Blogging Archetypes and Stereotypes Project (Julia Shin and Jung Eun Chung): Modern Princess

Introduction

             Our topic for the archetype and stereotype project was about modern princesses. Although princesses have been around in our society for centuries, the concept of princesses has taken a new dimension in the modern age which derived characteristics from Disney princesses. Princesses have changed from objects of worship and virtue to objects of commercialism, in which  big corporations such as Mattel and Disney market the image of princesses to young girls from 7-12, also known as the tween group. Disney, the archetype of the modern princess and companies selling stereotypical princess products such as Barbie allowed girls to project themselves as princesses from fairy tales, but aggressive marketing of modern princesses has caused a major negative consequences on society: distorted perception of beauty.

 Writing Prompt #2

We have seen news about the negative affects of the modern standard of beauty. Although the media would claim that fashion magazines and TV shows have affected this image, we believe that the problem actually arose from princesses that girls encounter in their early lives. It is hard for girls to not live their childhood life without encountering princesses from fairy tales. By listening to stories told from their moms and watching movies about these stories, girls have already established the standard of beauty based on princesses from these sources. The effect of princesses on girls may have been subtle until toy industries started to really target the concept of princess. When Disney, Mattel, and other toy industries started to manufacture products that enabled girls to fully indulge in  their desire to actually experience princess lifestyle rather than through vicarious experience, Western beauty combined with unrealistic body curves started to establish unrealistic perception of beauty in girls’ minds. As we have seen from the clip from Dove Evolution, it is “no wonder [that] our perception of beauty is distorted.” How can girls know that what they see in princess shops and movies are all warped versions of beautiful women? While enjoying the benefits of being a girl is important, companies and society should promote a realistic perception of beauty in these products. In a sense, diversity is what princess products and media should portray. Media can use variation from a stereotype to show that unrealistically thin waistline does not necessarily equals beauty. Moreover, a little more diversity would prevent young girls from being narrow-minded at such a young age. After all, one of the greatest things about princess concept is that there is no definite meaning; diversity would be a lot easier to integrate. Diversity would be a ticket to a break from plastic image to a more individualistic concept.

 

The video highlights the dangerous effect of emphasis on improbable body shape and standard of beauty.

As viewers can see from this picture, Barbie is featuring some characteristics of modern princesses that are negatively affecting our society’s standard of beauty. Princesses must be thin, including having an unrealistically thin waist-line, which prompted many young girls to already establish distorted standard of beauty. As a result, many young girls who want to become like these princesses push themselves too hard to have ridiculously thin body.

 Writing Prompt #1 

1. We believe that the original image is the Disney Princesses mythology. After the “Disney Princesses,” brands and shops like Club Libby Lu have elements that are derived from Disney Princesses. For example, these stereotypical products have pretty faces, bell-shaped curves, nice dresses, and fancy accessories. Just like what Disney Princesses had. 

 

Disney princesses embody some major elements of modern princess: thin waistline, pretty face, big eyes, fancy dresses, and accessories. To sum them up, they represent Western beauty that is represented in other stereotypes of modern princess such as Barbie and Bratz dolls.

3.          The intended audience is definitely international audience. Disney movies with princesses are exported throughout the world as well as Barbie and “Princess Diaries.” They represent what many girls throughout the world want to do: living a princess life. Princesses on media get to be beautiful, wear beautiful clothes and jewelries, and find Prince Charming. Even before Disney started to group all the princesses together, thousands of girls across the world are already familiar with Western fairies tales with princesses such as Cinderella, Snow White, and Beauty and Beast. Eventually, due to the familiarity, Disney was able to market the Princess mythologies not only in North America, but all around the world. Even though some Asian countries like China are not very familiar with these Western tales, selling princess products are not a hard thing to do because it is what every girl in the world would want to do at some point.

4.    Girls about age 18 are most widely represented. This is because girls at this age are usually at the pinnacle of their  beauty. Moreover, the tween group known as 7-12 year old girls have tendency to “look up” to teenage girls; as a result, princesses in products and media tend to be around late teenage so tween girls can purchase and imitate teenage girls in princess products.

