Parents should write a petition to Disney to make their princesses fit the mold of young girls across the world and protest the amount of sexualization that is being presented to girls through TV and the Internet. Stephanie Hanes (2011), author of ‘Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect’, claims that Disney stated: “The Disney princesses teach girls valuable life lessons like kindness and the love for animals”. Several parents have found themselves mixed up in the controversy of the Disney Princess effect. The Disney Princess effect is the belief that the Disney princesses are causing young girls to lose their youth a lot sooner than usual. Parents like Mary Finucane started a blog to help ‘break the grip’ of Cinderella and other Disney princesses in her household. Like many parents of young girls, Mary started to notice her daughter began acting different once she discovered the Disney princesses.
Several elements of logos prove that the Disney Princess effect are the first steps to sexualization, which is connected to eating disorders and depression. In the article, Stephanie Hanes claims that “girls who watch Disney princess movies are more likely to become victims of self-objectification, cyberbullying, and unhealthy body images”. A poll found that 50% of 3-6-year-old girls worry about if they’re too fat. At this age kids, shouldn’t even be worried about the way they look. This type of behavior is the result of the world we live in today. We live in a highly-sexualized society that mostly views women as sexual objects. Even at a young age we teach young girls if they’re not pretty there’s no chance of them being successful. This message has been engraved in young girl’s head for so long that they believe it. Girls today no longer feel like they must do or they can’t do something because they’re female, but they have a strong belief if they want to do something, they need to look hot doing it. Nowadays girls drop out of sports around middle school because they believe sports makes them look less feminine. Therefore, you see a higher percentage of girls wanting to be cheerleader’s rather than a basketball player. The cheerleader is advertised to be the more feminine one out of the two.
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Parents fear that their daughters are going to grow up hating their bodies because the girls that are shown on the big screen only represent a portion of those watching. The Disney princesses shouldn’t just be skinny teenagers, but girls who are all different ages and sizes. For example, when Disney came out with movie ‘The Princess and The Frog’, the African-American community was thrilled that they were finally being represented in the 4-billion-dollar company. Imagine what it would do to a young girl’s confidence if she saw a Disney princess that looked just like her.
In addition, numerous elements of ethos prove that it’s wrong for young girls to be exposed to this type of sexualization at such a young age. The movies and shows that are shown on TV only broadcast girls who are skinny, pretty, and twice their age. Young girls shouldn’t be thinking about having boyfriends and getting married at the age of 6. They should enjoy playing around without a care in the world. Parents should start to enforce their kids to watch more age-appropriate shows, where the characters are the same age as the kids watching. This will allow kids to notice behaviors that are normal for their age. For example, showing 8-year-olds how to play with other children, or how to dress themselves would be a good idea.
The fallacy faulty causality is avoided in this article because the cause-and-effect statement that was presented was based on factual evidence that can be backed up by parents, educators, and researchers. The faulty causality is the assumption that an event or action follows another, the first causes the second cause and effect. In the article, Stephanie Hanes claims that since these little girls have become addicted to these Disney princess movies at such a young age their going to become over sexualized. In result of this, Hanes can argue that girls around the ages of 7-12 years old spent $1.6 billion dollars on thong under-wear in 2003 alone due to the influence of the Disney princesses.
In conclusion, parents should think of creative ways to stop their daughters from becoming victims of sexualization. Taking the famous Disney princess isn’t going to completely solve the issue, but pointing out the misrepresentation of female character’s may be able to help resolve this issue. In the article a young girl by the name Maya Brown suggested that girls should become media critics. This action will allow girls to notice what’s wrong with certain images and why they should avoid dressing like certain characters. Teaching young women that their worth more than just their bodies, will not only create better women, but better people.
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