Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY&feature=related

An important topic in this study was on how men are told how to act. Media tells men that woman are for pleasure or are for servants that should please them. I think this is very true today and also why I feel relationships today have such problems.

Media tells men that women should be flawless and should expect them to give up their bodies to men. I think this is why women, especially young women, feel they have so much pressure put on them because they are getting it from the media as well as men around them telling them what to be, how to act, and how to look.

I believe that just like young girls are told to look sexy to transform into a woman, boys also have pressure to be a certain type of man. This certain type is to be masculine, which is defined by strength and physical prowess. In the Disney movie, Mulan, there is a song describing everything a man should be. “He must be swift as a coursing river, be a man! With all the force of a great typhoon, be a man! With all the strength of a raging fire, mysterious as the dark side of the moon.” I feel that these types of messages put on a lot of pressure for men to be what media considers masculine and I am even victim to judging men if their not “masculine enough.” But a part of me wonders if this is a “survival of the fittest” or a stereotype that is hurting our society.

The study then goes on to explain how not fighting is seen as pitiful. Even today it baffles me how men protect their territory, as they call it aka their woman, by trying to act macho, tough, and eventually leading into fights. I’ve often asked why men feel the need to do so but they can never explain why. They just say, it’s what men do, it’s divides the men from the boys. I think its ridiculous and wonder if they would ever admit it is as well.

These images will begin to shape what we know about reality and even if media today was to stray outside of stereotypes, there would be a lot of hardship for those children as they would be growing up in a more accepting world that their fathers cannot understand.