We’ve all heard the expression “Chivalry isn’t dead”, but, what does that declaration actually mean? According to dictionary.com, chivalry is “qualities such as courtesy and courage” or “medieval knighthood”.  Personality traits and jousting aside, we as a modern culture know it to have an entirely different connotation. For us, we think of it as a male figure going out of his way to ease the everyday burdens of a female figure. A perfect example can be found daily in the world of public transportation. Often times, men will refuse to sit down if there appears not to be enough seats for all of the female passengers. Others will offer their seats to those women who they deem worthy of receiving them. Personally, I understand giving a seat up for an elderly individual, or person with young children or disabilities. However, I don’t find it appropriate to assume that women are incapable of standing up on a moving train, thus offering them your seat.

Most common examples oft come out in the dating world, where men open doors, pull chairs out, or even pay the bill at a restaurant, all under the guise of chivalry. You, as a woman, might say “Well, it’s a nice gesture”, when in actuality, it’s a clear example of sexism. Subconsciously, this is that person’s way of exhibiting your inadequacy as a woman to perform even the simplest of tasks. They’re displaying their strength over this weaker party who can’t seem do anything at all without male assistance, all while assuming this will make the aforementioned party and others view him as a gentleman, thus, respecting him. What’s worse is that this sort of primitive behavior is unconsciously accepted and condoned by our society. For example, I’ve noticed that when I go to a restaurant with a male friend or male date, the bill is nearly always placed in front of (if not directly handed to) the man I’m with. That person waiting the table doesn’t make a conscious choice, or think to themselves: “Gee, I bet that woman is incapable of paying this…I should probably give it to her boyfriend.” That only makes the scenarios more upsetting, because it’s sad that this sort of senseless thought process is simply embedded into our minds. It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

When I go out with another person (regardless of their gender or our relationship), I expect to be treated as an equal. Of course I appreciate when people hold doors for me, but it shouldn’t be because I’m a woman. It should be because I’m walking behind you, and you don’t want to give me a bloody nose. Same goes for spotting the check when we go out to dinner. If you want to pay, it should be because you know I just had to buy $400 worth of textbooks, not because you were “raised that way”.  These “chivalrous” gestures are only appreciated if they’re performed on a premise other than gender.

I don’t know about you, but I spent a majority of my childhood idolizing Disney princesses. From singing like Ariel in pools to wanting to have fairy godmothers like Aurora (better known as Sleeping Beauty), I just couldn’t wait to grow up and blossom into one of these perfect women.  Turns out, it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I sit here now typing this as a plus sized feminist, and although I’m perfectly content with that, most of the women we spent our adolescence worshipping fit neither of those categories. Okay, the former part of that sentence is way more obviously un-Disney, and more noticeable.  The Disney culture concept of perfection has nearly always lain in a size two, pale woman. But, that’s not what this blog posting is about. It’s about the fact that these women were purposely created and fitted to the female gender-role stereotypes of the day. Howsoever, one could argue against the latter, saying that beloved Belle or inspirational Mulan were the epitomes of feminists. They went against their societies to prove that women were worth more than just a pretty face. Unfortunately, that isn’t all that goes into feminism, and therefore just isn’t the case.

I’ll start with Belle, who due to her quirky charm, was my favorite princess growing up. I admired the fact that she knew how to read (a skill and pastime abandoned by all other Disney franchise women) and did so actively, despite what her peers thought. From a feminist perspective, seems like we’re off to a great start with an empowered young woman such as this. Moving right along, she is told by local beau Gaston that they are to be married at once. Nope, she says, I don’t think that you’re a good person despite the fact that you’re stunningly gorgeous. Wow, you think, what a good decision by Belle. But, then you examine at her relationship with Beast. He yells at her, physically intimidates her, keeps her as his prisoner, and his overall behavior is simply appalling. By standard definition, she’s trapped in an abusive relationship, on both emotional and physical grounds. No worries though, since Beast apologizes time and time again, he’s forgiven and the whole situation is completely diffused. It isn’t until Beast becomes overwhelmingly jealous and murders Belle’s other love interest that she accepts him as her love. Basically, it’s okay if he’s abusive, as long as he apologizes and is your only option.

In my eyes, the basic principle of feminism has always been that a person’s gender has nothing to do with their mental or physical capabilities, nor does it in any way effect the sort of person they can be. However, in the eyes of the Disney corporation, it is clear that this is not the dictum they follow. They’re more focused upon the instinctual need for a woman to have a man to take care of her and solve all of her problems. Snow White is a perfect example of this. One of her first lines in the movie is that “Someday, my prince will come”. While that’s all well and good, she takes it to the extreme by actually putting it into practice. She is essentially brain dead in a casket, and she has to wait for a man to come and rescue her. As if that weren’t bad enough, many of us forget that they’d never ever had a decent conversation, yet they go galloping off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Or, take Mulan for example.  I mean, she starts the movie as an extremely endowed young woman by defying the gender expectations of her culture, supporting her father, and going to war. However, Mulan only accomplishes things when she is dressed as a male soldier. She can only gain respect from her peers, lieutenant, and Emperor when they think she is a man. When they find out that she’s actually a woman, they go ballistic. They cannot cope with the likelihood that a woman could possibly do something beneficial from their society, aside from “bearing sons”. She narrowly escapes execution, and goes on to save the kingdom (yet again, dressed in a “masculine” fashion).

