Fifth Blog Post

My source is called “Disney’s modern heroine Pocahontas: revealing age-old gender stereotypes and role discontinuity under a facade of liberation”. This article was written by Lauren Dundes, in the Social Science Journal. This article is focused on one specific Disney Princess Pocahontas. In the article Lauren Dundes disputes the idea that Pocahontas was the start of a new generation of Disney princess.  That Pocahontas would break the race barrier, and gender stereotypes concerning Disney princess.  While Pocahontas does do these things, by being an independent princess. She makes a lot of her own decisions herself, but at the same time is still restricted by the same gender issues as the previous Disney princesses. Pocahontas is seen as Native American “savage” that needs to be “saved” and brought to the cultured world by John Smith. The article concludes that while Pocahontas does not act like the typical Disney Princess, and is more liberated than her predecessors she still is not a free woman. She still adheres to some of the previous Disney Princess bonds.  I feel like this source is very useful to my essay. This is because the essay directly, contributes to my essay question of if Disney princess movies are contributing to or harming their young viewers’ self-esteems, and self-views. This source helped me with the structure of my essay immensely. This is because it helped me figure out what I wanted to write my essay on. Before reading this article, I just had the broad topic of Disney princesses and the gender stereotypes that the princess movies contain.