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Disney Movies

How they display racism and sexist gender roles in society

As a kid growing up I’ve watched all the Disney princesses’ movies and growing up I started believing that I needed to find my “prince charming” to save me the “damsel in distress,” because that’s what most of the movies portrayed. It took me until I reached high school, to realize that “prince charming” doesn’t exist and I can find happiness in the stuff I do. As a kid, the Disney movies heavily influences your mentality of the real world and what men and women are supposed to do in real life. The women are sexualized and are supposed to be like the housewife, to cook and clean while the men are demanding and expecting food.  

The movie Snow White had a princess clean and cook for the seven dwarfs while she is hiding from the wicked step-mother. Due to these stereotypes, I was raised to believe that the wife does all the cooking and cleaning. I even saw it in real life, my dad hardly ever cooked and as I grew older I was told to do chores around the house both my sister and I had to do cleaning inside. When my dad or my brother did do the cleaning, it was mostly yard work like mowing and pulling weeds. So not only was it through Disney that I learned the roles of society but how I was raised taught me the same thing as well.

When Mulan came out, it showed that woman could be powerful and independent without a male’s help. This movie was released 50-60 years later after Cinderella and Snow White were released, where the woman is stereotyped in the gender roles as housewife or maid of the house. Shortly after Mulan came out more independent woman movies started to arise from the surface.

Among the gender roles in Disney, there is also racism too. I never even comprehended the race disparity on Disney movies until later when the first black princess movie: The Princess and the Frog was released. All of these posts and lash backs of saying that the princess and the frog was not the first movie that displayed minority race. Pocahontas and Mulan are good examples of minority princesses prior to Princess and the Frog. Beyond that, the animals are displayed or characterized as a certain minority as well. In most movies the chihuahuas are always voiced as a Latino or Mexican; in Dumbo you had the crows characterized as black people and possibly even hinting at the “Jim Crow laws,” in itself.  

Of course, as a kid, you really don’t begin to learn the racism or gender roles until you grow up and re-watch it as an adult. Then you began to realize how sexist or racist some of these movies are.

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Gender Things

Walking into the Gender Fair, it was kind of interesting to see stands not just about feminism but about masculinity as well. One of the stands even invited students to say gender neutral sayings such as and not limited to; Y'all, mortals, you all, everybody, friends, pals, squad, posse etc. It was funny to me to see “Y'all at the top of the list because most Texans mostly say this one. It was kind of interesting to see this stand because saying “you guys” is very common in movies and in real life, and it’s used for both females and males. I admit I say it sometimes too. I’m forgetting that the type of society I’m living in now, is a little more sensitive and demanding of respect based on the gender that people claim themselves to be. 

When the term non-binary came out, I honestly thought it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. There are parts of a human body that automatically decides if you are classified as a male or female, you can’t deny that. Now, if someone wants to be a transgender because they believed they were trapped in the wrong body, it’s something I’m still trying to grasp, but I understand why. Transgender is more common and with a little education can be understood but this new term non-binary in my honest opinion is nonsense.  

when I started my first day of school my social psychology professor starts off saying “Hi my name is..... and I’m cisgender,” it completely threw me off because for one I didn’t even know what it meant and two I wasn’t sure why she said that either. I looked it up and basically means if you are not a transgender then you are a cisgender. I started questioning my own sexuality like does that make me cisgender as well? I could literally consider myself a female or a cisgender and would literally mean the same thing. 

Another stand I came across had gender terms that few were similar and others completely threw me off. All the terms that were displayed really showed me that there is more than I want to believe is a real thing. I feel coming to this fair it has opened my eyes to our society but it seems I’ve only scratched the surface and there is so much to learn beyond this event. 

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Latinos Beyond Reel: Analysis

This movie hit real close to home for me. I consider myself a Latino, but my skin color tells people that I’m white. I’m half white and half Latino I might not be able to speak Spanish, but that doesn’t isolate me to claim myself as a Latino. As I was growing up I watched Spy Kids, George Lopez, and other movies/shows in that era. I didn’t grow up with the more racist shows like Speedy Gonzales or Fort Bronx, so I never took into consideration how bad it was for Latinos. What I have noticed that Latinos are being labeled as immigrants and although there are many different immigrants in the U.S., it seems that the term “immigrants” is only from Mexico. Trump wants to build a border south of the country, but no one cares about the northern border. 

What I thought was kind of sad is that there was no representation of Latinos in the World War II movie. The PBS movie, The War, that was released didn’t involve any Latinos in the WWII and had estimated to have 500,000 Latinos in the actual war. After many protests that the Latinos did, the director added 30 minutes to the film with Latino interviews. The Latinos had to fight and protest their rights to share their own WWII experience how bad is that?

