The princess pride
Disney’s feminine heroes are empowering — not demeaning — for young girls, no matter what ‘science’ tells us
IT’S true what they say: Disney princesses are a frightful menace. But to me, not my daughters. To prove it I’ve got the scars on my feet from tiny (but hard!) plastic mini-pumps and diabolically pointy little tiaras. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, but uneasier still is the bare sole that treads on one. As for that burgeoning sub-sector of social psychology — Disney-princess panic — that is dedicated to finding pernicious personality effects on your kids caused by Ariel and Elsa? Please. Disney princess “science” is what happens when you merge feminism (the idea that masculine behavior is terrible, except when females do it) with public-health alarmism (everything is killing us, especially the fun stuff).
This week brought details of a laughable BYU academic “study” that generated paranoid headlines like “Disney Princesses Are Bad Role Models for Girls” and “This Is the Latest Evidence That Disney Princesses Are Hurting Young Girls.”
The study finds a correlation between feminine behavior and fondness for Disney princesses. But which way does the causation go? Is it more plausible that girly girls are simply attracted to Disney princess movies, or that watching “Cinderella” magically rewires your brain?
If the latter, how is this belief different from the “Pray away the gay” school of thought that holds that fervent Bible study, and maybe a few John Wayne movies, will turn your homosexual nephew straight? The study’s
lead author, family-life professor Sarah M. Coyne of BYU, is a professional media scaremonger. Among her papers: “It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Gender Stereotype!: Longitudinal Associations Between Superhero Viewing and Gender Stereotyped Play” (Finding: Boys who liked superhero movies tended to behave like boys.)
A2011 paper Coyne trumpeted to the media to generate headlines like “profanity on TV-linked to kids’ aggression” was dismissed by a neutral observer, psych prof Christopher J. Ferguson of Texas A&M International, who noted to Reuters that the study “isn’t enough to show a robust correlation, let alone cause and effect.” That’s a major whoopsie, as the whole
point of this line of research is to show causation, not just correlation.
Coyne’s attack on Disney princesses is really just an angry op-ed in a lab coat.
The study didn’t prove Disney princesses caused behavioral changes and didn’t prove any changes that might have occurred were bad.
Disney princesses don’t turn kids meek, passive and narcoleptic any more than playing cowboys and Indians when we were in first grade turned my friends and me into ethnic
cleansers.
What do Disney princesses bring my little girls, aged 4 and 8? Well, not much, I guess, unless you count joy, imaginative stimulus, laughter, enchantment and astronomical levels of cuteness. (OK, that last one benefits me, not them.)
The kids have a wicker storage hamper full of ice-blue gowns, sparkly aqua mermaid sheaths, shimmering golden ballroom frocks. They’ve got dolls, coloring books, stickers, puzzles. It’s all great fun.
Disney-princess alarmists may never forgive Snow White for singing “Someday My Prince Will Come” (79 years ago) or Sleeping Beauty for being the world’s most prominent coma victim (57 years ago), but today’s Disney princesses are merrily slaying beasts, clocking intruders with frying pans and building fabulously independent ice penthouses.
Anyway, Snow White managed to use her wits to survive alone in a forest, make smart friendship choices and secure gainful employment. “Sleeping Beauty” isn’t a celebration of passivity but a useful warning not to count unhatched chickens: Her problems are caused by those three daft fairies celebrating her birthday too soon.
Which are lessons I look forward to pointing out to my kids, but not yet, because they don’t care. Today they’re all about the pretty dresses, the magical kingdoms in their minds, the advanced twirling techniques that often lead to regrettable wipeouts (followed by giggling) on the carpet.
Disney princess power is girl power, and they’ve got 10,000 megajoules of that zipping through them. Social scientists, there is no need to frown over my daughters with a clipboard and make up a sinister chart damning them for preferring “female-gender-stereotypical” toys. So what? They’re girly girls, and they’re doing just fine.