Like many queer-identified individuals, I love Disney. Like, love it. Of course, I grew up watching the classics like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and the 90’s films like Aladdin and The Lion King came out when I was still in elementary school. The stories, based on legends and fairy tales passed down through generations, offered an escape from the humdrum reality of life into a world of magic and mystery. It was a world where animals could talk, where carpets could fly, and even the lowliest street rat could end up being a prince or a princess.
Later in life, I became very interested in the way Disney movies, particularly the later ones, loved to play with our society’s concepts of gender identity. See, the stories and music of many of the films Disney made in the 80’s and 90’s were created by two men: Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. What makes this significant is that Ashman was gay (and tragically died of AIDS in 1991), and the duo helped create characters who toyed with society’s perceptions of what men and women could be. The most obvious example is the sea witch Ursula, famously based on the drag queen Divine. And of course Mulan, although released after Ashman’s death, was all about throwing away traditional gender roles – the heroine has to pretend to be a man to join the army, but proves to be stronger than any man in the movie.
So being a huge fan of Disney in general, I was very happy to hear that this Halloween, Disney will no longer identify their costumes by gender. All the costumes that were previously labeled “for boys” or “for girls” are now just going to be “for kids”. This is a tremendous decision for the company, and should be great news for both kids and adults. After all, who is to say that a boy can’t be Pocahontas for Halloween, or that a girl can’t be Buzz Lightyear? Removing the gendered labels will make it easier for children, both cis and trans, to express their own identity, and remove the stigma of wearing something that is generally seen as belonging to boys or girls specifically.
But let’s not get too complimentary here. Disney has done a great thing here, but they still have a long way to go. Just last year, I went to a Disney store to get a gift for my then-girlfriend (who was borderline obsessed with Frozen), and the first thing I noticed is that the store was completely gender-segregated. All the “boy” merchandise; the superhero figures and Star Wars toys, were on one side, and all the “girl” merchandise; the princess costumes and dolls, were on the other. It was as if an imaginary line was drawn in the store, and all the children had to stay on one side to get their assigned gender’s toys – even if, say, a closeted trans girl went in, and she had to buy a Thor figurine when she really just wanted an Elsa doll.
And you can see this pretty much anywhere you go. Corporations gender everything, from toys to cars to bathroom products. My favorite example of this is Coke Zero. The drink was created specifically to be marketed to young adult males, because they associated Diet Coke with women and wouldn’t buy it. They even used the words “zero calories” instead of “diet” in their ads for the same reason! The two drinks are almost identical, just with a different color can and different commercials on TV. Who knew that carbonated water sweetened with aspartame needed to have a gender?
And here we have two separate ads for Coke Zero and Diet Coke, objectifying women and men respectively. Yay for equality?
This is not to fault Disney, or Coca-Cola for that matter, in their marketing decisions. They are corporations, and primarily interested in generating a profit. Coke Zero wouldn’t have been made if people didn’t think it would sell, and Disney wouldn’t gender everything in their stores if there wasn’t a financial reason to do it. What bothers me is that this strategy works. Gendering products works because we as a society gender everything anyway. And, creepily, we use this bizarre gender segregation on children. Hell, we start imposing traditional gender roles before babies are even born, with parents painting their baby rooms blue or pink depending on what set of genitalia they can see in the ultrasound while the baby is still in the womb.
It doesn’t need to be this way. And, in fact, it shouldn’t. Traditional gender norms hurt people. They hurt trans people and the LGBT community as a whole, yes, but they also affect cis/hetero women and men. There have been studies that show that hypermasculinity, or excessive male posturing, can lead to rape. It also promotes a false belief that men and women need to conform to their gender roles, lest they be ridiculed or even attacked for doing otherwise.
I think the fact that Disney is changing their ways is a positive sign. It means that people are tired of seeing traditional gender roles imposed on children. It means that people want to see kids express themselves with whatever gender they choose – masculine, feminine, or something else on the spectrum. It means that people are saying, with their mouths and their wallets, that they want to see a real change, in the stores and in society. And because we live in a capitalist system, the most important decisions are usually made with money involved, and so Disney sees that removing gendered labels on their costumes can result in a profit.
But we have so far to go. Disney has done a good thing here, but it’s not enough. We need to call out unnecessary gendering and imposing of gender norms whenever it occurs. We need to tell companies to stop gendering our shampoo or our diet (sorry, zero calorie) soda. We need to be critical about the messages that we are sending about gender roles, especially when said messages involve children. Because I grew up loving princesses, but I never got to be one for Halloween. And if I ever have kids, I want to tell them it’s OK to be either a superhero or a princess, or possibly both. That, more than any talking animals or magic carpets, is truly magical.
marissatheterrible 
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