She’s reading? You know what that leads to…
“Oh, look! She’s reading again.”
“Poor thing. Although…without a man, I guess she has to think for herself.”
Once upon a time, it was frowned upon for women to read. They simply weren’t wired right for thinking and education, so why waste their time with silly things like books? Women needed time to focus on their music and needlecraft.
Times have changed. Women refuse to be discounted like that anymore…and yet we keep getting movies that reinforce this. Part of me says, “Oh, they’re just trying to create the when of the story.” The other part of me screamed last night while watching the newest Barbie (who has never been a positive female role model) movie, “Not when the ‘when’ really doesn’t matter!”
In Ever After, it was appropriate for the “women shouldn’t read because it would lead to them thinking” scene because it’s clearly set in a period of history where that was how people actually thought. The same thing is true for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Both are set in times when women had to fight for their right to be educated if they wanted to read.
The Island Princess, however, is set in a timeless setting. There is nothing to suggest an assumed time period at all, and yet the villain makes comments on women, reading, and the combination of the two leading to a woman thinking, which is pointless in her opinion.
The sad part is, the only reason I think this actually got to me last night is because in this day and age, I keep finding myself tutoring a lot of girls who are just killing time in high school until they meet a rich man who will turn them into a trophy wife. That’s seriously all they want or expect for life. They haven’t considered actually finding a career of any sort. They worry about me because I don’t have so much as a boyfriend, and have no desire to have children.
2007, and there are honestly girls who’ve more than likely grown up on these Barbie movies, on settingless movies where it’s dangerous for women to think for themselves.
Why can’t we seem to move away from this?
