The world could use more Rebel Princesses

 

 It is said that our personalities are mostly developed within the first five years of our lives and our brains within the first three. Children and exposed too many things during this critical period as new parents struggle to determine what is appropriate for their young children. Sometimes however, life gets in the way and harmful information slips through the cracks. Busy parents set their children in front of a television screen only to have them absorb these images like the sponges they are. For my final project I would like to analyze the content which media conglomerates produce for the youngest generation. I will focus primarily on the gender constructs of men and women in animated cinema and television as well as other content which perpetuates these gender norms.

In order to collect accounts from real people I will conduct interviews with willing parents and children in order to construct an understanding of how content for children shape their understanding of what it means to be a man and women. I will initially collect unbiased accounts from both parents and children. Secondarily I will reconstruct the lens through which they are viewing children’s content; i.e. are Disney movies as innocent as they appear. In order to do so a careful dissection of this content will be necessary and I will have to spend some time analyzing these works for myself.

As part of my interview series, I would like to collect data from professionals as well; psychologist’s, sociologist’s, and possibly individuals who are producing this potentially harmful content. My aim for this project is to raise awareness about the negative repercussions of gender constructions in children’s content and to educate the public about the future consequences of this type of manipulation.

Preliminarily Research

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2010/11/29/disneys-gender-roles-remain-un-tangled/ 

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba/495/paperss98/paper1.html 

http://prezi.com/lycl-4xwlspx/gender-stereotypes-and-non-stereotypes-in-cartoons-comics/