Princesses and Evil Step Mothers

Would you rather be a princess or an evil stepmother? Because for a long time, those were the only two paths open to women and girls in Disney movies. Guests Jamie and Caitlin of the Bechdel Cast join the show to discuss the representation of women in movies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph. I've
never told you. Our guest today are the co host
of The Bechdel Cast, Jamie and Caitlin. Jamie and Caitlin,

(00:26):
thank you so much for joining us, Hi, thanks for
having us. Men. We are a big, big fans of yours.
As our listeners know, we love love, love love love
digging into pop culture and looking at it through a
feminist lens, hopefully in a fun, enjoyable way. Could you
tell us a bit about yourselves and your show. Well,

(00:50):
we were both comedians, yes, Um, we're both writers. Um,
we host the Bechtel Cost as you said, which is
a show where we examine the portrayal of women in
movies through an intersectional feminist lens. Um. And yeah, I mean,
I mean we we made the show both because we

(01:12):
didn't think that there was a show like it out there.
Most of the movie podcasts were just like, yep, it's awesome,
and it was dudes saying that movies by dudes. There's
actually nothing wrong with it, and and it's and and
to like kind of like keep ourselves accountable and make

(01:33):
us better writers and people. Yeah, that was the idea.
Didn't work out. Well, that's a really important thing on
this show is UM constantly growing and trying to become
better and more aware. So I definitely encourage listeners to
check out your show. Recently, you guys had Alfred led

(01:56):
on there. I love it. I want the shirts oh badly,
very Oh please send me one. That was a ploy
for this whole podcast collaboration. UM and most listeners probably
know what the Bechdel test is, but as a primer,
would you mind giving us a brief rundown? I mean,
they could just check out your podcast because you have

(02:18):
a wonderful intro song that explains it. But yeah, just
to get everybody on the same page. Yeah, we So.
The Bechdel Test is a media test metric invented by
UH cartoonist Alison Bechdel, and for our purposes, we require
that there be a scene in any piece of narrative

(02:38):
fiction that as two named female identifying characters who talk
about something other than a man for more than two
lines of dialogue. Yes, gather different variations of it, but
that's the one that we use, and as we often
point out on our show, it's a low bar. You
wouldn't think it would be that hard for two named

(02:59):
women to peak to each other about something other than
a man, And yet it does not happen that often,
and when it does happen, it's usually like it just
like barely squeaks by, or the women are telling each
other how much do they hate each other? Or they're
like calling each other up like it's you know, it's
it's a flawed metric. But it wasn't meant intended to

(03:20):
be used as intensely as it is used. It was
originally in uh comic that Alisa Bechdel wrote in the eighties. Right,
it was kind of more of a almost a joke
pointing something out right. Exactly right, but yes it is.
It is a low bar and yet a lot of movies,

(03:42):
especially as I've gotten older and become feminists, like, really
accepted it and embraced its. Surprising how many movies I've
had to go back to that were favorites of mine
and say, well, main theme of our podcasts either women
who are the love interest or women just providing exposition

(04:02):
about the male protagonist. Yep, I guess that's what we're for. Yeah,
I mean, I'm a pro. And the the idea that
you pitched was you wanted to talk about, um, the
betrayal of women in movies in general, but maybe with
a particular focus or a starting off point with Disney movies. Correct, yes, yes,

(04:29):
And I immediately, because I'm a big nerd, I was like, wait,
which which Disney movies are we talking about? Are we
talking about the princesses? Like Black Widow? Does she count?
Princess Leiah? What about her? Because Disney owns everything they
Oh yeah, they are just conglomerate, those swallowing ass whole Yeah,

(04:49):
but yeah, we were thinking more along the lines of
like the classic Disney princesses, your snow Whites, your Cinderella,
the ones on the backpacks. You're your classic backpack princess,
your Bells, your Jasmines. Although Mulan is never on the
backpacks and that always was upsetting to me as a child.
And now because Disney is racist and Mulan is the

(05:13):
bet I argue I still think Mulan is the best
princess in terms of uh, like from using a feminist
bar and just like she's the cool Yeah, and the
songs are great in that movie? Yeah, yeah, was that?
Do you do you each have a favorite when you're
a kid, which was your favorite Disney princess? Hmm. I

