The first three Disney princess movies were: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959). These three princesses were the typical helpless princesses. They are all relatively submissive to their male counterparts and don’t see anything wrong with that. Their assertiveness was shown to animals and to children, but not to their male suitors. This sends the wrong message to young girls. It tells them that they can let their voices be heard but that the only people that will listen to them and be affected by their assertiveness are small children and animals that cannot choose for themselves who they listen to. Snow White and Cinderella had very similar story features—both have an evil stepmother and the princes are absent for the majority of the movie. The female characters that they had in their lives were quite the opposite of what a mother figure should be, obviously not giving these girls much to aspire to themselves. Aurora was always my least favorite princess. What good is a princess that sleeps throughout her entire story? She does not assert herself in any special way and just lays around waiting for a man to come and kiss her to wake her and save her life. So unnecessary. While she actually had a mother to look up to, she was unable to do that because she was just sleeping. These three movies also highlight women doing housework quite frequently. That seems to be the one productive thing that they do for themselves and others, which makes me question if that is supposed to be some kind of subliminal messaging taking into account the timeframe in which they were put out (1937-1959), when housekeeper was a socially acceptable role for women to hold. However, now that it’s 2011, these things are more of an issue—these movies show social injustices against women, supported by the timeframe they were produced.
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