This paper examines the creation of female archetypes
in the classic Disney Princess films, with the emphases of villains Vs heroes.
It concludes that Disney’s female body on screen has been in support of
patriarchal stereotypes over a long period, up until the films Brave and
Frozen. Their innovative characters broke such stereotypes and introduced a new
female hero narrative; one that is more ‘female friendly’. The Literature
review is integrated throughout this paper.
Within the Disney animated films, the design of the
on-screen female body and face of the villain female characters uses strategies
that are consistently different from the design of the heroines (i.e. the
princess figures).
The villainous characters in particular use specific
design features to directly link their characters evil nature to their physical
appearance. There is an implication that their 'otherness' is marked by their
‘failure’ to correspond to specific ideas of what a 'good' female body should
be.
This paper examines the classic female Disney Princess
and villain archetypes in Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little
Mermaid and Tangled (Golden, et al., 2018), and establishes Disney’s two ‘objective
lists’ of the female body on screen; one for how a good female body should be,
and another one for how a villain female body should be.
Those two lists are in antithesis and mirroring each
other, as they both objectify women reducing them to an object, and thus static
level of existence. This perspective rips the dynamic potential and
individuality out of what it means to be human.
‘Objectification theory posits that girls and women
are typically acculturated to internalize an observer’s perspective as a
primary view of their physical selves... Bodies exist within social and
cultural contexts and hence are also constructed through sociocultural
practices and discourses’ (Fredrickson and Roberts, 2006).
The controversial term ‘objective list’ is a term
borrowed from philosophy. The supporters of the ‘objective list’ go back to
Plato’s Theory of Ideas. It is the belief that there is an objective list of
what is good and what is evil or bad for us, despite our time, place, or preferences,
and any deviation from that objective list has consequences. An objective list
claims to be universal in all places and all historical times (Michalopoulou,
2025).
Preferentism is a school of thought in philosophy that
questions the objectivity of any ‘objective’ list of values. A Preferentist’s
objection is that this list is always changing according to time and place, and
even to one’s preferences, thus it cannot be objective. To convince a
Preferentist about the objectivity of a list, the supporters of such a list
would first need to agree on what that list is. This has not happened.
Additionally, ‘objective lists’ pose the obvious
‘danger of some group forcing as “final values” upon others their own interest,
in a paternalistic way’ (Barber, 2014, p. 46, cited in Michalopoulou, 2025).
This paper concludes that this danger has been fulfilled in the Disney Princess
franchise.
Within the classic Disney Princess films, the female
protagonist is confined into passivity, ephemeral youth and pastel colours, and
the villain is a peri-menopausal woman that looks more like a drag queen,
questioning her ‘right’ to represent femininity. These archetypes have elements
of both sexism and queerphobia.
Marcia R. Lieberman (1972) points out that the stories
by Disney claim to be inspired by ancient fairy tales yet are carefully
selected to ‘reflect the taste of the refined literary men who edited the first
popular collections of fairy tales for children during the Victorian era’,
chosen ‘partly for their moral lesson’.
Scholars use the term Disneyfication of stories, to
describe Disney’s effect on our perception of ancient fairy tales. ‘Disneyfication
refers to the transformation of children’s books into a journey to a magic
kingdom; the term also reveals negative aspects due to its tendency to
consumption, homogenization and merchandising.’ (Bălinişteanu, 2014).
However, we see that even though the bodily
requirements to be a ‘good female’ stay almost the same throughout the decades
(young, pale colours, small/fragile, etc), as we move forward in time the
‘good’ females are taking a more active role, rather than the initial passivity
requirement.
A classic Disney Princess must either be passive, or
unsuccessful in her attempts, to justify the prince’s necessity. In Tangled (2010),
Rapunzel fails to save Flynn and is being saved by him instead,
by cutting her hair that represent her magical, untamed side.
This pattern changes with Brave (2012) and Frozen
(2013), as Disney’s ‘objective’ list of values adjusts with the modern times. Because
Brave and Frozen have no female villains and they represent a new ‘list of
values Disney era’, those films are mentioned in this paper only where it is
necessary for context regarding the Classic Princess films with a female
villain story.
The princess is worthy to be saved because of her
beauty, if she succumbs to her given role; passivity. One cannot help but ask: ‘what
if Snow White were not beautiful enough? Would she have beam buried alive and
no one would have desired to rescue her’? (Nada, 2015).
