Q4Women: What do you think are the messages of the Disney movies that you watched as a child? What were the messages exactly? And how much of an impact do you think these messages had on your life?

I just watched the 2015 Disney film Cinderella starring Lily James. It was cute. It made me wonder about some things.

First off, there are interesting class things in Cinderella. The message is that you don't want to be a "creature of toil and ash." I agree that nobody wants that position in life, but when you think about it it's an interesting "Fuck You" to cleaning ladies and janitors and other low-level blue-collar workers stuck in that position in life.

Also, it was interesting to see how physical attractiveness was associated with inner beauty in the film. Ella is beautiful on the inside and out; her step-sisters are ugly on the inside and out. The handsome price is a great guy, of course. Not that beautiful people aren't often beautiful on the inside too, but I don't know any studies that confirm that they're especially likely to be beautiful on the inside. (Maybe they are especially likely to be beautiful on the inside, though; it's possible.)

There is a common theme in a lot of Disney movies. There is a woman in rough circumstances who marries a handsome prince. She gets her "Happily Ever After" fairy-tale ending. She gets the looks. She gets the status. The fact that he is always a prince is interesting because it's the TRP notion of hypergamy: she marries up...way up in fact.

As a male, it's interesting to me that all this kind of forward-thinking stuff is instilled into women at such a young age. To me, this is a profound asymmetry: little boys are playing Power Rangers or whatever random stuff and little girls are actually forming forward-thinking notions about marriage and family and what their actual lives will be like. These notions/dreams/visions that little girls are immersed in may be fantastical, but they're at least related to important questions about their future: Who will I marry? What will my life be like? What will be my Happily Ever After?

Meanwhile, boys are playing fucking Power Rangers, which doesn't have shit to do with life. Females are way more socially savvy and way more savvy regarding sexual dynamics, from a young age. It's no wonder males are so often lost in life and totally spergy: they grow up with zero social/sexual guidance, lost in video games and random shit that has nothing to do with the world.

So here are my questions.

1: What do you think are the messages of the Disney movies that you watched as a child?

2: Are there certain patterns/themes/archetypes that can be extracted from the Disney filmography?

3: What are these films' messages exactly for girls?

4: What are these films' messages exactly for boys?

5: How much of an impact do you think these messages had on your life?

Edit: Aladdin is an interesting reversal of the standard pattern, because in that case it's the male who is poor and the female who is wealthy/high-status/royal. By the way, here is a link to the film that I saw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(2015_Disney_film).