reinforce the reality of beauty rules, but they show that ugliness will always fail by always portraying the enemies, or villains, as ugly. In Disney’s Cinderella, Cinderella is gorgeous in all her features and her step sisters are considered ugly and annoying. Another layer that Disney uses to emphasize the dislike of the villains is making them be annoying and loud mouthed. Ugliness is not a likable trait in itself, but to add annoyance or being a loud mouth just reinforces the dislike. These ideas about how to treat beauty in society can be linked to Ivan Pavlov’s study with dogs. Ivan Pavlov would ring a bell whenever the bell rang the dogs would be given something to eat. Eventually every time the dogs hear the bell rung, they would start salivating for food. This is similar in the fact that every time a child watches a Disney movie and see’s an ugly person, they are always the villain. So after watching many Disney movies children start seeing every ugly person as bad. This then will not only stay within watching movies but will leak into real life, so that when a child sees an ugly person they automatically think of them as bad, or annoying, or not worth as much as a beautiful person.
In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast the whole story is based on looks and what people think about looks. Beast is not the necessarily the villain but is considered the ugly on in this story. Belle of course beautiful, as that is why she is named Belle, and the Beast named specifically because of his looks. The movie is depicting that the worst punishment is being something ugly. And Disney is also saying that if you are ugly and you know it, it would be best if you lock yourself away in a castle until you look good again. Again this proves that, in society, the harsh truth is that, if you are ugly you are not pleasant to look at, so you should just stay out of sight from the public eye. The movie gives the hard truth that if you are ugly, you do not belong in society. In the movie the Beast sorrowfully says, “She's so beautiful, and I'm... Well, look at me!” This just drives it home even more that ugly people do not think that they can even be loved solely based on their looks. This also adds to the idea that ugly people are un-rescuable. Society says that ugly people are almost not worth saving because beauty is the number one thing to offer and that is what they are lacking the most. Of course everybody knows that Belle eventually overlooks the Beasts physical features and falls in love with his personality, but the main plot is still that the Beast is ugly and an outsider because of it. The movie also gives the idea that if you are ugly, you do not belong in society, and you should stay out of sight.
Disney movies portrayal of ugly people being villains and the beautiful people as the wonderful princesses is really a matter of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Is the society the ones that say that ugly people are bad, so Disney just mocks it? Or do movies, like Disney Princess movies, put forth the action of disliking ugly people and tagging them as bad. Either way it is how society works, and even though children might not realize then, they are being programmed to think that beauty rules and ugliness fails.
The Definition of Beauty
Different Ages and Genders
Beauty is such a difficult subject to tackle because everybody has their own opinion of what is beautiful and rarely does someone have the exact same ideas as the next. With this statement alone, it is hard to understand how society has marked a certain kind of person as beautiful and others as not. Just because the magazines and television do not concede that these “non-beauties” do not fall in the category of beautiful, does not mean that they are ugly or not beautiful. I think that every women and man is beautiful in somebody’s eye. Just because I might not think they are beautiful, does not mean they are not. Who am I and the media to put a ranking on beauty? The formal definition of beauty is:
The quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).
With that being in mind of the different aspects of beauty, I interviewed five people and asked their own opinion on what they thought beautiful was and why. Also I asked them to name a person who they considered beautiful. The first person I asked was Hannah, a 10 year old female fifth grader. Hannah thought that what makes a person beautiful is, “The ways their hair is. Their make-up matching their outfits. Their outfits.”
By interviewing these individuals or different ages and genders the reader is able to see some similarities and differences. Hannah, 9, sees just physical characteristics as being beautiful, probably because that is what television says is beautiful and the comprehension of inner beauty is above her head right now. Taler and Zach, both in college, were able to look in a little deeper and see physical features but also some inner beauty. For both of them, personality characteristics were first listed, which shows that physical features are not the first things that attracts them to the other person. Physical features were still important in both of their interviews. Leanne and Reid, both in their forties, went straight for personality and physical features were not as important. By looking at these interviewees and comparing their answers, there are similarities within genders of the same age group and differences between age groups. Younger children are not able to see the inner beauty of people yet and solely see the physical features like hair, make-up, outfits. This is probably because lack of experience dealing with people and getting their source of beauty from watching television. The college age adults were able to see more inner beauty, because they know that just have the physical looks, is not always attractive. Although they did have personality answers, physical looks were still important, because they felt that you still have to be attractive to be beautiful. The older individuals focused more on personality and inner beauty than outer. Most likely because they know that outer beauty will fade and that their personality is what will carry on with them forever. One similarity is that every one of the interviewees all chose women as the person they thought was beautiful. Most likely because the word beautiful is more of a feminine word and associated more with women.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and there is no way of ranking beauty. That being said, women still constantly look to television and magazines to see how to become more beautiful to society. In Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth she says that, “women […] admitted to knowing, from the time they could first consciously think, that the ideal was someone tall, thin, white, and blond, a face without pores, asymmetry, or flaws, someone wholly perfect” (Wolf 1). Who says that those characteristics are beautiful? There are many people who do not like blondes, does not see thin people as attractive, and wants somebody who is short. I believe that confidence is a beautiful characteristic and I believe that, “women want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it” (Wolf 12). I think that if women are confident in their appearance then that’s just makes them even more beautiful than they already are. There is not set guidelines on beauty, everyone is different, so realize that you are beautiful without adding or subtracting.
Bibliography
Gilman, Susan Jane. "Klaus Barbie, and Other Dolls I'd Like to See." Body Outlaws. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2003. 14-21.
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
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