{"id":60775,"date":"2014-01-07T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=60775"},"modified":"2014-06-09T19:41:55","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T00:41:55","slug":"do-cartoons-have-to-exaggerate-gender-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/01\/07\/do-cartoons-have-to-exaggerate-gender-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Cartoons Have to Exaggerate Gender Difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One criticism of my post on gender dimorphism in Disney movies<\/a>\u00a0was that good animation inevitably<\/em> exaggerates sex differences. There are a lot of these comments here on SocImages<\/a>\u00a0and at\u00a0Slate<\/a>. Here\u2019s one example:<\/p>\n

Cartoons aren\u2019t meant to accurately portray people, EVER. They are meant to exaggerate features, so that they are more prominent and eye catching. So feminine features are made more feminine, and masculine features are made more masculine. \u2026 The less realistic the proportions, the more endearing and charming we find the character. The closer to realistic they are, the creepier\/blander they can become.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Flipping through IMDB\u2019s list of the\u00a0top 500 animated movies<\/a>\u00a0reveals that Disney is certainly not alone in emphasizing the larger size of males. But there are a few successful counterexamples as well.<\/p>\n

Here are some good ones where the male and female characters are similarly proportioned. Note these are not just random male and female characters but couples (more or less).<\/p>\n

From\u00a0Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0Hayao Miyazaki:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From\u00a0Dreams of Jinsha<\/a>:<\/i><\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even some old Disney movies have romantic moments between physically-similar males and females. The original Snow White (from the 1937 movie) was paired with a Prince Charming whose wrists were barely bigger than hers:<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Disney\u00a0non-human animal pairs were sometimes quite physically matched. Consider Bambi and Faline (Bambi<\/em>, 1942):<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Or Dutchess and O\u2019Malley from\u00a0Aristocats<\/em>\u00a0(1970) in which their exaggerated femininity and masculinity are not conveyed through extreme body-size difference:<\/p>\n

\"5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In other realms of animation, Marge and Homer Simpson, the most durable couple in animation history, have very similar features: heads, eyes, noses, ears. His arms are fatter and neither of them really have wrists, but I\u2019d put this in the category of normal sex difference:<\/p>\n

\"6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, Lucy and Charlie Brown were virtually identical if you think about it:<\/p>\n

\"7\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m open to other suggestions.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>\u00a0and Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/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":"

One criticism of my post on gender dimorphism in Disney movies\u00a0was that good animation inevitably exaggerates sex differences. There are a lot of these comments here on SocImages\u00a0and at\u00a0Slate. Here\u2019s one example: Cartoons aren\u2019t meant to accurately portray people, EVER. They are meant to exaggerate features, so that they are more prominent and eye catching. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":60930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,55,2103,129,343,293],"class_list":["post-60775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies","tag-media","tag-tvmovies","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/01\/41.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60775","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=60775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61341,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60775\/revisions\/61341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}