ever-enigmatic:

feministdisney:

ever-enigmatic:

kingofthelostkids:

DisneyStore.com sometimes bothers me.

I wish they’d be just a tad more liberal instead of labeling things as “Girls” or “Boys” things they could just have them open to anyone. It isn’t necessary to say “Peter Pan Costume for Boys,” just say “Peter Pan Costume.” Or call the Toy Story dolls “Action Figures.” Jessie and Woody are pull string dolls. Will a boy suddenly have an allergic reaction if he touches a doll? “Rapunzel Costume for Girls,” sorry lil boys but if you want to be Rapunzel we want to make sure you know you’re not “supposed” to be Rapunzel and that you’re weird. If my daughter wants to be Captain America you want to make sure all the other girls know she wearing a “boys costume.”

And most of the time it seems that the people who work for Disney are pretty liberal. As far as I’ve seen there are a good number of gay people in Disney too. You’d think they’d toss something out there.

At least the kids on the front page are racially diverse.

OR.

Or.

They’re just children’s costumes.

And you can buy your kid whatever they want.

And this ad is just called marketing.

WOW, NOVEL CONCEPT, SLOW DOWN, I KNOW, I KNOW, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THIS WAS ALL A PLOY TO MAKE MONEY

oh wait, everyone.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t an ad to just stab at gender equality.  not once did i read boys weren’t “supposed” to be Rapunzel.  if your little boy wants to be rapunzel?  let him be, shit.

quit caring so much about a god damn marketing ploy.  quit making it about an issue that is most likely is not.  understand that the world is slow to change.  and also?  stop.  stop?  stop.

fuckin halloween costumes, jfc

you’re right it’s not possible at all that marketing schemes influence consumer decisions

that has never happened in the history of marketing

so long as they’re not evil-y, intentionally scheming something it must be okay, because unintentionally reinforcing problematic gender binaryisms has never happened before. You’re right, so long as the point was just “to make money,” then we definitely should not even think to criticize the setup

if your kid is influenced by a ton of ads and people telling them that they shouldn’t be a boy wearing a princess dress obviously it is their fault because even though they grow up in a society that naturally influences how they see the world, as a 6 year old they have complete free will while evaluating these things and we should never critically examine the media that has influence over their young and impressionable minds

thank goodness for this sharp tumblr reader who was on the lookout for us unjustly picking on more multi-billion-dollar companies

so what’s the solution, put a bunch of boys in disney princess costumes and have them lose their marketing ascetic?

this isn’t about inequality, it is about what makes money, and i’m not saying it is okay, so you don’t need to take a passive-aggressive stab at me.

the world isn’t black and white, and neither is gender identity, but with marketing, it either sells or it doesn’t, and they’ll appeal to whoever buys more, and if this ad is so offensive, you can make the choice not to support them.

this also goes back to the parents and the children themselves.  if your little girl wants to be Buzz Lightyear, who’s stopping her, this ad?  If a boy wants to be Rapunzel, who’s saying he isn’t supposed to, Disney?  They don’t care, it’s money, buy the costume anyway, they get what they want in the end.  OR.  HEY.  Maybe they can buy another costume from some other company and make a statement because gender equality wasn’t fully represented.

it’s funny you ask about solutions since the OP suggested some right there, in that first post?  To start with, it’s helpful to simply stop labeling things BOYS and GIRLS in big capital letters.   It doesn’t make sense to ignore tons of research done in the field of children’s psychology/sociology just because it is at odds with what you want to believe; yes, microaggressions like this influence children’s decisions and sense of gender identity (it is, after all, in its modern phase a learned behavior rather than something we’re born with, and I’m guessing your parents didn’t sit you down with a book called “How to be a boy or girl” when you were little, so guess what?  Yes, you learned what it means “to be” a boy or girl in little, unintentional lessons all along the way.   No special snowflakes here), and yes, children will pick up on the idea that certain roles are “not meant for them” and will then shy away from these roles.   If you bothered to look through the reblogs you’d see people already talking about how, as children, they felt uncomfortable dressing in a costume relegated “for the other gender” because of the way it was marketed/the way people reacted to them.   

I know this is a revolutionary concept but it actually is possible to successfully market costumes without resorting to using the gender binary as a prop to sell your product.   Companies do it all the time… just not this company as well as many others.   You say “if this offends me I have the choice to not support them,” which is exactly what the OP’s and following posts were about- not supporting this- and yet in reality you actually seem very defensive to the very idea of people vocally not supporting it?

Parents and children have choice but once again: choice is limited when choice occurs within a larger social context.   I can choose to allow my boy child to paint his nails and wear a skirt to class, but I cannot control the often very negative reaction of his classmates and other adults, or the message he receives from tv shows that boys exhibiting traits traditionally labeled “feminine” or “girly”  are only worth showing as the butts of jokes.   This is the reason we talk about these things in public places and do not just silently dissent: because we live within the larger world and it can be changed when many small voices add to a larger force against harmful gender labels.