Disney established the Disney Princess Mythologies in 2000 with Andy Moony. Moony realized that there was a demand for princess products that will allow young girls to “project themselves into the character from the classic movie.” As a result, Disney earned up to 3 billion in 2006, crowning itself as the archetype of the modern princess concept. Club Libby Lu is another major stereotype of modern princess because it allows girls to fantasize princess lives more personally. No longer do girls have to depend on princess characters from movies to see themselves as princesses. By offering these young girls events such as princess make-up event, princess spa, and princess modeling competition, Club Libby Lu continued girls' craze with "princessism." Unfortunately, the sucess with the brand has also shown the effect of aggressive corporate marketing on modern princess to attract more girls.

5. Girls above 20 years of age and Asians seem to be the least represented. This is because usually in fairy tales girls are no older than 20. Also, Asians are least represented because Asians do not represent the Western beauty that is currently the standard of beauty in the world.

6.  We realized that original Disney princesses did not comprehensively incorporate pink in their dresses or jewels. Except the Sleeping Beauty, princesses like Jasmine, Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle wore either azure or yellow dresses. According to the New York Times article, we found out that pink in the early century was considered a masculine color because pink was a light color of red, which was the color representing Apollo, the god of the sun. On the other hand, blue was known as the more feminine color due to its association with Virgin Mary. It was only after Barbie that the world started to associate pink with girls.

Barbie is one of the major stereotypes of modern princess but it is also an archetype in one way. Barbie was the first product to associate the color pink with the concept of modern princess. Disney princesses incorporated pink to some extent, but pink was not the prominent color for its princesses as we can see from their dresses such as Jasmine’s, Snow White’s, and Ariel’s.

 

Key Images With Captions

 

 

 

 

 

For princesses, clothes were the important factor due to its beauty effect. However, as the concept of princesses merge with modernism, cutting-edge fashion became the must-have for modern princesses as shown by this picture of a Barbie wearing Vera Wang clothing. Without fashionable clothes, princess brands would not survive.

  

Walt Disney’s “The Princess Diaries” series is a modernized version of classic princess movies. The movie is pact with key elements of modern princess: clothes, jewelry, pretty face, thin body, and rise from the poor/ordinary.

 

Vocabulary and word cloud

Vocabs

Jewelry                Ariel          Tiny Wasitline      Pretty           Photoshop and Air Brushing             Disney

Belle                      Princess               No definite meaning           Corporate merchandise

Girlie                    Prince Charming              Fantasies            Living the fairy tale life

Snow White        Western Beauty             Distorted perception of beauty       Big eyes

Cosmetic surgery           Thin                  Tween                  Dancing

Must haves        Cinderella               Asians looking life Westerners             Silky hair

Bell-curves         Flawless skin                     Fashion                Barbie

Spin-off                  Singing                      High Bridged Nose          Jasmine              Pink

Resources and Links

modern_princesses_finale11       

Our PowerPoint, which is about modern princesses, is focused mainly on images because of the dominance of corporate products and advertisements in our topic. However, since the concept of modern princesses can be confusing to others, we dedicated the first slide to briefly explain some key concepts of the topic so it will be easy for the audience to understand how these concepts justify some products, movies, and books as archetype and stereotypes of modern princesses. Also, we used the last 4 slides to explain the negative influence of modern princesses.

 

“What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” NYT                                      http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/magazine/24princess.t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=6

“Building an Edgier Barbie to Revive Franchise Sales” The Wall Street Journal           http://www.commercialexploitation.org/news/2008/12/edgybarbie.html

Dove Evolution video on  YouTube                                                                                                                                                                             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

Barbie waistline Image from www.beautyfromtheheart.org     http://www.beautyfromtheheart.org/uploaded_images/barbie-789919.jpg

Link to Jung Eung Chung’s blog                                                                                                                                 jungeun620.wordpress.com