DISNEY POC »

...For most of the movie, Mulan has felt out of place. She doesn’t know where she fits in. Covering herself in femininity doesn’t work, like, at all. The scene of the matchmaker…I don’t even have to explain to show you how much that is not her. But then she runs away and poses as a man. She tries her hardest to blend in and be a guy, but at the same time, covering herself in the masculine just doesn’t work. She’s still awkward and out of place. The men eventually embrace her as one of their own, see her as a guy, but they see her as a strange guy, a very effeminate man. But this scene, this final part of the movie, she has finally found her place. She is short haired (masculine) and wearing a woman’s outfit. She has found her place as a tomboy, somewhere in the middle of extremes.

Just for fun, try taking your daughter to the movies this weekend. See if you can find something cheap to watch. Wreck It Ralph might be playing still, or maybe even Rise of the Guardians. Whatever movie you choose, I want you to count up all of the female characters. It won’t take long. Now count the male characters and give me the ratio of them next to the female characters.

Think it will be 50-50? Try again. Female sare disproportionately represented in films, which presents a number of problems. Firstly, it’s completely inaccurate and stupid, given that half of the population is missing from a movie. So unless it’s about, say, pod people from another planet who only have one sex, it’s irrelevant to half of the people watching it.

iamabutchsolo:

I was in the Disney store at the mall yesterday and as usual I gaze at all of the merchandise for my favorite character, Mulan. But as usual, I see her featured exclusively in this particular outfit, her “matchmaking” clothes. It actually frustrates me a bit to see her constantly marketed and commodified in this outfit because it’s the outfit that she feels least comfortable with wearing and the one which embodies everything about her journey that she’s trying to leave behind. But of course, because it’s the most “princess-like” and the most feminine, it has to be the outfit that is sold, as if it’s supposed to be her most iconic look. Not only that, but she’s in these clothes for maybe fifteen minutes at most, and only in the beginning. There should be dolls and representations of her in her training uniform, in her soldier’s armor, in short hair, in any of the several other outfits in the movie that better illustrate who Mulan is.

The merchandise intentionally plays down Mulan’s heroic journey in order for her to conform to the “princess” label. Merchandizing her in only this outfit inadvertently erasing all of Mulan’s heroic qualities rather than allow her to stick out amongst the “Disney princesses” to show a more well-rounded group of women.