In the Disney Princess franchise, the female villain is
peri-menopausal or older and is obsessed with staying young. She ought to be
ambitious, she is taller than the princess (an attribute usually related with
masculinity), she wears heavy make-up and dark clothes, moves in a weird way,
makes ugly facial expressions, and transforms into a scary old witch, or a
dragon, or she can be an overweight octopus.
Mainly, the villain needs to be old and uncanny. This
Disney approach of representation of the antagonist female body on screen
establishes ‘the link between old age and villainy’ (Nada, 2015). ‘The
representation of the human body and the uncanny have a particular historical
importance’ (Kamm, 2015), and real consequences.
Scholars claim a connection between the negative aging
stereotypes in Disney films and the findings that children having negative
feelings towards older people (Robinson, et al., 2007). ‘The term “agism” was
first coined in the late 60s in the United States by Robers Butler to name
widespread discrimination against elderly solely based on their being “old”
(Nada, 2015).
Elements of ethnic diversity might also be present in
the villain characters, to highlight their otherness to Disney’s assumed white
audience, despite Disney films having global success. Vanessa Martyas (2010)
writes that ‘Clearly, Disney has created a division in its presentation of white
women versus women of colour.’
Snow White is the first one of those films, made in
1937. Snow White looks like a 16-year-old girl, a pattern that continues in all
Disney Princess films. A 16-year-old is too young for a love story with an
adult for today’s standards. However, at the time those films were made, 16 was
a ‘proper’ age for marriage; usually with an older man. Thus, this paper will
ignore the age difference of the princesses and the princes.
In Snow White the villain is never named. Nada Elnahla
(2015) sees the technique of not providing a specific name to the queen’s
character as ‘dehumanizing’. The queen is additionally ‘othered’ by her dark
clothes and scary facial expressions. However, her facial features are not very
unlike Snow White’s and they are wearing the same lipstick; with the main
difference being the age and their fashion choices; except the lipstick. Snow
White establishes the Disney Female Princess and Villain Objective Lists that
exists in all later films of the Disney Princess movies, up until Brave and
Frozen.
The Princess ought to be young, small, with pastel
colours, submissive and follow the rules or face consequences. Snow White
opened the Dwarfs door when she shouldn’t have and she got poisoned. Ariel lost
her voice making a deal with evil Ursula. The underlying message here is that a
female needs to surrender to the expected role of passivity or face death.
Sid Connor (2026) has observed a connection with women’s
biopic and ‘the cultural logic of euthanasia’, the ‘explicit assumption that’
sometimes for some people life is ‘no longer worth living’ (Garland-Thomson,
2004). This paper argues that Disney films make the same connection in their
Princesses stories regarding the villains’ life, while it warns the princesses
that their only hope to be saved is by a prince, as Jesus saved church from
damnation (John 3:16).
The ‘Cinderella Complex’ is a term by Colette Dowling
(1981) that describes ‘the female fear of success and her incapability to
change her situation without help by an outside force, usually male – represented
by the prince in the fairy tale’ (in Nada, 2015).
Cinderella – 1950 – continues the glorification of
beauty. Yet, rather than making a straight connection with youth, Cinderella story
tells us that youth does not necessarily presupposes beauty, and old age is not
inherently evil. Cinderella’s stepsisters are young but not beautiful.
Cinderella’s Godmother is old but not evil. Cinderella at the end dares to ask to
try the glass slipper, despite her stepmother’s attempts to stop her.
‘Based on the Cinderella tale, women have three
choices: First, to become ruthlessly competitive and pettily cruel; secondly,
to be swallowed by a patriarchal world that does not value them; thirdly, to
believe that loving service brings joy and to wait for divine help’ (Clarke,
2000, pp 698-707, cited in Nada, 2015).
In Sleeping Beauty – 1959 – we see the second sign of
female action that is not punished. The three good fairies free the prince when
he is captured, implying that females are not helpless or evil. This ‘created’
the need to exaggerate the female villain’s ‘otherness’, her difference with
the old good fairies. Thus, we see Maleficent at the end being transformed into
a dragon, before she is slayed by the prince, with the help of the good
fairies.
The Little Mermaid – 1989 – continues the same
patterns; Ariel loses her voice and needs to be rescued. However, Ariel does
succeed saving Eric from a shipwreck, and Sebastian would confirm Ariel is not
at all passive and without ambition (to meet the humans and walk on forbidden
land).
Tangled is the most recent of those films – 2010 – yet
we see a backlash into the villain being driven by her inability to accept old
age and at the end we see Rapunzel’s inability to save the male protagonist.
