Gender Stereotypes - Happily Ever After
Gender Stereotypes - Happily Ever After
Gender Stereotypes - Happily Ever After
Happily Ever
After (or What
Fairytales Teach Girls
About Being Women)
Alice Neikirk
Introduction
Fairytales are the common thread throughout
the fabric of childhood in the United States. The
Grimms Fairytales serve as the foundation to
many of the stories that are common in a variety
of mediums. A survey of these re-published stories
yields a distinct trend that focuses on validating
women through submissive beauty while men are
portrayed as active and, at times, violent. Rather
than being a mere reection of societal ideals, these
fairytales perpetuate Christian, patriarchal concepts
as a means of maintaining the gender hierarchy.
An analysis of the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty
illustrates the changes that fairytales undergo, the
stereotypes that they perpetuate and the more subtle
forms of social manipulation that they employ. The
effects of fairytales are evident in everything from
studies done with children to the roles of males and
females in current television programs. Movies, and
more particularly horror movies, thrive on exploiting
the stereotypes that tie together sexuality and
violence that children are initially exposed to through
fairytales. Fairytales have never been bedtime stories;
in this day in age, they have morphed into a very
effective means of exercising power over women and
maintaining gender inequality.
Background
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Whilhelm,
collected their rst fairy tales over one hundred
years ago and inuenced many other countries to
begin preserving their oral traditions. They gathered
the stories predominantly from German women,
the majority of whom were spinners, as a means of
preserving the oral traditions of Germany (MichaelisJena, 1971). Spinning during the 19th century was
dominated by women and it was an activity that
was often done communally. Tales were told at
night as a means to keep themselves and their
Gender Roles
The lead characters of fairytales, perhaps
because they were originally told by groups of
females, are women. However, several different
types of women exist and the reader is often able to
deduce each characters moral character based on
their physical appearance. Attractiveness is the most
important attribute that a woman can possess, and is
often an indicator of chances of future happiness. A
study of the evolution of 168 tales that originated in
1857 found a strong correlation between the number
of times a book was reproduced and the number of
times the appearance (i.e. beauty) of the female lead
was stated (Baker, 2003). The good female is generally
submissively accepting of her lot in life while waiting
for the prince to appear and take control of her
destiny. In many ways, some of the more popular
stories can be interpreted as elaborate beauty
contests, emphasizing the message that a womans
youthful appearance, especially when paired with the
appropriately meek demeanor, is her most important
asset (Lieberman, 1972). Conversely, women that
are not beautiful are a source of suspicion. The evil
stepsisters in Cinderella are an example of how, at
Specic Analysis
Inuences on Society
The effects of fairytales on the perspectives of
children are remarkable. A study of close to twentyve hundred eight to ten year old German school
children revealed a startling trend in the effectiveness
of fairytales in terms of associating specic behaviors
with a certain gender (Wardetsky, 1990). The boys
and girls were given a variety of introductory
sentences and then instructed to write their own
story or fairytale based off of that opener. What the
researchers discovered was that if the introductory
sentence suggested victimization or repression of
the main character, both female and male characters
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Inuence on Movies
The movie genre which seems to thrive on
the victimization of women is the horror genre.
Alfred Hitchcock attempted to artistically portray
violence towards women, an act that he perceived
as a universal aspect of the human experience
(Thomas-Allen, 1985). In perhaps the most famous
Hitchcock movie, Psycho, the female lead exemplies
many stereotypically female characteristics. Dressed
demurely in a pencil skirt with a conservatively
feminine haircut, she works as a secretary. These
behaviors have strong parallels to most Grimms
fairytales: a demurely beautiful female that stays
within her socially-imposed boundaries. In the movie,
as in the fairytales, the female attempting to step
out of her role is met with punishment. In Psycho,
by stealing money and attempting to control her
own destiny, the female heroine sets herself up to be
punished. The ironic parallel between Hitchcocks
masterpiece and typical fairytales is that the theme
of females punishing each other still punctuates
the story. In the movie, the male murderer dons
the clothes and mannerisms of his dead mother in
order to kill the heroine. Rather than a man inicting
pain on a woman, a man is possessed by a jealous,
older woman who demands that the younger, more
attractive and sexual woman is punished. In this
case, the heroine meets a more permanent fate which
cannot be xed through the kiss of a prince. However,
the dashingly masculine detective can unravel the
plot twists and save the female from being victim to
an unsolved crime.
Hitchcock and many other disciples have
recognized the commercial value of tying female
Conclusion
Fairytales change and evolve depending on
the biases of the interpreter. Starting with the Brothers
Grimm, changes occurred that replaced the traditional
male villain with a female one that was ugly, jealous,
and old. Disney went a step further, giving the
audience a visual ideal of beauty and introducing
the association between violence and masculinity.
These male interpreters have, perhaps unwittingly,
enhanced characteristics that support stereotypical
female behavior and downplays or punishes
attributes that threaten the patriarchy of society. The
distorted view that remains keep women, regardless
of the other freedoms they may enjoy, slaves to the
beauty myth. Fairytales plant an inuential seed in
the minds of children and as children grow, these
subtle concepts morph into their perspective of reality.
Movies can be viewed as both the by-product of
these early fairytales, inspired impressions of reality,
and as another means of perpetuating gender ideals
that hyper-masculine men while objectifying and
subordinating women. The themes in fairytales that
reward female submissiveness and place an emphasis
on beauty remain inuential long after the fairytale is
over.
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