While on the topic of movies, for the longest time white directors would hire white actors to play Latino Roles. The first movie that had hired a Latino kid for a Latino role was Spy Kids. I never knew that was the case for this movie, still one of my all-time favorite kid's movie though. Even the cartoon characters on tv were hired by white actors to play Mexican role cartoons. When the actors were playing Latino they all created a stereotype of the Latino culture. Most of these movies have Latinos as Latino criminals, bandits or for women prostitutes, lovers. These movies and shows have been going on for the last century. It wasn’t until 21 first century where Latino Americans are getting more notice and more movies that have the right race for the roles. So many movies that were supposed to have Latinos play the part, it was whitewashed with all of the white supremacy in America.

A lot of discrimination is still happening right now, but we are getting better very slowly, but we are progressing.

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Get Out Analysis

After watching the movie “Get Out,” it’s easily recognized that there’s a strong white supremacy that takes place in the movie. The movie starts off with a black man being abducted by a white car, then it cuts to the main characters, the biracial couple, Chris and Rose Armitage. The first thing that Chris ask Rose is “Does your family know that I’m black?” Although we live in a more accepting society, Chris still believed that Rose’s family would be racist towards him, because we do have racism still in our society. 

As the movie progresses, Chris’ suspension of Armitage family arises. As he suspected Armitage’s Family was being oblivously racist. They would make comments like “black is in fashion” or “is it true that he’s better” (in bed, it wasn't said but it was implied). While all of this is happening Rose goes in “defense mode” acting innocent and it’s her whole family are just wrong in the head and not her in front of Chris, (we see her psycho side, later on, she’s just like them). Rose also wears a lot of white, symbolizing Rosemary and innocence, and the irony of it is that she’s not innocent at all, she’s the opposite. 

The black people that Chris did encounter appeared to him as “Hostile,” psychotic, inhuman as possessed. He calls his friend and his friend tells him that Rose’s family is hypnotizing the black people and using them as “sex slaves”. He’s half right on that, Rose’s family is hypnotizing black people but are using the black people as a host for white people’s brain and immobilizes the black people’s mind. Chris doesn’t realize that part till he gets trapped in the deer room. 

Before he gets hypnotized again, he finds cotton and uses it to plug his ears so he can save himself from hypnosis. In this symbolism, picking cotton relays to the slave work did back then, but in this case, the cotton was used to help Chris escape. 

In this movie, there was a lot of symbolism that goes on such as white supremacy ruling over black people literally, rosemary, and slavery. When I first saw this movie, it was clear that the Armitage’s Family were psychopaths, I, however, did not see that Rose was the key holder of the entire family, #plottwist. I loved the movie though and all the symbolism it held in them.  

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Dolores Huerta

The most famous, unfamous person that no one knows about. 

Kind of a contradicting sentence there huh? Anyone who may have heard of Dolores believed that she was just a housewife to the United Farm Workers president Cesar Chavez when she was the co-founder of the organization. Dolores was never married to Cesar but she was in a relationship with his brother Robert Chavez, guess that’s where the confusion comes from. Dolores was as active in the labor Union as Chavez was. They helped farm workers get the pay they deserve and insurance as well. Dolores helped lead protesters, marches and even boycotting across the nation just to show what farm workers are going through. 

Having Dolores come on campus and show the students her movie was truly inspirational.  Dolores is a strong feminist who never stopped fighting for the rights of the farm workers even after she resigned from United Farm Workers, she created an organization that encourages people to become leaders and activist for health, education, and economics. She’s a small old lady yet she is a strong, assertive woman, now and then, that every student or woman would hope to be. 

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His Girl Friday Analysis

In this movie, Hilda was once the star reporter of the Morning Post but left her husband Walter because he was a “scumbag” and got engaged to a nicer man named Bruce Baldwin. The movie started in the newsroom when Hilda barged in and told Walter to stop bugging him because she’s getting married. Throughout the movie, Walter tried and convince her to write a story about Earl Williams and Hilda just wanted to leave town and get married to Bruce. Somehow, Walter convinced Hilda to write the story and as she got sucked into writing the story Bruce kept getting arrested for stuff he never did (because of Walter). Hilda is going back and forth with writing the story and helping Bruce getting out of jail. Hilda eventually loses herself in her story and working with Walter on the story that Bruce decides to leave her, and she ends up with Walter at the end of the movie.

The character development with Hilda was almost not visible in the movie. Hilda started off wanting Walter to back off and leave the newspaper and in the end, she’s back with Walter and back with the newspaper. The classic, girl gets back with “dirtbag” boyfriend, happens in a lot of movies and this is what it mainly reminds me of.

