#who worked at Western University of Health Sciences and would deliver lectures at animation powerhouses (like Disney but not limited to

[show-us-kaidenshenandoah]

the western animation nerd in me wants to commission an editor (alas: i am broke) to edit together an amv of Taylor Swift's "Clara Bow" where

the Clara Bow section: would have a montage based off of Betty Boop. Because she was a caricature of Clara Bow (and also Baby Esther since Clara Bow copied her scat + baby-voice gimmick) and heavily influenced the infantilization of women in animation (for anyone who doesn't know: Betty Boop was purposefully designed to have a baby head and an adult woman's body to reflect her voice. infantalization in animation of women is based similarly off of "baby proportions in head" + "adult woman body" via peanut-shaped heads, big eyes, and facial spacing (space between nose and lips, a small bottom of the nose as well as a short height of nose, and many more) mixed with an adult body with breasts) Betty Boop, through globilization, famously impacted how Osamu Tezuka drew children and women (along with other influences, of course, but Betty Boop was one of them). So she impacted both Japanese animation and USA animation through trickle-down influences, but her biggest impact was probably on the iconic Ariel of the "Little Mermaid"

the Stevie Nicks section: would have a montage based off of Ariel from "The Little Mermaid". Betty Boop influence Glen Keane in his designs for her as he was trying to differ away from Disney's past princess designs (where you'll see stylization, yes, but also more adult-modeled facial structures) and one of the sources he looked for how to draw this 16 year-old girl was the design conventions (aka: infantilization) of Betty Boop, another famous teenage girl(? Betty's age is complicated and in constant flux depending in what age range best suits the story, but teenager is her classic statis) in western animation. From then on, seeing Ariel explode with popularity, they carry the same design philosophy to Belle and so on to success after success leading to the "Disney Renaissance" period. You can see other studios start to take note of this global success, as Dreamworks changes (it's wild seeing the facial differences between "Prince of Egypt" or "El Dorado" compared to any contemporary human-female characters from the studio) and you can even see Japanese animated properties start to change away from designing adult faces in its animated women (That generalization specifically is likely be correlation and not causation, I will fully admit, but globalization of media has lead to some fascinating influences and trends). Betty Boop was the start of this animation design trend of visually infantilizing women, but Ariel is the one who really catalysted and popularized the trend. Like. To the point that you'd be hard-pressed to not be influenced by her impact of not her, or "the Disney Princess Style" directly lmao

the Taylor Swift section: I'm not sure. I waffled between several different styles and properties ("Avatar: The Last Airbender", "Frozen", Miyazaki specifically from Studio Ghibli, "How to Train Your Dragon", "Steven Universe",... I think you could make an argument for having the Taylor Swift verse just be a montage of a bunch of properties) but I think for the infantilization throughline + chronology (as "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" came out before "The Little Mermaid") + western (USA specifically) animation stylizations of how women are designed... I think I'm going to go with the "Into The Spider-Verse" series? And say to cycle that tiny final verse with shots of all the series' female characters. because it truly has changed animation as we know it. Yet it still keeps with infant baby-heads for some of its female characters. Thankfully, not all of them as I think that would've been reductive to the movie series message about "Anyone can be Spider-man"; though even all the female adults have bigger eyes than the adult males which is one of the traits of infantalization. But it makes sense for both the teen boys and teen girls to have some infantilization in their faces since they are in-between childhood and adulthood. But yeah, the infantilization is the most prominent in Gwen and Penny. But it's cool. I don't see visual infantalization as bad btw, I just see it as a design choice that I like tracking the family tree of since it's a design choice that can be done in any style lol But I'm not confident in my choice of "Spider-verse", because it's female characters are not the main characters and I kind of want that to be an over-arching theme as well. But Gwen does sell a LOT and this series has impacted the animation industry's stylization in general (and hopefully also itd depictions of women and diversity ♡). So maybe I'll change my mind, maybe I won't. But the parts with Clara Bow/Betty Boop and Stevie Nicks/Ariel? I love that part of this concept so, so much, I'm cemented on those verses, and I am on CUSP of something with this idea lmao

like?? do you see the vision? idk, man. maybe i'll animate something or edit it myself (i won't; i'm too sickly rn lmao rip)