Disney Men

Okay, so for our presentation we are doing gender stereotypes in Disney movies. Going into this project I really thought that we would be focusing on the female portrayal and femininity. Trying to find some you-tube videos, I stumbled across a video about masculinity in Disney movies, and I was really surprised about how blind I was to the box they put males in.

Here's the link (although I think we are showing it in our presentation): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CWMCt35oFY&feature=related

It is crazy the amount of muscles the Disney male protagonists (and even antagonists) have. Take Gasten for example. He is just ridiculously proportioned. How is any male going to live up to that (the muscles or eating five dozen eggs)? And he's supposed to be the most handsome man in town? If I were a villager in that town, I'd be terrified of him; he'd be able to overtake me in a second. All of the other males have similarly proportioned bodies: really wide shoulders, narrow hips, and very defined muscles. This reminds me of the 'tough guise' video we watched in class when they compared the growth of the GI Joe muscles. With that in mind, I thought back to the earlier Disney movies like the princes from Cinderella/Snow White/etc, and they were less muscled and large. I have also noticed that the males have taken on a more significant role in recent Disney movies. For example, in Snow White, the prince does not really have any character development; all he does is save Snow White. In more recent movies, like the Lion King, the male characters and the relationships between them (father-son, etc) are explored more.