Hurley, Melanie P. (2024) Cinderella: Disney’s foremost plastic and postfeminine icon. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
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Abstract
Cinderella: Disney’s Foremost Plastic and Postfeminine Icon provides a feminist analysis of Disney’s Cinderella, one of the company’s thirteen official princesses. It understands Cinderella as an icon, plastic because she is adaptable to many contexts and because her significations are extremely flexible, and postfeminine because these significations are contradictory. The dissertation uses postfeminist critique and aesthetic theories of glamour to analyze how this icon has gained her many significations through her presence in a variety of historical and media contexts. To get a multifaceted understanding of the icon, it closely examines Disney’s animated Cinderella, originally released in 1950, and several Disney Princess picture-book treasuries, sticker books, and calendars. Additionally, to understand how the cultural contexts of these Disney products influence the icon’s significations, it uses a series of intertexts, such as the post-war films Sabrina, Gigi, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and My Fair Lady; Britney Spears’s early songs and music videos; Home Box Office’s sitcom Sex and the City; and multiple products from Mattel’s Barbie brand. It argues that Cinderella’s significations include women’s discontentment with domestic labour and female empowerment through performative labour; class struggle and socioeconomic aspiration; romantic love and its interrogation; cultural pressure for women to embody conventional standards of attractiveness; the culture’s objectification of women; rabid consumerism; and stereotypical female passivity and helplessness. It concludes that Cinderella has feminist potential, but that Disney—especially the Disney Princess brand—limits that potential and instead maintains rigid definitions of girlhood and womanhood, using this icon to foster little girls’ interest in dress, personal grooming, and consumer goods, and to prompt their desire for social status and material wealth.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral (PhD)) |
|---|---|
| URI: | http://research.library.mun.ca/id/eprint/16681 |
| Item ID: | 16681 |
| Additional Information: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 436-520) -- Restricted until September 19, 2025 |
| Keywords: | Cinderella, Disney, postfeminism, icon, children's media |
| Department(s): | Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of > English Language and Literature |
| Date: | October 2024 |
| Date Type: | Submission |
| Library of Congress Subject Heading: | Cinderella (Legendary character); Disney characters; Feminist theory; Icons in literature; Children's mass media |
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