Shaping Girls: Analyzing Animated Female Body Shapes

Abstract

The debate over whether television and film affect girls' body image has been contentious. Researchers argue that film and television negatively affect, only partially affect, or do not affect girls' body image. These studies have one common limitation: they approach animated female bodies as if they are the same because they are, mostly, thin. In this project, the author seeks to extend and complicate this existing scholarship by analyzing bodies in 67 films produced by several American animation studios from 1989 through 2016. In this study, she classifies 239 female characters as one of four body types: Hourglass, Pear, Rectangle, or Inverted Triangle. Her argument is twofold: (1) over the last 30 years, there has been a shift from a singular dominant shape (Hourglass) to the dominance of several body shapes (especially Pear and Rectangle); and (2) young girls may be affected by characters their own age who have been largely ignored in studies thus far. The author argues that young girls see diverse images of bodies rather than the singular image that scholars study. Girls' body image may be affected by animation, but animated images are so diverse that this effect may be difficult to determine. A more nuanced understanding of the body shapes animation utilizes may allow researchers to study the more complex messages that girls do or do not internalize.

Cartoon Characters in Children’s Series: Gender Disparities in Body Weight and Food Consumption

“…Although, once the stimulus type was examined by gender, thin girls always rated higher than overweight girls, the same applied to thin and overweight boys [25]. Additionally, a research focusing on 239 females' body shape (and not on body weight or size) in cartoon series found that over the last 20 years, there has been a shift from the dominant "hourglass" shape to the dominance of other body shapes ("pear", "rectangle") which have small waists and so may be called thin by the researchers analyzing body size [26].…”

A cultural history through the comics of Donald Duck and friends

“…The similarity in actual numbers of men and women in the world, while the comics remain dominated by male characters is an example of patriarchy that has continued from the 1930s to the present day. The paradigm of non‐binary and the gender spectrum has yet to be approached in these stories and as such the explicit gender binary used in these comic stories is an example of Disney reflecting a binary gender normative society of male and female (Rowe, 2019, 24) and patriarchy that shows little indication of change. To date, Disney's Duck comics do not reflect society's demographics.…”

Deconstruction of Immersive Animation Image Interaction Design under Virtual Reality Technology

“…By analyzing the application of animation elements in dynamic animation images, he summed up the advantages and characteristics of dynamic animation images and the skills and methods of animation elements. And the application methods, principles, application effects, and advantages of animation elements in dynamic animation images are studied [3]. Javadi N experimented with the Remote Immersion Platform (TIP) in order to study the application of immersive technology in animation.…”