I can’t offer much in the crowded field of Disney gender criticism. But I do want to update my running series on the company’s animated gender dimorphism. The latest installment is Frozen.
Just when I was wondering what the body dimensions of the supposedly-human characters were, the script conveniently supplied the dimorphism money-shot: hand-in-hand romantic leads, with perfect composition for both eye-size and hand-size comparisons:
With the gloves you can’t compare the hands exactly, but you get the idea. And the eyes? Yes, her eyeball actually has a wider diameter than her wrist:
Giant eyes and tiny hands symbolize femininity in Disneyland.
While I’m at at, I may as well include Brave in the series. Unless I have repressed it, there is no romance story for the female lead in that movie, but there are some nice comparison shots of her parents:
Go ahead, give me some explanation about the different gene pools of the rival clans from which Merida’s parents came.
Since I first complained about this regarding Tangled, I have updated the story to include Gnomeo and Juliet . You can check those posts for more links to research (and see also this essay on human versus animal dimorphismby Lisa Wade). To just refresh the image file, though, here are the key images. From Tangled: