It's the middle of the night

[velvetpage]

And I have links for you. So there!
Dear Pixar, please make a movie about a girl who isn't a princess

On Rape and Men, which all the wonderful men on my friends list still need to read. I truly believe that most of you are That Guy, and like some of the commenters said, it's pretty sad that I feel the need to acknowledge guys as good just for not being raging dickheads.

Comments

[starry-midnight.livejournal.com]

Why is it so important though that their media role models be animated? There are a tremendous amount of real life female role models (which always always stuck with me longer than girls in movies when I was little...and come on, you know what a Disney nut I am) to expose your girls to. There are a lot of movies about these women and then when they get older, books.

I understand the point...I will gladly point out every last flaw with the Princess deal and other females aimed at young girls.

I do not have children of my own, but my cousins girls are like my own and I strive to expose them to strong, capable female role models (especially considering the grand majority of completely skanky useless females they are exposed to on a daily basis) so I understand...I just think there are better things to contemplate

It's not so much to me about whether or not the main character is male or female but it's about the journey, the story, the experience. So, so long as it's promoting something positive in our children and ourselves...and getting them to engage and think and we are doing our duty to expose our girls and boys to real life female role models, then for the most part all is well. We're a long way off from perfect and mainstream media is even further behind but it's okay. We can challenge ourselves and our children to look beyond that...to find the treasures in biographies and real people whose stories media never saw fit to animate or develop into a miniseries. We are becoming complacent if our concern is that major film companies are not exposing our daughters to the kind of role models we want them to have. You know?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I think what you're saying is, "Pixar does better than most with good messages, so we might as well be thankful and move on to other things."

I don't think it's out of line to ask a major filmmaker to produce pictures that will show women in starring roles as strong characters, since they already show women in secondary roles as strong characters. I don't like complacency and I believe in letting companies know how I feel about their products. How else are we to get truly representative media works, if the companies think nobody wants them?

As for role models - Elizabeth wants to be a screen writer when she grows up. Movies are her medium and I would like to see better representation there. I will certainly expose her to great women in other ways. But it's wrong that boys can find strong, worthy characters everywhere they look, and girls have to seek them out.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Why is it so important though that their media role models be animated?

Animated films get ideas into a child's mind "through the backdoor," if you will. Yes, there are real live women out there who are great role models. But not everybody notices that.

But having the idea of a woman as strong, independent, and able to chart her own path in life, and slipping it into a child's subconscious through animated entertainment gets the idea in without anybody pointing it out. It also gets the idea in in spite of nobody pointing it out. A parent who doesn't believe in equality may ignore the message in the cartoon because it is a cartoon.

(That's my opinion. Here's a grain of salt.)