Introducing Disney Pat

Researchers from the University of California have concluded that the gender gap between Disney princes and princesses is closing, and perhaps one day may result in a faceless, shapeless, sexless entity known as Disney Pat.

- by Bob McLain, April 2, 2011

Share

Dawn England is a researcher at the University of California. In my day, researchers researched things like atomic energy and the cure for cancer. Nowadays, researchers like Dawn England - assisted by her team - research stuff like whether Disney princesses are growing beards.

That's a crude way to encapsulate Dawn's research, so let me try again: she studied whether, over time, Disney princesses have shown more masculine traits, and Disney princes more feminine traits.

To prepare for the study, Dawn (with an assist from her team) categorized Disney films into three categories, the better to influence the outcome of her research. The categories are Disney princess films made before 1960, those made during the 1990s, and those made since the 1990s.

Disney princesses, says Dawn, are less stereotypical in later films. Ditto Disney princes.

I'm not sure we needed scientific research to determine that, in general, women and men have shed many gender-specific traits over the past several decades. Kudos to Disney for keeping up with the times!

Right, Dawn? Not right...

Dawn takes Disney to task for not putting its earlier princess films like Cinderella and Snow White in mothballs. There are scenes in those films, Dawn believes, that "could be worrisome to parents". What scenes? Well, the scene in which the princess falls in love with the prince over the course of a mere few days, which in less academic circles is known as real life.

Is there anyone in the world who hasn't fallen in love within days or even hours of meeting someone special? That's a sweet thing, isn't it?

Peggy Orenstein, who hates Disney princesses and who wrote about it in a best-selling book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter, slings more fuel on the feminist fire by claiming that Disney encourages parents to raise not princesses but "vain, spoiled step-sisters".

That evil Disney!

(I interviewed Peggy earlier this year about her book. Read it here. She's actually a very nice woman with a keen sense of how to promote what she writes.)

I think, in the end, it's clear what must happen to appease the likes of Dawn, Peggy, and others who have a problem with Disney princesses.

What must happen is hermaphroditism.

Let's give tots a shapeless, sexless doll called Disney Pat who, in a pinch, can be posed as either prince or princess, and whose humble abode is not a castle but a cubicle, and who comes with a small, equally shapeless, sexless sidekick called Misery.

That'll teach kids to dream!