One part of the movie that took my interest is when Molly comes into the newsroom and talk to the journalists, they brush her aside and not care about what she has to say. Later on, she comes in the newsroom and gets ambushed by the newsmen about the locations of Earl and when she doesn’t give him up, she willingly throws herself at the window. The newsman doesn’t even call the ambulance or anything for her. They just let her lay there

This movie was a little hard to keep up with mostly banter and comedic wits but overall the movie was decent.

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Women Pioneers in Journalism

In celebration of Women History’s Month, I attended a panel called Women With Words: Female pioneers in Journalism (hence the title). 

The women that were paneled were truly inspirational. The women in the panel have been doing journalism for 30+ years and a lot has changed since then. Maternity leave wasn’t an option when these women started as journalists and now its required by law to have maternity leave. If a woman was pregnant in the 20th century they were forced to quit at 6 months pregnant. Sexual harassment was and is still going on in journalism for women. Plenty of women now have rights to be any kind of journalist, Carolyn Barta, was the first women to become a political reporter. Back in the 60’s, there were no women covering hard news, politics, or crimes and Barta wanted to be part of the politics and she pushed forward to getting that career. These women wanted to be more than just the fashion/food/entertainment reporters that were stigmatized only for women. Leona Allen was almost always the only black woman in the newsroom and for her, that meant making sure the stories were ok to both women and black people. Being a black woman in journalism, however, did not stop her from moving forward and becoming successful as she is today. Allen even won a Pulitzer prize in 1994 for public service journalism, for examinations of race relations. Katie Sherrod was the first women reporter to write her own opinion column at the Fort Worth Stars Telegram. Her series was about rape crimes that help create the Rape Crisis Center. Each of these women had a role in what makes journalism for women today. Along with these women, many other women reporters spoke up for themselves and fought for their rights. A lot has changed in 30 years but there is still a huge gap between men vs women in this industry. This being said, there are more opportunities for women to break through the obstacles and be all that we can be.

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Let’s be honest

I’m not being racist but it’s true;

I hate middle-age white women here’s why:

-they believe they’re so high class because one their white and two they’re women

(AKA: they’re PSYCHOPATHS)

- they believe they are empowered

- if they don’t get what they want so help us they’ll walk in a store and demand for a manger.

- every time I have delt with angry customers it’s 85% of the time middle-age white women

-if you ever seen a middle-age women have a BF (you know what that means) you know you are absolutely toast.

- the managers ? Oh you they got your back because these type of women are psychopaths!

- the associates? Lol they going laugh with you and say she’s psychopath as well.

#white supremist at its finest 🙃

Here’s the kicker: I’m half white lol

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Chuck and Larry- LGBT Analysis

Recently I watched “Now I pronounce you Chuck and Larry” and in the movie they had to go to Canada to get legally married (in 2007 eight years before it was legal in US). When I first watched the movie, it didn’t click that LGBT were not allowed to get married in the U.S., but also I was 11 or 12 around that time so I was an innocent at the time. Watching the movie, now, I realize how LGBT were/ are poorly treated. When The fire department found out that Chuck and Larry were married the crew wrote a petition to have the two on separate shifts. Larry was so disappointed in his crew, after all they saved some of their crew members, a few times as well, as Larry rudely pointed out. Also, when Chuck wanted to play basketball with the guys like he usually does they turned him down because he was “gay.” It’s like all the time and effort they put into their job was thrown away because of their sexuality. Another point of the movie was when Larry went to do Parent-student job thing, the kids asked questions referring to his sexuality and not his job. Larry then talked to one of the parents about little league for Eric and the parent said we don’t need Eric. It could’ve been because Larry was gay or even that Eric might be gay but still, the parent has rude toward Larry because of his sexuality as well. The fact of this matter is that a lot of people say 10 years ago, absolutely hated the idea. Now, there are some disagreements here or there but now people have to accept LGBT marriage. It’s the law now. I’m glad that I have friends that can finally legally marry in the US. It’s a beautiful thing.

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The Ideal Body is Unrealistic

As a female, you are constantly being told what to eat and how to live your life. It’s an endless cycle of trying to be the ideal body that doesn’t exist. If you are too fat, you need to go on a diet to avoid getting diabetes. If you are too skinny you need to put some “meat on those bones,” because you are considered anorexic. Personally, I never had someone tell me either of these things. However, I have a little stomach fat and guess what people say about that. “Oh, when are you due?” People thought I was pregnant because I had a little tummy fat. If you are a woman than you understand how insecure I felt about my body after that comment. Shortly after those comments I went cold turkey on sweets and worked my ass off to lose the tummy fat. I was able to lose 20lbs quick due to the oblivious comment that people have made to me. 

