{"id":47598,"date":"2012-05-29T09:17:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T14:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=4254"},"modified":"2015-02-01T02:46:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T07:46:45","slug":"tangled-up-in-disneys-dimorphism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/29\/tangled-up-in-disneys-dimorphism\/","title":{"rendered":"Tangled up in Disney\u2019s dimorphism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting through Disney\u2019s Tangled<\/em> again, I saw new layers of gender in there. They\u2019ve moved beyond the old-fashioned problem of passive princesses and active princes, so Rapunzel has plenty of action sequences. And it\u2019s not all about falling in love (at least at first). Fine.<\/p>\n

But how about sexual dimorphism?\u00a0In bathroom icons<\/a> the tendency to differentiate male and female bodies is obvious. In anthropomorphized animal stories its a convenient fiction<\/a>. But in social science it\u2019s a hazardous concept that reduces social processes<\/a> to an imagined biological essence.<\/p>\n

In Tangled<\/em>, the hero and heroine are apparently the more human characters, whose love story unfolds amidst a cast of exaggerated cartoons, including many giant ghoulish men (the billed cast includes the voices of 12 men and three women).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Making the main characters more normally-human looking (normal<\/em>\u00a0in the statistical sense)\u00a0is a nice way of encouraging children to imagine themselves surrounded by a magical wonderland, which has a long tradition in children\u2019s literature: from Alice in Wonderland<\/a><\/em> to Where the Wild Things Are<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I was thinking. But then they went in for the lovey-dovey closeup toward the end, and I had to pause the video:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Their total relative size is pretty normal, with him a few inches taller. But look at their eyes: Hers are at least twice as big. And look at their hands and arms: his are more than twice as wide. Look closer at their hands:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now she is a tiny child and he is a gentle giant. In fact, his wrist appears to be almost as wide as her waist (although it is a little closer to the viewer).<\/p>\n

In short, what looks like normal humanity \u2013 anchoring fantasy in a cocoon of reality \u2013 contains its own fantastical exaggeration.<\/p>\n

The patriarchal norm of bigger, stronger men paired up with smaller, weaker women, is a staple of royalty myth-making<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which is its own modern fantasy-within-reality creation. (Diana was actually taller than Charles, at least when she wore heels .)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this, Tangled<\/em> is subtler than the old Disney, but it seems no less powerful.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Disney’s dimorphic distortion makes a human couple fantastically patriarchal.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,55,23676,129,120],"class_list":["post-47598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-gender-binary","tag-media","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47598"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65759,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47598\/revisions\/65759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}