As a huge Disney fan, it goes without saying that reading Martin and Kazyak’s “Hetero-Romantic Love in Children’s Films” was a little disheartening. The fact that heterosexual romances were often the focal point or a part of the main storyline in many of these films was unsurprising, but I had never considered how much attention was placed on them in almost all G-rated films. The fact that only two out of the twenty films studied contained absolutely no reference to a hetero-romantic storyline was surprising, but when I thought about it, it made total sense. As a little girl, I was obsessed with the idea of falling in love. Pretty much everything I played with or watched involved romance of some kind, and now the link between my way of thinking and the romantic stories targeted towards kids is clear. What I find most interesting about the pervasiveness of magical, transformative love described in the article is the effect it had on me as a child and, arguably, still has on me. When the depictions of love children see in movies are only accompanied by dramatic portrayals and over-the-top outcomes (such as a kiss turning household objects into humans), kids come to expect that love is something that has to be earth-shattering. On page 325, Martin and Kazyak explain that the heteronormative love in children’s G-rated films is often only started with some kind of visible chemistry or spark. When children are repeatedly exposed to this, it’s only natural that they come to believe hetero-romantic love is something special and instantaneous. I had to pause here, because I realized I still have that mentality. Luckily, I value other kinds of love just as highly as romantic love, but I realized I still think romantic love should be some kind of fairytale started by some special spark, when in reality it is nothing like this. This is just my personal experience, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t the only one who still thinks this way sometimes.
Something more disturbing about this article was how it pointed out the emphasis placed on men gazing at women’s bodies. Martin and Kazyak state “[these] depictions of heterosexual interactions have the effect of normalizing men’s objectification of women’s bodies and the heterosexual desire it signifies” (332). When I watch Disney movies now, I never even blinked an eye at the obvious sexualization of the women’s bodies in the film, and of course I never thought about it as a kid; it was so internalized that it didn’t even deserve note. Thinking about how that may affect kids in the future, however, is troubling. If the objectification of women’s bodies becomes no big deal as a child, how is it going to be as that child gets older? He or she is only going to be exposed to more kinds of objectification, normalizing it even more.
The past studies that Bordo outlines in the first part of her article are so ridiculously inaccurate that they’re funny. She shows how men were portrayed as sex-crazed due to their biology, and that women’s sexuality is much slower and built up more. I find it amusing that she mentions that men and women used to be described as hailing from separate planets; by the way they were described, it was as if men and women had absolutely no variation in their genders and had to conform exactly to what was expected of them. This was pretty insulting not only in the descriptions of women, but also in what it implied about men, saying that all they thought about was sex and they would jump any woman they deemed attractive. In essence, people like John Gray were implying that men were animals and had absolutely no self-control.
The problem arises when animalistic, violent actions are seen as essential to a man’s nature. Violence is seen as a positive attribute because it is a sign of one’s masculinity. Not surprisingly, it is the men who partake in this aggressiveness, such as athletes in impact sports, who “get charged with rape and public vandalism far more often than any other group of financially and socially successful males” (236). As a society, we reward violence; Bordo mentions how we cheer on boxers, urging then to beat each other up as much as possible. There is a “tremendous cultural adoration heaped on them – by men and women alike – [which] encourages a sense of absolute entitlement that doesn’t combine very well with respect for property rights or women’s wishes” (237). It is exactly this mentality surrounding masculine aggression that leads to rape and the insinuation that it is the women’s faults. People don’t want to accuse the men in these situations because their masculinity, i.e. their violence, is held in such high esteem. We can see this apparent in the case in Steubenville, Ohio, where recently a girl, who was passed out at a party, was sexually assaulted by boys on the football team. After coming forward about the assault, the girl got threats from community members who supported the boys on the team, saying they would never do such a thing. These boys are so idolized in their communities because of the masculinity they portray that they can do no wrong in the eyes of those around them.
Something more disturbing about this article was how it pointed out the emphasis placed on men gazing at women’s bodies. Martin and Kazyak state “[these] depictions of heterosexual interactions have the effect of normalizing men’s objectification of women’s bodies and the heterosexual desire it signifies” (332). When I watch Disney movies now, I never even blinked an eye at the obvious sexualization of the women’s bodies in the film, and of course I never thought about it as a kid; it was so internalized that it didn’t even deserve note. Thinking about how that may affect kids in the future, however, is troubling. If the objectification of women’s bodies becomes no big deal as a child, how is it going to be as that child gets older? He or she is only going to be exposed to more kinds of objectification, normalizing it even more.
The past studies that Bordo outlines in the first part of her article are so ridiculously inaccurate that they’re funny. She shows how men were portrayed as sex-crazed due to their biology, and that women’s sexuality is much slower and built up more. I find it amusing that she mentions that men and women used to be described as hailing from separate planets; by the way they were described, it was as if men and women had absolutely no variation in their genders and had to conform exactly to what was expected of them. This was pretty insulting not only in the descriptions of women, but also in what it implied about men, saying that all they thought about was sex and they would jump any woman they deemed attractive. In essence, people like John Gray were implying that men were animals and had absolutely no self-control.
The problem arises when animalistic, violent actions are seen as essential to a man’s nature. Violence is seen as a positive attribute because it is a sign of one’s masculinity. Not surprisingly, it is the men who partake in this aggressiveness, such as athletes in impact sports, who “get charged with rape and public vandalism far more often than any other group of financially and socially successful males” (236). As a society, we reward violence; Bordo mentions how we cheer on boxers, urging then to beat each other up as much as possible. There is a “tremendous cultural adoration heaped on them – by men and women alike – [which] encourages a sense of absolute entitlement that doesn’t combine very well with respect for property rights or women’s wishes” (237). It is exactly this mentality surrounding masculine aggression that leads to rape and the insinuation that it is the women’s faults. People don’t want to accuse the men in these situations because their masculinity, i.e. their violence, is held in such high esteem. We can see this apparent in the case in Steubenville, Ohio, where recently a girl, who was passed out at a party, was sexually assaulted by boys on the football team. After coming forward about the assault, the girl got threats from community members who supported the boys on the team, saying they would never do such a thing. These boys are so idolized in their communities because of the masculinity they portray that they can do no wrong in the eyes of those around them.
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