Instead, he is the one that saves her, by cutting her hair, and Mother Gothel
falls off the tower, as her life depended on Rapunzel’s magical hair.
Additionally, we see hints of racial negative
stereotypes here, with the difference of the blond hair of Rapunzel when it is
magical, and the dark hair of Gothel’s and even Rapunzel’s after being cut and
losing their magic. For all these reasons this paper does not see a tangible
improvement in the Disney negative female stereotypes before Brave (2012) and
Frozen (2013).
Frozen is breaking the negative stereotypes that
Jordan Peterson calls ‘archetypical dynamics’. Peterson, a psychologist known
for his conservative views on gender described Frozen as ‘deeply
propagandistic’. In his own words: ‘It attempted to write a modern fable that
was a counter-narrative to a classic story like, let’s say, Sleeping Beauty – but
with no understanding whatsoever of the underlying archetypal dynamics.’
Peterson’s negative reaction to Frozen, after he has
described in his lectures as masterpieces older Disney films such as Pinocchio
and Lion King to justify his right wing political views regarding the necessity
of the patriarchy, show the obvious difference in the ‘objective’ list of
values in the new films in comparison with the classic era of Disney films that
this paper is examining.
‘The Walt Disney Company simplified the
representations of gender in its films to make them more accessible and clear
for young children to attain the “appropriate message”’ (O’Brien 161 in
Martyas, 2010). Martyas continues: ‘Disney uses the dichotomy to highlight the
qualities “a woman needs if she wants to get married and therefore be happy and
fulfilled” and gives no warning to girls about the fact that they too will
become older.
In most Disney Princess films ‘an aging female
character exhibits stereotypical behaviours traditionally associated with
aging. ‘According to Perry (1999, p. 209), “By continually
depicting aging as negative, the media creates a society that denies and
mistrust all persons who are past their youth”.
Such depiction shows how society values youthful
beauty in women, consequently, when such beauty is lost and those women try to
compensate it with power, villainesses are born (Nada, 2015). In the context of
Disney movies, the word “woman” has become synonymous with “victim” in a
patriarchal society,' (Nandini Maity, 2014).
Dawn Elizabeth England (et al., 2011) used content
coding analyses on the Disney Princess films to ‘demonstrate that all the
movies portray some stereotypical representations of gender’, and they have
created a Disney Princess Characteristics list. This list is what this paper describes
as Disney Female Objective list of values.
Female Princess
(Wellman, 2020) Disney Characteristics List:
• Physically weak, Asks for or accepts
advice or help
• Shows emotion, Sensitive, Collapses
crying, Ashamed
• Affectionate, Nurturing
• Tentative, Fearful, Submissive
• Tents to physical appearance,
Described as physically attractive as a definition of femininity
• Victim and Troublesome
• European beauty standards (seven out
of eight)
• Wearing lighter colours
• Don’t get much screen time in their
own films, and/or Don’t get many lines (ex. Ariel losing her voice)
• ‘Not given clear reasons for doing
things. (they are) shown as Two-dimensional characters.’
Female Villain
(Wellman, 2020) Disney Characteristics List:
·
Old
·
Wearing
heavy, dark makeup, like bright red lipstick with heavy eyeshadow
·
Dressed
in power colours – black, blue, green, brown – (Knapp, et al., in Wellman,
2020), purple, and red. Black and purple
have been ‘linked to mourning’, which connects with the idea of euthanasia
(Connor, 2026) mentioned previously. Red is often seen negatively and is
‘related to aggression, defiance, and strain (Grzybowski &
Kupidura-Majewski, 2019)
·
‘Villains
utilize space and gestures in order to express their power over others... they
walk slower... are also more purposeful when they move... carry themselves with
a straight back and solemn face... (and make) gestures and over the top
movements to enhance their presence... they are also... extremely expressive
and loud’
·
Nontraditional
beauty standards, or ugly
·
Bigger
than the princesses. Could also be overweight or nonsymmetrical
·
Deeper
or harsher voices than the princesses (related with masculinity)
·
Nonverbal
power
Germaine Greer (2020, p, 34) in The Female Eunuch,
shares the discouragement she got from her mother as a child to exercise, so
her muscles won’t grow to look masculine. Simone de Beauvoir (2009, p. 163)
wrote that: History has shown that men have always held all concrete powers. We
can see the antithesis of the princess’s ‘unclear reasons in her actions and
the villains’ posture that ‘communicates they are moving to a specific place of
importance’ (Wellman, 2020).
