Breaking the Stereotypes of Female Hair: From Portrayals of Disney Princesses to Female Autonomy

• Main Authors: Lin, Mu-Min, 林牧旻
• Other Authors: Chueh, Difeng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/8mfk8m

碩士 === 逢甲大學 === 外國語文學系英語文研究碩士班 === 107 === This study aims to explore how social influences have stereotyped and shifted hair colors and lengths of women. The Disney Princess franchise’s hair images will be used as an example in viewing hair as a powerful object presenting female autonomy. To link female’s hair and personalities together into literary form, I address the importance of viewing female's hair imagery as a motif and how hair is related to people’s first inter-pretations of a woman’s personality. In Chapter one, I focus on analyzing the connec-tions between color stereotypes and the princesses’ respective personalities. Color stereo-types play a big role in the personalities of Disney’s blonde, redheaded, and black-haired princesses from its earlier films, while princesses from movies released in the twenty-first century are not subject to such stereotypes. In ancient mythology, blondes are char-acterized as noble, kind,and pure. Disney uses this characterization in their blonde prin-cesses, such as Cinderella, Aurora, and Rapunzel. With redheaded princesses like Ariel and Merida, Disney alludes to images of a redheaded Satan and the hair color’s per-ceived notions of rebellion and adventure. Black-haired princesses maintain mysterious and sophisticated personalities, stemming from the West’s exoticism of dark hair and the unfamiliar. Chapter two uses social and anthropological theories to analyze interpreta-tions of Mulan’s and Rapunzel’s hair lengths and the meaning behind their haircuts. The princesses’ long hair represents their unrestricted female attraction from appearance. That said, the princesses only gain autonomy and confidence after they cut their long hair. By highlighting the parallels between women’s personalities and the Disney prin-cesses' hair colors and lengths, this study sheds awareness to the fact that other people may use stereotypes to judge women’s personalities through their hair in certain ways but women should always be proud of their respective hairstyles and personalities out of the hair stereotypes, as the process of deciding a hairstyle is a form of female autonomy.