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Girl power in Disney films

A girl walking through a village while reading her book. The villagers looking at her with eyes full of love. She is a simple girl with big dreams. The girl's dream is made of colors and imagination. The beginning of Beauty and the Beast paints Belle as empowering to men but is not really true. In this paper I will examine how gender roles in the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast, reinforces gender stereotypes. First, I will discuss how intimacy and sexuality are negatively portrayed in the story. Second, I will examine how language, imagery, and symbolism are used to create limited views of beauty. Finally, I will explain how family roles in the story are portrayed in ways that are severely limited for girls and women.


In the story Beauty and the Beast, an old lady comes to the prince for help and he does not help her. She sees the prince has no love in his heart and a caste the spell on him which turns him to a beast. She also turns the prince's workers into the objects which represent their profession. The lady gives a magical mirror to the beast to watch the world through it and a rose whose petals fall according to the time limit of the spell. He needs to learn to love a person before the last petal falls.
In the village a beautiful girl, Belle lives with her father, who is an inventor. The villagers think she is different because of her reading habits. Her father goes to an inventors' fair but gets lost in the woods and ends up a prisoner at the beast's castle. Belle goes looking for him and finds him at the castle. She requests that the beast lets her father go, in return for her staying there with the beast. There she falls in love with the kindness of the Beast. In the village the ignorant and manly Gaston is upset about Belle's refusal to marry him. After being released from the castle, Belle's fathers tell the villagers about the Beast and Gaston commits him to a mental hospital. When the Beast allows Belle to visit her father she saves him from the mental hospital and proves to the villagers there is a Beast. Afraid, the villagers get ready to kill the Beast. In the fight with the Beast Gaston wounds the Beast and falls off the castle to his death. As the Beast is about to die, Belle says she loves him before the last rose petal falls. Belle's words of love breaks the spell turning the Beast back to the prince, and all the other objects back to people. The story concludes with the wedding for Belle and the Prince.
First, I will discuss how intimacy


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Girl power in Disney films

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