I love Disney movies, especially the classics, and trust me, this is not an exaggeration. I mean, let’s see, I’ll put this in perspective for you, I’ve already decided that my children will know all the stories before watching these new children movies, they aren’t quite up to par in my opinion.
So, imagine my surprise when a quick conversation at Disney turned into another reminder of practicaly unconscious double standard that never seems to escape society.

He was telling me a story about how, at age 14, a friend of his tied him down and forced him to watch “Beauty & the Beast”. “Lucky you!” I replied, “I love that movie!”
“Yeah, of course you love it, girls usually do…”
Well he was right, right? I mean it was one of those so-called princess movies. Hmm, in that case, which ones qualify as gender-friendly then?
“…As far as Disney goes, I’d much rather prefer the movies that are for guys and girls. You know like The Jungle Book, Hercules, Peter Pan, ones like those.”
“Oh.”

Can see you see the difference between the first film and the second three?
I could: the gender of the main character.
And when you think about it, as much as it disappoints me, in many ways he’s right. For whatever reason, these movies where the boys are the heroes, the protagonist seem to be marketed to both us and them, having a universal appeal. Still, then when their is a girl in the lead role all of a sudden we are bombarded with frills, lace, and pink. With this kind of pressure, it’s no wonder that guys learn to catagorize these moves as ‘for girls only’ and not drift into the magic of happily ever after.
Now I wouldn’t consider myself an uber-feminist, by any means. To be honest, I’m really not that bothered by the fact that Sleeping Beauty is rescued by her Prince Charming. Yep, I’ll admit it, I actually find it romantic. But this is just not right, and the fact that I’ve never noticed it before, bothers me more. Apparently not everyone in this kingdom (aka Earth) can love Disney.

It’s a small world after all. Trouble is, is this small world actually progressing as much as we’d like to think?