Study Explains Why Disney Princess Culture Might Be Bad For Young Girls

Little girls in billowing costume dresses with plastic tiaras adorned in rhinestones – can you picture it? This is the stuff that little girls' dreams are made of. Finding their prince charming, being saved from harrowing circumstances, living happily ever after. And though a new wave of Disney princesses have changed those old, outdated tropes — ie. Elsa, Anna, Merida, and Rapunzel — the older original Disney princesses —Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty — are still held near and dear in the hearts of many American homes. Keep reading to find out why Disney princess culture might be bad for young girls, according to this study.

Role models. For many young girls, once exposed to Disney princess culture, they begin to think of the figures they see on TV as their idols, their role models, people they look up to. And once that mentality sets in, it’s difficult to overcome.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Sarah Coyne was the lead author of a new study where some interesting information has emerged about the correlation between young girls and Disney princess culture.

Findings. Rebecca Hains of The Washington Post reports that study involved 198 preschool aged and kindergarten aged children — boys and girls. What she found was deeply unsettling.

Feminine. “The more the girls in the study engaged with princess culture,” Hains writes, “the more they behaved in stereotypically feminine ways."

Body image. “Girls with a lower body image when the study began tended to be more interested in princess culture a year later,” Hains writes.

Betterment. “There was no evidence that the girls’ engagement with princess culture influence girls’ behavior for the better,” Hains writes. “Princesses’ potential as positive, prosocial role models is limited."

Data. Hains and Coyne both admit that the findings are quite unsurprising, but they are quite helpful. “The big contribution this study makes,” Coyne says, “is that we actually have data now. We’ve been talking about princesses for a long time, and there’s been all kinds of speculation."

Boys. Though the impact of Disney princess culture on young girls is quite negative, there was a silver lining. Hains writes, “Engaging with princess culture seemed to have positive effects on boys, counterbalancing some of the stereotypically aggressive messages found in media targeting male children."

Body image. The study did find, however, that there was no negative impact on young girls’ body image after watching the films. They reportedly had very positive body image views in the beginning and at the conclusion of the study.

Follow-up. Coyne believes there is more work to be done, and that she may find more conclusive evidence to back some of her hypotheses if she conducted a follow-up five year long study.

Changes. “We kind of caught them at the age where all of them felt great about their body, and I’d like to see if that pans out long term,” Coyne says.

Lessons learned. When a child watches a movie like Cinderella, for example, what sort of things does she learn? First of all, she learns to prize beauty and femininity over all other things. It is the key to finding “Prince Charming,” if you will.

Results. Coyne isn’t sure if these sort of beauty ideals will be pervasive enough to influence young girls and their views of their bodies. She does believe that prolonged exposure may not help, but hurt young girls body image in the long run.

Confusing finding. Hains reports that “The authors found that girls were more stereotypically feminine in their behavior (considered a negative outcome of princess culture) if their parents reported talking about media with them."

Why? Hains hypothesizes that this discourse between parent and child may reinforce some of the problematic messages from the film, “perhaps praising television character’s physical appearances, for example."

Careful vs. Careless. Hains says that we as parents might be unknowingly reinforcing negative messages for our children, but if we are more careful, “we can help our children become resilient — and that’s useful knowledge.”