Barbra, I'm totally supportive of your point of view. I'm real tired of
females struggling to understand life/world issues and all becomes "clear"
once a male comes into the picture. Disney completely supports this idea.
An old story that keeps replaying itself. Bad news.
Cat Farrar
At 02:05 AM 12/14/97 EST, you wrote:
>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
>
>
~Cat Farrar
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Gender is a lived ideology...that becomes EMBODIED because it is enforced."
~Martha McCaughey
Real Knockouts - The Physical Feminism of Women's Self-Defense
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