Can a Girl Be a Hero?
Gender constitutes one of the most important learning experiences for the young child. By the time, a child reaches pre-school, he or she is able to make gender distinctions and sex-role preferences. They also learn the appropriate behaviour for both boys and girls and men and women. In addition to learning gender identification and sex-role expectations, boys and girls are exposed to accept society's definition of the relative worth of each of the sexes and to assume the personality characteristics that are "typical" of members of each sex. In a patriarchal society like ours, children learn very quickly that boys are more highly valued than girls, and with regard to personality differences, they learn that boys are more active and achieving while girls are passive and emotional. In the media, girls are again generally portrayed in a different way to boys. There are lots of examples of this from the images found on birthday cards to those in children's books. In picture books such as comics, boys are mostly shown as rough and aggressive while girls are presented as 'scaredy cats' and 'goody-goodies'. There are also far more male characters than females in comics, from 'Superman', 'Batman' to all the othe
Princess Jasmine, on the other hand is simply an object of Aladdin's immediate desire as well as a stepping stone to his fame. Jasmine's life is almost completely defined by men and in the end her happiness is ensured by Aladdin. Again, she goes against her father's will to marry a street tramp-turn-prince. In this case, it is quite misleading for young girls to believe that it is always right for them to long for something they can't have. As for Belle in Beauty and the Beast, she is merely a "mechanism for solving the Beast's dilemma" rather than a real heroine (Giroux, 1999). She becomes another woman whose life is valued for solving a man's problems where as a reward she gets the man, only to subject herself to more domestic and nurturing tasks. Finally, even the bravest female character, Mulan, is not quite a heroine. Despite sacrificing her femininity to fight in the war for her father, she attracts the handsome son of a general, which is really quite an irony. Rather than aligning herself against the patriarchal celebration of war and violence, Mulan is seen as a cross-dresser who proves that when it comes to war she can perform as vigorously as any male. She simply becomes one of the boys who engage in a series of adventures instead of staying at home. However, Disney never fails to remind its audience that Mulan is just another teenage girl in search of her prince charming and manages to gain him as well. Children's books reflect cultural values and are an important instrument for persuading children to accept these values. However, the stereotype of male and female continues to exist and rule such values. According to Edna Wignell (1976), the overwhelming majority of books for pre-school children including the popular standards like Dr Seuss and Maurice Sendak are written for and about boys. Even the animals are mostly male. She points out that it is obvious that little girls are expected to identify with boys, or simply to accept being left out. Whichever, the case the message that comes across is that girls aren't as important as boys. In other words, girls can't really be heroes. Even if they were, they wouldn't be as good as boys.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Snow White, Beauty Beast, , Christian Andersen, Lion King, Wonderwoman Batgirl, Sleeping Beauty's, Little Mermaid, According Weitzman, Princess Jasmine, little mermaid, snow white, girls women, children's books, boys girls, little girls, prince charming, female character, girl hero, female characters,
Approximate Word count = 2015
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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