What makes us jump on the bandwagon to make ourselves the “ideal body” when the ideal body cannot exist. The ideal body type is unsymmetrical, photoshopped and has been plastered all over the country. Yet, woman are constantly dieting, getting plastic surgery, and doing whatever they can to become the ideal body type. The only ideal body type that women should be worried about is just being themselves. No one is perfect, and if the woman wants to change, they should change for themselves not for other people. Women are not just targeted for their body type but how they live their lives. We, woman, can’t even live our lives without someone telling us what we should do and how we should live our lives. As a woman, I choose to live my life the way I want to, not the way people “think” I should live.

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Accepting Your “Implicit Bias”and Learning From It.

I have a friend who came to visit recently, and I’ve always heard and imagined what he looked like when I was playing with him on Xbox. Based on his voice and how he spoke my first reaction and thought was that he was a tall white man with blonde hair. I had no idea why but that’s how I imagined him. Seeing him for the first time in person came a shock to me. He was an average height Mexican with a little color to him. I told him, that he wasn’t at all how I’d imagine him and it’s not the first time he has heard that reaction he finds it actually funny. He spoke so fluent in English I couldn’t hear any form of accent in his tone or voice. At the time I didn’t realize, but now I’m starting to grasp the term “implicit bias.” Based off what I hear I automatically assumed what race that person is or may be. In this case, I was completely off, but there are times I was right.

The other day I went to a restaurant with my boyfriend, there were these girls that were talking two tables behind me, and I’m like they sound like a bunch of black girls. I looked. I was right. Majority of most black people or black woman I meet they are naturally loud and obnoxious. I know it’s not all black woman, but it’s a good majority of them.

Already, I have an “implicit bias” of how a white man and a black female is supposed to sound like. I’m unconsciously labeling people and not even realizing it. There goes a saying that some people are “color blind,” that people don’t see color which as ignorant as saying I’m “color deaf,” “I can’t tell what you are by the sound of your voice.” You usually can’t identify someone just by appearance or the sound of someone’s voice. However, we subconsciously have that implicit bias of who someone is based on their appearance or voice. The only way to stop this is to acknowledge the ignorance that we have and just accept people the way they are no matter how people appear or sound.

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Stereotypes are the Worst

So today I was doing my usual night chores at the gas station, taking out the trash and one of the customers say, “oh I can take out the trash for you.” I replied with “it’s ok you don’t have to, I got this.” Before I knew it, he took out two trash bags and put new trash bags in the trash bins right before my eyes. I told him he didn’t have to and he insisted and did it for me. To put into perspective, this was a middle-aged man probably 30 or 40 who helped me out. I said thank you and he left. The first thing that went through my head was ‘do I look weak to do my own job?’ I take out the trash out of 10 trash bins every weekend and I never asked for assistance. As genuine as that man was, it was almost an insult. No, it WAS an insult, pretty much saying “taking out the trash is no job for a young woman.”

*side note: I was raised to do all jobs in the kitchen; do the dishes, sweep the floor, and TAKE OUT THE TRASH. Although I’m at a gas station there is no sex rule of who does the trash. *

Back to what I said, I think it should say, “young WHITE women.” I say that because I think out of all stereotypes; ‘a young white woman is weak or fragile’ is pretty offensive. For Asian women, they wouldn’t be messed with because they know Kung-fu, for Mexican woman and black women they know how to beat someone up. One look at me, and it’s “oh she shouldn’t be out at night it’s dangerous,” or “she’s not strong enough,” it’s almost as worst as calling a blonde stupid. I know quite a few blondes who are quite intelligent, and it sucks how our society stereotypes us all women to make us look weak or stupid.

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“Politically Correct?!”

Today I was talking to one of my friends, who is black. Yes, I said black, not African-American, which is now the politically correct way of defining “blacks.” We were talking about how stereotypical and hypocritical Americans are and how everyone gets so butthurt at every comment that is made. The ironic thing about it all is that he drives a sports car; he tells me he’s a target for cops because he’s black and he drives a sports car. Even though he knows it, he still speeds on the road! We even talked about the use of derogatory language. We all know that black people say the N word. You know the word I’m talking about. All the blacks say it, but let’s say if I say it, a white American girl, it becomes offensive and wrong. If someone were to ask me to describe my friend how else am I supposed to describe “black”? I can say he’s dark-skinned or African-American, but does it matter at all in the end? However, if I do say my friend is black, someone will scream “Racist!” I’ll just be like no I’m just describing what he looks like, describing someone’s skin color does not automatically define me as a racist. Watching the movie “White like me,” one of the quotes I particularly liked was “Racism was built into the foundation of our country.”  It’s sad, but it’s true. From slavery to segregation to Civil Rights today, whether we want to admit it or not racism was built into the white American minds. I say white because that is where most of the racism is from. Black people, on the other hand, they are raised to be obedient and afraid of cops because they know white cops are more abusive to blacks than any other race. It’s a statistical fact that black people are harmed or even killed by police more than white people. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org 

We live in the 21st century and black people still fear white people and that is what is truly sad.