(05:34):
don't know if I had a favorite Disney princess, because
my favorite Disney movie when I was a kid was
The Great Mouse Detective. Oh yeah, I would say my
favorite movie that has a Disney princess in it when
I was a kid was probably probably Aladdin. Um today
it is Mowanna. My favorite. My favorite when I was

(05:56):
a kid was definitely Belle and Beauty and the Beast,
I think strictly big. She had brown hair, uh and
could read, which at the time was like, oh she
can read amazing. Um. So I was like, brown hair
can read. Well, I feel seen that a and her
child we can read. Um. And then yeah, now these

(06:19):
days it is a tie. I think Mulana is my favor,
but Milana is also incredible. Milanna yeah pretty great. Um
mine was. And I love looking back at this now
because mine was the Princess Aurora from The Sleeping Beauty
and she pretty much spent the whole movie set. So

(06:40):
I'm like, why did I Why was she my favorite?
I don't know. I think I really liked Maleficent. And
also they said hell in that movie, which as a kid,
I was like head, Oh my god, moleficent Is and
I mean like as a just the way that character
is designed is was the scariest person in the world
to me when I was a kid, because she was like, yeah,

(07:02):
so she looked really sharp. I remember that was like
my specific fear, like she looked like, yeah, the scariest
for me was Ursula and Little Mermaid I wanted to bear. Yeah,
she was pretty frightening too. But okay, let's let's get
into this discussion around the betrayal of of women in movies,

(07:25):
and particularly of Disney. And it sounds like we're talking
about Disney princesses right now. I mean, it's pretty pretty
well understood, especially as I've gotten older, that it's not
great the because it's been the whole movie. Like success

(07:46):
in these movies is finding your prince charming and getting married.
That is like your entire goal in life, right, because
a lot of them are based on existing fairy tale that. Yeah,
the narratives of those are always like, oh, damsel in
distress and then she gets rescued by her prince Charming

(08:09):
and then they live happily ever after. Something I think
is like interesting that we're we're we're gearing up for
a Little Mermaid episode right now, so we're kind of
thinking a lot about it. Is that especially like once
you hit the Disney renaissance, so like a Little Mermaid
and on um, there's like such a specific formula that
all the Princess movies follow, i think with the exception

(08:32):
of a Laddin, because Jasmine is not the main character.
But where at the they always start out okay, where
there's always that song in the beginning, like in The
Little Mermaid and in Beauty and the Beast, where it's
like there's some sort of like intellectual longing from the
princess character who's like, I wanna, you know, bust out

(08:53):
of my normal life. I want to go out in
the world and I want to learn things and all
this stuff. And then immediately after that song it's always
derailed by like and the only way to do that
is boyfriend or large dog if it's speedy in the
Beast like and so it's just always it's frustrating because
those are always the best songs movie usually, and the

(09:17):
topic of it is generally like vague enough of like
wanting to learn, and then it's well, even with Aladdin,
even though she doesn't have a jasmine doesn't have a
song about it. Her driving desire in the first chunk
of the movie is to like escape the palace life
and because she doesn't want like her father deciding her

(09:38):
future for all that stuff, so she like has a
drive to like go out into the world and live
her own life. But then immediately she's like, well, what
if I met Aladdin though and married him? Literally it's
always literally the first person she meets upon going into
the like Ariel like goes to the surface and is like,
oh boy, and like I'm I guess Bells is a

(10:00):
little more complicated because she like trades her body for
her bad inventor dad, Like there and the daddy issues,
Like what, that's the whole thing too, But it's the
something that because your your is like the criticism surrounding
Disney princesses are so like well known generally now that

(10:23):
it's it's almost like okay, fine, another person saying, like
Ariel trade her legs and her voice to get a boyfriend.
But there's there are good parts hidden in there, and
it makes it even more disappointing that those are kind
of buried by all these like normative, boring stories. Yeah,

(10:45):
it's a couple of years ago. I have a friend who, um,
we we would just stay up and discuss all kinds
of things, and somehow or another, the conversation became which
Disney princess do you think is the most problematic? Like
that's how well known, it's just so classmatic, and we

(11:07):
I think she said Belle and I said Ariel. But
this was years ago, so I'd have to revisit, revisit
the question. I think. I mean, Sleeping Beauty is an
easy choice, just because she's not allowed to do anything
the whole movie. But I don't know. I mean, Ariel
seems to be the popular choice for I mean, that's
the most egregious example on the on the surface at least. Wow. Um,

(11:35):
I would I mean, I would maybe take it all
the way back to the original Disney Princess of snow White,
who is no one's favorite, but she sucks. That movie sucks.
And yeah we're saying it, but hot takes. I don't
take it back. You're sticking by it. Yeah, mm hmm.