Almost every official Disney franchise princess (Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan) share one common characteristic: they all have at least one very close animal companion. While it isn’t uncommon for people to own pets, it seems that it’s a conjoint motif that these women’s pets are their best (and often, only) friends. They do everything with the princesses; they help clean cottages, they serve as emotional support systems, or even help them fight wars. Again, it isn’t wrong that these women take an interest in animals, but it’s the fact that many of them don’t have other human friends. They have to settle for some overly-anthropomorphized excuse for a chum instead of being allowed to interact with other people. Writers make conscious decisions when they’re drafting up scripts. Why did Ariel’s best friend have to be a flounder, rather than being another mermaid? Or, take Pocahontas for example. Sure, she had an actual human as a confidante, but in actuality, she kept all of her secrets from her, and spilled her guts to a raccoon and a hummingbird. It’s situations like these that show women as being incapable of having meaningful relationships, or even interacting on a deep level with other humans.

The list goes on and on. Every single Disney movie is chock full of examples like these, and next to none of the instances have to be deeply-analyzed to find them. But you know what the biggest problem with Disney movies is? Their audience. They sell these misogynistic stereotypes to children of both genders, causing a never-ending cycle of sexism. Children grow up thinking that princesses have to look and act a certain way, thus causing them to modify their desires and behaviors to fit those expectations. We, as adults, show these movies to our children in the hopes that they too will fall in love with the classically romantic storylines like we did. Instead, we end up mutilating their understandings of gender roles, and we simultaneously endorse these franchises that continue to put out sexist merchandise.

Do you remember the J.C. Penney t-shirt that read “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”? It was marketed for young girls between the ages of 7-16, and is oh-so-ironically part of the brand “Self Esteem”.  It was pulled off the J.C. Penney website this summer, but not before customers expressed their outrage loudly enough to garner media attention.

I'm too pretty

 I was in Target the other night, and I found a birthday card where the cover read “I’m too pritty to do math”. When I flipped open the card, I was even more surprised. As a young woman, and a student, I felt degraded and outraged. As I stood there in the birthday card aisle, I couldn’t help but wonder about the kind of message this sends out to young, impressionable girls. The card not only equates being attractive to being unintelligent, but it also manages to make women look dumb and forgetful.

   

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After some googling, I discovered a blog post made by a very concerned mother that read: “It is disrespectful to their predominantly female customers and perpetuating stereotype that’s already running rampant. There’s absolutely no justification for equating one’s appearance with one’s ability — not even a “joke.” I couldn’t agree more. It is always the assumption that women are not capable of being intellectually equal to men. Blatantly stereotypical products like these only add to the problem.

Even though studies are proving that little girls are just as competent in mathematics as boys, and women who are both attractive and smart are graduating at the top of their class at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, messages like these just continue to maintain a false dichotomy between a woman’s appearance and her intelligence.

While J.C. Penney has discontinued their “I’m too pretty” shirts, Target has not removed their card from the shelves. Want to help advocate against gender stereotyping in the marketplace?

Tell them how you feel here: http://bit.ly/sWOnIX

Or call them: 1-800-440-0680

It’s a typical day in an American pre-school classroom. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the local children subject themselves to the societal constructs of the day. Don’t you remember those wonderful toys you’d play with in preschool? The stations set up all around your classroom, filled to the brim with lots of captivating and learning-enhancing materials. But what we, as toddlers, oft failed to notice was the intentions of one of the most vied for stations; the pretend house.

In my education class, we were discussing the concept of children learning through play. One of the articles we read stirred up some talk between a partner and me. We talked about how societal constructs are handed to us at the beginning our lives and not just at home. In our pre-school and kindergarten classrooms, many of the “stations” focused on a kitchenette or a play house. Far too often, girls will stay at the “home” and cook and clean for her stuffed animal children, while the boys will leave the station to “work”. While on-lookers may look on and smile at the social skills of these children, I see something a little different. I see a perfect example of how children learn the expectations of their society based off of their gender. These stereotypes of the bread-winner father and the stay at home mom start extremely young, because that’s simply what many kids grow up seeing. Now, obviously not everybody’s family fit into these stereotypes, but the fact of the matter was that the children often just jump into this sort of misogynistic setting.

When do we learn out social place? Sure, it varies person to person based on their environment growing up, but I’d say it’s during those crucial first few years of psychological development. It’s when children notice that their mother stays home with them while Daddy works, or that Cinderella is only capable of cleaning and waiting on her Prince Charming. It’s when the girls join ballet classes and the boys pick out their first baseball mitt. Of course, the society we live in is also a factor, but at the end of the day, the adults in that child’s life get to decide what stereotypes we’re going to enforce.

Many people I know will tell me that you can raise a child to be one thing over another. If you entertain their desires, then they could end up becoming that fantasy person. In my case, my parents encouraged my brother and me to do and be whatever we want. When we were little, I wanted to be a gown-wearing baseball player, and my brother wanted to be a karate star and wanted to paint his nails. Today, I want to be a lawyer, and my brother wants to be an architect. Children go through stages, and they want to experience lots of different things. Just because my brother wanted his nails to be blue and orange doesn’t mean that he wanted to be a girl, and I didn’t want to be a boy based off of my interests either. So don’t be afraid to let your son play with a make-believe kitchen, or to let your daughter try out for the basketball team. Sure, you can certainly raise your daughter with Barbie dolls and pink hats, and your son with G.I. Joes and blue wallpaper, but at the end of the day, their personality will continue to develop and will change hundreds of times over the course of their adolescence.