Gender Shaping and Fairy tales:

For our research based presentation I chose to go with the topic choice of how gender is shaped in young children through the fairy tales they are exposed too. I found this topic particularly interesting as I see it as something very dynamic, and influential. In my mind, ever since the successful Disney interpretations of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, which for the first time presented children with relatable characters in often mesmerizing and magical outfits, that, for those who were familiar with the original tales put protagonists like Belle, Snow White and Cinderella into a depicted form that often leaves little girls dreaming of being a princess dressed in beautiful outfits like those we see in Disney Films. While movies like Cinderella have been around since the 1950s, a major change in the industries related to the designing, producing and marketing have flourished over the last 20 years, exploiting yet another consumer niche through the magic of globalization, exports, and rapid development processes we have established in today’s society. 

It’s evident that children make up a good part of today’s consumers, and it’s not hard to see why; on one hand children are generally exposed to very similar forms of media as they grow up, watching Disney movies, and possibly being read some of the fairy tales we have deemed as acceptable over the years. On the other hand most parents today are very concerned with their child’s well being and happiness, and although most parents don’t want their kids to end up spoiled, when compared to standards of forty years ago, most children would probably appear to be. This is largely due to the fact that society has grown so materialistic, which doesn’t just say something about our changing habits and values, but is largely due to our advancements in production techniques and ever growing globalization. It used to be a tedious and costly process to create a dress that would look as fancy as that worn Disney’s Cinderella, nowadays however it has become an intelligent, cost effective process, that has evolved from great powers like the textile industry. Synthetic fabrics like nylon, polyester and spandex are to thank here. These fabrics have become immensely cheap and easy to manufacture all over the world. And with today’s impressive import-export systems these dresses can be manufactured for close to nothing in certain countries like Egypt, where I was personally able to observe this at a wal-mart sewing plant. Along with the latest technologies in computer aided design, a dress could go from concept to production in no time, and with minimal development costs. 

We can observe these changes in any clothing store today, shirts with detailed print designs and several different types of fabric can be purchased for five dollars or less at times, something that would simply have been impossible through sheer production costs just ten years ago. So we really have expanded in both ways, and it’s hard to say who is more responsible for this growth in gender shaping today, on one hand we as consumers seem much more willing to give our children whatever they desire, on the other hand it has become much easier faster and cheaper to manufacture and develop all these toys and clothes for children, giving parents a whole new array of products to choose from.