(11:58):
It has been a while since I've seen is No
White and and something you said earlier, I hadn't really
considered because, Um, in the second half of this discussion,
we're going to look at the treatment of mothers in
in Disney movies, but I haven't really thought about like
daddy issues and fathers in Disney movies. Hyeah. Yeah, there's

(12:20):
i mean the majority of Disney princesses, and this has
like gradually changed over time. Like I think by the
time you hit Frozen, there's two living parents parents. They
will they die shortly after we meet them. They are
killed immediately, but at least there's you know, gender parity

(12:42):
in who dies. Um. But in most of them, especially
like the Disney Renaissance once it's like a part of
the formula that there's no mother and in it like
in some it's i mean not really in any as
it referred to were Ariel has King Triton, who's just
like this, you know, he doesn't understand his teenage daughter

(13:05):
and he destroys everything she owns because he's confused. Uh,
And then the story ends with her still needing his
permission to live the life she wants to live because
he's the only one who can alter her body permanently
and give her over to another man. So that's not good. Um,

(13:26):
it's I mean, and then Belle's father is a huge
portion of beauty and the beast Pocahontas has another I
mean kind of closer to King Triton, like a powerful
father who doesn't get it, uh kind of figure. Uh.
Mulan has a mom, but she's not as important in

(13:47):
the narrative as the dad. Uh. So it's all all
the princesses sort of have some patriarch type figure. Um
who gets to deter and what happens to her life?
Because even though Mulana as a mom, it's her father
who tells her that, you know, she has to live
out this, you know, being married off life instead of

(14:10):
going off to fight like she wants to. Same thing
with um Frozen, even though we meet both parents and
even though they are killed, it's shipwreck. I think, um
the mother in that movie, while she is on screen,
I don't think has any lines or only says like
one or two things. And then it's the father character
who is making all the decisions, calling all the shots,

(14:33):
like pushing the story forward in any significant way. So
like the mother may as well not even be there
because of how unimportant she is to the story. Yeah,
it seems like almost an empty response to like Disney
princesses never have moms. It's like, well, we rendered one,
but we didn't hire anyone to voice her. She was

(14:53):
there briefly. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, and then
you storry. I mean it's subverted later on. I know
that the Rapunzel has I mean she has an evil
mother figure and Tangled villain slash mother. Yeah, so if
women are on screen, they can't be. But with Molanna,
she has both a mother that she talks to and

(15:16):
who supports her, and it is grandma and grandmother who
is killed. She is killed, but at least from old
age and not from like some violent death which the
mother characters, as I think, are we're supposed to assume
that they die or like with the least with like Frozen,
there's Frozen. There's like a whole bizarro theory that Frozen,

(15:38):
the Little Mermaid and Tangled are all connected and that uh,
the parents in Frozen die on the way to Ariel's
wedding or something. Yeah, there's a lot of wild theories
out there, and I believe all of them. Of course,

(16:00):
I went on a deep dive about how all of
the Pixar movies are connected in the universe. There seems
to be a lot of water to that one. I
don't know. There seems to be credibility. Yeah, that is definitely.
I mean, if you're looking for a fun or probably
not fun at all time, get me drunk and put
me in front of a Pixar movie and I will

(16:20):
explain how they're all connected in the most conspiratorial way. Um.
But I was thinking about going back to Sleeping Beauty, which,
again I haven't watched it forever, but it was my
favorite as a child. I guess she did. She had
those like three fairies women that she she lived with. Yeah,

(16:42):
that's true. And then Cinderella had the fairy godmother. Yeah
but in the but in both of those stories, I
feel like those characters are introduced only because the princess
character doesn't have enough personality. We don't know her well
enough to be to be able. We're not supposed to
believe that she could do it on her own. Uh.

