In a message dated 97-12-13 10:27:46 EST, Catherine Asaro wrote:
> The beauty=good and ugly=bad thing also discourages me. Had the
> Hunchback of ND been female instead of male, would she have been
> portrayed in such a sympathetic manner?
Another thing I have found disturbing is that in a lot of Disney's (and other
company's) live-action movies directed at kids, there is a heavy-set boy who
at the end of the movie finds a thing, "pretty" girl who likes him, but never
(well, from what I've seen) is there a heavy-set girl who is anything other
than an over-eager "geek" who is someone for the boys to run away screaming
from.
I had a few hopeful delusions about Ricki Lake, in her pre-talk show days, but
alas, she turned away from movies and to talk shows, and lost a lot of weight
to do it. Speaking of which - while _Exit_to_Eden_ wasn't a great movie (it
was very silly in parts, and I've heard it torn apart for a lot of other
reasons as well, although I enjoyed it - I can't pick why, but I did. Sue me.
:-) ), it's worth a $1 rental just to see Rosie O'Donnell (IMO an attractive,
good actress who happens to be heavy set) treated as just as sexual a person
as Dana Delany (Well, not Dana Delany, as her main function in a very sex-
oriented movie is to be sexual, but definitely Rosie holds her own.).
> We have a lot of stories where the heroine is beautiful and the evil
> witch is either ugly or beautiful. We also have stories where the bad
> guy is handsome. But how many stories do we have where the heroine is
> plain and the hero is gorgeous?
I got the feeling that Belle (from Beauty and the Beast - for the non-
moviegoers out there) was supposed to be a "plainer" Disney heroine, and she
was, but she still managed to be "beautiful" when it counted. And another
thing I have found disturbing (actually my fiance pointed this one out) - the
waists on the Disney heroines have gotten smaller over the years. We really
don't need to have young girls starting to hate their bodies even _younger_
than we do already.
In (wary) support of Disney - the females in The Lion King (while not human,
they were meant to be just as "role model-ish") were all depicted as strong.
While I'm trying not to open the "Lion King" can of worms, as I do agree that
they should have watched their symbolism more closely, at least they didn't
make lionesses _weak_. That would have been too much, even for Disney.
Thanks for listening :)
Barbara Benesch
BJBenesch@aol.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:42 PDT