Wellman recognises that the newer Disney movies
(Tangled, Cinderella, Maleficent, and Moana) ‘show more developed characters
for longer periods of time (2020). Despite this progress, the introduction of
Disney+ has the potential to reintroduce and reinforce old stereotypes with a
sense of nostalgia for something the new generations might idolise, without the
understanding of the female oppression that those stereotypes usually come
with.
‘The social importance of the feminine beauty ideal
lies in its ability to reproduce gender inequality (Bartky 1990; Currie 1997;
Free Wolf 1991; in Baker-Sperry, & Grauerholz, 2003), Disney princess films
‘have come to represent more than just animated film characters... they provide
girls with a strictly one-dimensional vision of femininity and a rigidly
defined set of gendered roles (pollen, 2011, in Golden, Jacoby, 2018).
Disney films are so popular that they cannot deny
having influence into worldwide audience, creating stereotypes and ideas of
gender. Their ‘advertising campaign aims to attract a wide audience of girls
with the ultimate goal of encouraging children to personally identify with
characters so they will purchase the associated products (Do Rozario, 2004,
cited in England, et all., 2011).
‘The Walt Disney company has the opportunity to
contribute to the gender empowerment of children worldwide’ (Hine, et al.,
2018) Thus, there is a need for further research on the topic of negative
Disney female stereotypes and their effect on the self-image of girls and
women.
Further research can investigate the connection of the
changes in the Disney stereotypes that we see in Brave and Frozen, and any
contemporary sociopolitical events regarding female rights and feminism, and
those stereotypes in other film genres such as horror and female Gothic.
Moreover, there can be collaborative research between
universities globally, to investigate the effects of the Disney films in
children around the Globe, from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Word count: 2753
Reflection of my creative process
This research has revealed to me regarding my own
writing process that I am a combination of order and chaos. I started this
research from a documentary I randomly saw on the television with Miriam
Margolyes (Miriam Margolyes Made Me Me, 2026) and a podcast I heard on the go
the next day (Philosophy Podcast: Overthink – Evil). The documentary with Miriam
was very brave showing Miriam’s aged body on screen in some very intimate
moments. I found it very beautiful.
The podcast the next day was talking about the
difference of Evil characters in Disney Vs Studio Ghibli films. The presenters
explained that in Disney there is a ‘black and white’ mindset when it comes to
‘good and evil’. Someone is evil, and they need to be exterminated; in self-defence
of the ‘good’. In Studio Ghibli on the other hand, we find characters that
start evil and then it turns out they are not that bad, like Lady Eboshi from Princess
Mononoke.
The podcast then focused on the Disney female Villain,
and how her aged and uncanny body on screen is implicitly connected with her
evilness. The difference between the sweet documentary with old Miriam and the
Disney negative stereotypes was occupying my mind for days and I could not
think of a different topic to research.
My initial research question was:
How does the audience and the critics react to the
aged body of women on screen in different genres? - in Comedy / Horror /
Romance?
Or:
The ‘male gaze’ and the Disney stereotypes - Miriam's
documentary is challenging those stereotypes. What techniques is it using?
Then I got into my ‘order phase’. I started my
research collecting papers about Disney female negative stereotypes.
When I made my final essay plan, I already had
abandoned the idea of combining Miriam Margolyes, Disney, and Studio Ghibli in
a 3000 words paper. I decided to focus on Disney, as I had found much more essays
on that topic that I could reference in my own paper. At this point I thought I
would focus more on the Little Mermaid, as Ursula reminded me more of Miriam
Margolyes, and I always loved Ursula.
Then I started reading the papers and underlining the
parts that were relevant to the Disney female negative stereotypes. That is
when I realised that focusing on Ariel and Ursula, or any other film, would
miss the point of how those stereotypes are repeated, with some variations, up
until the films Brave and Frozen.
Thus, I changed my plan again, and I tried to show
that Disney chose those stereotypes consciously, knowing that they shape the
values of the next generations, and the effect visual messages have on screen, especially
in young children.
Yet, at the end I realised the power the audience has,
to shape the ‘new narratives’, despite the resistance of people like Jordan
Peterson.
Due to health and family issues, I could not enjoy
this research and go even deeper into my ‘research rabbit hall’, as much as I
would like to. Still, it has been inspiring and a good practice for me, before
I start my PhD research next academic year.
Word count: 532
My
Disney’s Princess ‘Objective List’
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