Counterarguments About Walt Disney Negative Effects Essay

Disney Company is among the leading producers and providers of entertainment and information in the world. The company was established on October 16, 1923, by Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney (Phillips, p. 3). Since its establishment, the Company has produced numerous entertainment, comic and children movies. With its multiple productions, it has made remarkable impacts on many people, including children, youths, and parents. The Walt Disney Company has become very popular all over the world. The paper examines the counterarguments about the Walt Disney negative effects it has had on the world. Moreover, it looks into what others view concerning the impacts of the company. Finally, it provides a concise conclusion of all the arguments.

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The Walt Disney Company has had negative effects on children, youths and parents regarding the ideas and morals it promotes such as the non-representative portrayal of women. Critics argue that Disney is guilty of a decades-old body-image problem which is simply put, showing thin as good and fat as bad. In "The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years," Rebecca Hains, an associate professor of Advertising and Media Studies, and the assistant director of the Center for Childhood and Youth Studies at Salem State University, argues that the more the girls engage with princess culture, the more they behave in stereotypically feminine ways (Hains, p87). Therefore, a survey from 2009 found that a third of young girls under the age of six years admit to worrying about being fat, and when they were asked to choose the "real princess" from an option of ballerinas, half of the girls opted for the thinnest one. It is understandable why the opposition believes that the "Pretty as a Princess" study has some positive effects for boys. Though it is true that the Disney movie may have some beneficial effects on boys, it might unwittingly reinforce the media's harmful messages in the children's mindset which in the long run may influence them into undesirable practices.

During her performance at the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam, Melissa May expressed how frustrated and disappointed she is with Disney for hacking inches off Ursula's waist. May laments that this is not the first time that the Disney Company has been criticized for fat-shaming. Disney Company launched a short game called Habit Heroes at its Epcot theme park, Florida in 2012. The short match allowed children to fight the three evil villains Snacker, Glutton, and Lead Bottom. Ragen Shastain argues that Disney should be the most preferred place of pleasure. However, the fat kids would not feel comfortable going on vacation and find out that people who are as they are, are the villains that the other kids are fighting for the bragging rights and points. Following the underlying societal disdain on these kids, they would furthermore be subjected to a barrage of fat-shaming, stigmatization, humiliation, and bullying messages.

Disney has negatively influenced girls by presenting thin as good and fat as bad. In Wonderland, both Alice and Ursula is the cruel matriarch, the Queen of Hearts are villains while the heroines are presented as disproportionately skinny with white and wide-eyed beauties. Princess Anna's eyeball, for example, is even wider than her arm. Such a non-representative portrayal of women makes Disney guilty of promoting the stereotypical feminism. As the most influential and iconic of the modern children storyteller, the Disney Company should be held highly accountable to the inversed morals and ideas it promotes among the unsuspecting young children.

The lack of normal-sized heroines in the Disney movies is a pat on the face for the younger plus-size girls and women with capsized confidence and seriously need positive plus-size character in the media in which they interact. On her petition to urge Disney to create a plus-size princess, Jewel Moore, a High School junior from Virginia, expressed an ultimate need of a character for the girls to look up. On the same note, Melissa May strongly disagrees with Disney for dramatically slimming Ursula. According to Melissa, Ursula was the only Disney character who ever resembled her. Melissa claims Ursula as a role-model for the powerful plus-size women whose size is not ugly or cumbersome, as for the case of the Queen of Hearts (Orenstein, p. 56). According to Robin Hood's Sheriff of Nottingham; the ugliness portrayed in the Queen of Hearts is a malicious sign of buffoonery. For Pocahontas' Governor Ratcliffe, it is a detestable symbol of greed and wickedness.

Moreover, the Disney movies depict to a large extent a heartless humiliation of the overweight people, which is never appropriate at all. Disney tried a trick by knocking some dress sizes off Ursula version of Merida. In that movie, the Scottish heroine had a tomboyish personality, fly-away red locks, and a reasonable figure. The creator of this character, Brenda Chapman, was not happy with the doll's redesign which portrayed fat-shaming. Obesity is a deadly health problem, but so is an enhancement of the artificial thinness as an ideal. It is very inappropriate especially for children, who cannot control their diets and more so, are highly probable as compared to adults to take such sharp criticism to heart.

The social stigma associated with fatness usually develops from the aesthetic disgust rather than an individual's health concerns. Through the act of slimming Ursula for the "Designer Villains" doll line, Disney Company is communicating that it is okay to be wrong. The evil villains are depicted as glamorous, high-end fashionistas, but very fat! It portrays a further demonization of the plus-size girls and women.

As per the above arguments, it is clear that the Disney's princess culture is not all games and fun. In fact, the brand suggests that a girl's most significant asset is her gorgeousness, and this promotes an unhealthy preoccupation with physical appearance. Moreover, the brand implies that girls must always be sweet and submissive, expecting a man to come to their rescue in the act of love at first sight. Although the newly introduced characters such as Anna, Merida, Elsa, and Rapunzel portray a corrective behavior to these ideas, wholesomely, the brand remains out of step with today's ideas about raising girls.

Conclusion

From the above arguments, it is therefore worthy to conclude that Walt Disney Company has produced adverse impacts on the lifestyle of children, youths, and the parents. Among the serious adverse effects of the Disney movies are fat-shaming, stigmatization, humiliation, and bullying messages to the plus-size girls and women. Furthermore, it promotes the concept of stereotypical feminism in the society, especially among the girls and women. In addition to that, the Disney movie has also caused drastic spoilage of the original societal moral values and social standard that we richly require.

Works cited

Hains, Rebecca C. The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years. Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2014. Internet resource.

Orenstein, Peggy. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. New York, NY: Harper, 2012. Print.

Phillips, Jean, and Stanley M. Gully. Organizational Behavior: Tools for Success. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.

Stanton, Neville A, Steven Landry, Bucchianico G. Di, and Andrea Vallicelli. Advances in Human Aspects of Transportation: Proceedings of the Ahfe 2016 International Conference on Human Factors in Transportation, July 27-31, 2016, Walt Disney World, Florida, USA. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017. Internet resource.