Consider what the Disney version of the fairytale has been teaching young girls for over seventy years to expect from love. Women expect a man to provide for them, an ideal that predates Disney but has nevertheless been intensified by it. As a prince in a Disney film, their source of income is already laid out for them, all they need to do is adequately embody the role of the chivalrous saviour. In its production of the ideals of happiness and love, has Disney produced unhappiness as a counterpart? These expectations of prince charming have possibly the worst translation into reality, women are left with the dissatisfaction of not being swept off their feet time and time again, rescued from their mundane lives. Instead, they are found screaming at their husbands, cursing them for not being men. On the converse side of things, men’s expectations of women as self-sacrificing creatures that will do anything to please and take care of a man, that are beautiful beyond most natural capacity, feeds dissatisfaction with authentic women. Instead, this proliferates a production of femininity that is not only unnatural but damaging to their self-esteem."The real evil of the media image of women is that it supports the sexist status quo...They encourage men to expect women to sport all the latest trappings of sexual slavery—expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive."(Willis) The ending of the fairytale, the 'happily ever after' produces the obsession with the wedding rather than the marriage that is probably the reason divorce rates continue to soar higher and higher. Moreover, the thought that women are damsels in distress that need to be rescued by a strong, chivalrous man is also damaging, as it creates an exclusive space where women that are self-sufficient and men that are less so have no place.
The Disney Complex operates within society through the proliferation of unrealistic expectations. What happens when real life fails to live up to the fairytale? In one word: unhappiness.
(image courtesy of belleprincesselle on deviantart.com)
Willis, Ellen. "Women and the Myth of Consumption." 1969.
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