No princesses allowed

I recently read a precis of a study which analysed various Disney princess films by percentage of words spoken by male and female characters, and was both unsurprised and horrified to read that, on average, the male characters get a substantial majority of the lines spoken (roughly 60-80% in the so-called "second-generation" princess films), including the ones in whom the central character(s) are female. The Little Mermaid, which has a female protagonist AND a female villain, still gives 68% of the lines to male characters - perhaps because (this isn't icky at all) Ariel literally gives up her voice in order to be with her man. My daughter's obsession with Frozen, before either of us had ever seen it (such is the power of marketing) forced me to set a daily limit of five minutes' conversation about Elsa and her ice powers lest I start howling with boredom, but I was convinced by an otherwise usually sensible friend that Frozen was better than most Disney films from a feminist perspective. So I watched it on the plane and... despite being about the (frequently pouty, histrionic) relationship between two (predictably Barbie-pretty teenage) sisters, Frozen clocks in at 59% of the dialogue spoken by male characters. Here's the weird part: this is an overall increase in male dialogue over the earliest Disney films (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella), in which female characters at least got to talk a bit more, even if there is plenty of disturbing chauvinism to be found in the content. The researchers attributed this to modern Disney films' having a larger cast of characters these days than in the old days, and nearly all the supporting characters with lines are male, because....drumroll.... "laziness."
I am confused by this. Laziness? Really? Men have an average of 1.9 m2 of skin, as opposed to women's 1.6 m2; thus it should be _quicker_ if anything to draw a female character, especially an underweight teenager, even if you do take up a little of the difference with attractively displayed cleavage:
Maybe it's not the drawing that's more difficult - maybe it's really hard to find unemployed young female actors in Hollywood to do the voices.... Um, not. Or maybe, just maybe, whoever is making the artistic decisions at Disney is walking around with a special helmet strapped to his head which filters out the voices of all women, and the appearance of all women other than anorexic pretty teenage girls, such that they believe themselves to be living in a world mostly populated by other men and voiceless teen girls, and gosh, yes, it would take a lot of work to remove that helmet and recognize that the world is actually populated half by women (!), many of whom are not anorexic pretty teenagers but who are nonetheless doing interesting and valuable things.

Which gets to another beef I have with Disney princesses, besides the fact that they don't get to say quite enough (although interestingly, all except Aladdin pass the Bechdel test): why are they all teenagers? I have done some poking around the Internet and this doesn't seem to be something that has caused that much comment in the blogosphere, but it seems obvious to me that if you are making films for children, that they should be _about_ children. So, why are all the princesses physically developed adolescents rather than straight-up girls? Obvious answer: so that you can sexualize them. This is presumably more fun and titillating for any heterosexual males involved in the process of making Disney films (boobs are always more fun than no boobs, right?), plus you don't have to do any hard thinking about what to have as a happy ending ("I know! A handsome prince can fall in love with her! Our work here is done. Let's go for coffee.")  Happy endings for bona fide kids, I suspect, would be much more interesting and varied; my daughter's goal for this kindergarten year, for instance, is to meet a unicorn; a classmate would like to be a panda wrapped in a taco - and I do see that finding a happy ending that all small children could unilaterally agree was awesome might be difficult. Surely, however, some compromise could be found - a taco party with pandas and unicorns? Disney, make that movie, and I will promise to take my kid to it.

Here's my totally predictable feminist-rant theory: the conspiracy to make girls feel ugly and incomplete without a male, and to be willing to submit to dominant male voices in their lives, has to start early in order to get it really stuck in their psyches, because if it's not really truly entrenched in their little brains before they hit sexual awakening, then you might not be able to make quite so many squillions of dollars down the line selling them eye-liner, push-up bras, botox, boob jobs, magazines advertising 10 best blow-job tips, wedding catering services, and diet pills. I'm open to other theories, but until I hear a more convincing one, or until Disney starts making movies that are better for girls, our house is going to stay a no-princess zone.

Guest post, wrttten by my trophy boyfriend

Almost directly copied and pasted from an email, as followup to a discussion re: insulin levels, diabetic risk, and obesity. Mostly the thing about slavery I think is probably dead accurate, and it's a theory I've never heard before. He came up with it all on his own, 'cause he's wicked smaht.

"There’s plenty of evidence that high levels of circulating insulin trigger a shift in metabolic pathways.  Fatty molecules are preferentially moved from blood-borne lipoproteins to adipocytes, leaving other tissues in a state of fat deprivation.  The brain reads this as a state of relative starvation, so it slows metabolism and activates hunger and craving.  This triggers the intake of more food, and coupled with the increase in adipocytes, this cranks insulin levels up again.  The cycle spirals upwards, and the end result is obesity, constant craving, tissue insulin resistance and high levels of circulating insulin.

 

"There are a bunch of experiments in which lowering circulating insulin makes lab mice pretty much impervious to diet-induced obesity.  There are also human experiments in which low carb, low glycemic index diets reduce weight more effectively and result in higher metabolic rates (measured by calories burned) than a low fat diet with the exact same protein and calorie intake.  Low carb diets also seem to improve post-prandial energy availability (no “post-lunch dip”), which encourages activity, further lowering insulin resistance and burning more calories.

 

"From a teleological point of view, this all makes perfect sense.  Our endocrine/nutrition systems evolved long before our ancestors learned to cook or grind grains to produce high glycemic index foods.  For millions of years, the only high glycemic index foods available to mammals in large quantities were ripened fruits, which appeared for a limited time in great abundance--but mostly in autumn, just before the long deprivation of winter.  To take advantage of this bounty, it makes sense that we would have evolved a metabolic switch, turned on by large spikes in circulating insulin.  We evolved to take advantage of the harvest season by flipping into storage mode and building up our fat stores for the lean times ahead.

 

"I also think the high rate of obesity, diabetes [and salt-responsive hypertension] in African Americans (which includes all income levels) may be a direct result of unnatural selection pressures of slavery.  On slave ships in particular, fat storage and reduced metabolic rates (not to mention sodium retention) came with a distinct survival advantage.  The slaves with the highest circulating insulin levels survived the voyage."

So, yuh. I've absolutely heard it posited that metabolic systems best attuned to survive relative scarcity will then be more prone to obesity etc. when faced with caloric over-availability, but the idea that specifically the single event of the metabolically extremely traumatic trans-Pacific voyage would be enough to act as a defining Darwinian moment in the genetic makeup of an entire ethnic group is intriguing, and absolutely makes sense. What I can't find are any studies comparing propensity for diabetes/salt-responsive hypertension in Africans and African-Americans with similar starting weights, diets, and exercise habits.