"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." But who is the beholder? Disney apparently is for preteen and adolescent girls following fads like Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez, and even those who remember the young Lindsay Lohan. These girls are seemingly ordinary until you realize that ordinary teenagers don't show up on TV everyday and have their own show about their fictional lives.
The media already has a knack of showing beautiful people on magazines and TV. I mean, who has ever seen an ugly TV reporter? On Cosmopolitan and Teen Vogue, women are depicted as curvy, thin, photogenic women. Some Disney shows are focused mainly on girls who are thin and pretty. If a child believes that Disney's standards for how a girl should look like is correct and that child doesn't meet those requirements for example, she is heavy set, then that child would probably begin losing weight and grow up with an eating disorder. Disney shows give negative body images and gives unrealistic standards that only a few percentages of women meet.
Remember High School Musical? I'm in high school and as far as I'm concerned, stereotypes don't exist. True, there are few individuals that devoutly follow that stereotype. The majority of high school students doesn't sing constantly or have any problem hanging out with people that are different than them. I spend time with athletes, or the so-called stereotypical jock, and they don't make fun of nerds or bully anyone. The Jonas Brothers is that band supposedly filled with brothers that have great relationships with each other. They have great talent and are handsome. These are the thoughts that the adolescent Disney fans believe. Any girl whose thoughts and morals that are not corrupted by the Disney franchise would believe that they aren't as great as they seem. Hannah Montana can also be interchangeable for the Jonas Brothers too.
I walked into Vons one day and the first thing I saw was a section of new Disney princess books. I'm pretty sure that any girl who loves those princesses would try to convince their parents to buy it for them. Six books for less than ten dollars? It seems like a deal. Children are demanding. They have to have the new High School Musical DVD or go to see the new Jonas Brothers movie. Disney advertising clearly uses the quote "In with the new and out with the old" and use the child's demands as an advantage for buying their merchandise. About ten years ago, pillowcases that were sold had the Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast on them. If you looked at the pillowcases now, they have Zac Efron or Miley Cyrus on them. How many Disney shows do you see that is specifically animation only? Few. Disney showcases more real life situations and less cartoons to get a broader audience.
If someone just looked up promise rings and who's wearing them in Hollywood, you would see that Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, and the Jonas Brothers all wear a promise ring. Isn't that a bit fishy? All of these people are affiliated with Disney. This is a speculation but is it possible that Disney is paying them to wear them? Was it influenced by the fact that both Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, both previously a part of Disney, became loose and wasted constantly? These promise rings do show the same commitment to abstain from sex before marriage but what about explicit pictures? Miley Cyrus took pictures that were incredibly suggestive. It was all over the news and there were also some explicit pictures of Vanessa Hudgens to Zac Efron. Disney is sending a message to girls that says, "As long as you close your legs before marriage, it's okay to be a slut in other ways."
However, Disney is not the only one who is doing this. Barbie did this long before Disney began doing so. Sara Burge, a British woman who has gone through numerous surgeries trying to look like Barbie. Many of her surgeries were for enlarging her breasts because she felt that they were not large enough compared to Barbie's. Not to say that Disney contains only negative things. Disney shouldn't stop their negative influences but consider the morals and standards that are being expressed to the millions of girls out there. Pixar, a movie company that works under Disney, takes the focus that Disney animated movies had but Disney itself is changing its focus.