Activism Log #5

Jessica Schwendeman
WST 3015 – Perez
3/27/2010

Activism:
This week was “The Week of the Woman”, sponsored by the Student Government Association’s Multicultural Student Center. Sarah Jackson and I attended one of these events on Friday, dinner at Brooklyn Pizza with a showing of the popular Disney children’s movie, “The Princess & The Frog”, with the Girl Scouts.

Initially Sarah and I went to enjoy a calm evening of dinner and a movie with the girls, and we really enjoyed the free pizza and first 20 minutes or so of the movie, which is about a “nontraditional” (read: African-American) Disney Princess (a phrase that is actually copyrighted) named Tiana. She is on a mission to earn enough money to open her own restaurant, which is a dream of her fathers’, who it is implied has passed away.

However, because there were sound system issues, we had to stop the movie and Sarah and I were called upon by Mariana (our community partner, who was the coordinator for the event), to entertain the Girl Scouts. After some quick thinking, we got up and played games like Red Light, Green Light and Simon Says with the scouts, who were generally from Daisy (kindergarten) to Brownie (through second grade) in age. After the whole impromptu game thing went a little thin, we turned on fun “tweenybopper” music and danced around the empty pizza parlor.

Reflection:
Though we didn’t watch the whole movie at the actual event, I was really intrigued by it and borrowed it from a friend to watch today. The movie was about a prince from another culture, and a “Disney Princess” who was “culturally diverse”. A lot has been made in the media about “The Princess & the Frog” being Disney’s attempt at reaching out to non-white girls. Though it may seem that they are attempting to be more culturally sensitive with this aim, it probably has more to do with appealing to a different market. This can be seen as a message about globalization – defined by the text as a system by which “the world’s people are brought into an increasingly integrated system that is structured around a range of rules, institutions, and conditions” (Kirk 372). The message is, it seems, is one of inclusion. Most of the girls who were at the event had seen the movie already and I wonder if it affected them personally to see a girl on screen that wasn’t white. Of course, she was still thin and beautiful, which is another issue entirely, but a lot of the girls were African-American and I have to wonder if she was more relatable to them because she looked like them. Being white, I personally never had to contend with the mass media’s images being primarily of people from a different culture that was dissimilar to me, or “flesh” colored band aids and crayons that didn’t match my skin. I’m sure that these types of subtle cultural exclusion affect these girls on a deeper level.

Reciprocity: This was such a fun evening. Even though we had to really think on our feet and I subjected myself to some serious embarrassment (I led a conga line of 35 girls through a restaurant, for goodness’ sake) it was a really good time. I like to be around the girls because it reminds me about what I was like at that age – when life was about just having a good time and you weren’t afraid to dance in front of other people and look silly. I think that adolescent girls are socialized to be more self-conscious and care about what other people think. These girls were just about having fun and I really wish that they would stay that way – it’s a better way to live for sure.

Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. 5th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010.