(17:04):
With like Cinderella, like, I know she's upset, but she
could walk out of the house, you know. Like but
but it's like, no, she needs this Matt, she needs
magic to to leave the house, or like sleeping Beauty
needs magic to not be dead basically, or snow White

(17:25):
needs the magic of necrophilia to bring her back to life. Well,
isn't a lot of these. It's like true love's kiss
that like breaks whatever spells kiss from a man of course,
Like it's it's always this heaterformative story, which I mean
the like I mean it's but the the whole consent

(17:46):
thing with true love's kisses, Like the prince in snow
White fully thought she was dead when he when he
really laid one on her. But then he's like, oh,
you're alive, sick, live, but she was asleep and therefore
could not give consent, right, uh, And you can never

(18:06):
give consent when you're dead, That's true. We always say
on the show it's our main cat, which sounds vaguely threatening.
And I didn't mean you can't keep it's just a fact, yeah,

(18:33):
a panic attack. And then when we do this is
especially true of the earlier Disney Princess movies. But if
we do see a mother figure, it is often an
evil stepmother. So it's villainizing another woman for reasons that
you could maybe argue are justified. But the way the

(18:56):
narrative sets it up like usually not it's usually like
the snow white just this woman who's so petty that
she's not the prettiest woman in all the land. And
then it's kind of the same deal with the evil
stepmother who is just like my daughter's look Weirdrella, and yeah, sorry, Cinderella,
and Cinderella doesn't look weird, and so she will be

(19:20):
and like an unpaid worker forever and she's just like
their intern permanently. Um it's bad. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah,
I don't know. And it's not to say that the
father figures that are presented, they're usually complicated, and but
they're not villains. They're allowed to be complicated in a

(19:42):
way that like female characters are Like, no, they're evil.
But Triton, who like destroys everything his daughter cares about, Uh,
he's just confused. And like Chief Powton, who's like threatening,
I mean and Chief out and it's different because he's
kind of trying to like get rid of people who

(20:02):
are actively trying to like eradicate everything that you like
Native American called indigenous people. So he's got like better points.
And then those fathers are both like redeemed by the end,
whereas like the Evil stepmothers at least in snow White
falls off a cliff or kids bolder land on top

(20:24):
of her. Maleficent is she killed? I don't, I've only
ever seen sleeping Beauty. Why. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she
gets she turns into a dragon and gets stabbed. She
gets slain Maleficent And uh, this is just a fun
little fact I learned. Maleficent and the Evil Stepmother are.

(20:45):
If you look at the characters side by side, it's
like the exact same build of a character. They just
like recycled one in making the other. And they're also
voiced by the same person. Oh well, that that would
be a fun like these worlds are connected type thing too.
I'll have to think about that. Only one evil lady. Yeah,
she's just got around marrying a bunch of men who

(21:07):
already have daughters and being the evil stepmother to all
of them. But Malifficent is I think like she's also
petty jealous of Aurora, but she's a little closer connected
to Ursula. I think of like, she is upset that
she's been cast out of the Royal Um, out of

(21:29):
like the Royal in circle um. And then you know
comes back to punish a teen for some reason instead
of the person who wronged her always like their teen
daughter that she targets leverage. Yeah, M I recently watched

(21:51):
I don't know if either of you ever saw The
Black Cauldron. I've never seen it, but it's I'm I'd
be interested to see it. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when
it came out. Um, it was build in this way
of like it was a movie that was too dark
for Disney to release. It has no songs in it, um,

(22:13):
And as a kid, I was like, whoa this? And
it's obviously a little different because it's based on that book,
The Black Cauldron. Um, but I yeah, it's still like
a princess one one female character. There are three witches later,
which is very similar to Sleeping Beauty. Yeah, it's interesting

(22:36):
that it seems to be a very similar story, just
told in different ways. Yeah. Yeah, it's like Bill, It's
all it's most of the time, it's like, here's a
very similar story with some elements changed, taking place in
a different Western European country. Like that's usually until more recently,

(22:57):
what it's always been. But it's because there are a
opting the same European fairy tales over and over and
not really exploring much outside of that region. I wonder
why why I wonder. I know we it probably goes
without saying, but we've done an episode on action figures,

(23:20):
and so many executives have said one of the reasons that, um,
the princesses, they make so much money that they don't
think that they have to make new content for young
girls because they're already selling so much with princesses, so

(23:41):
they don't. Entire movies have been written by by that
like mindset of thinking, I want to sell toys to boys,
so I'm going to make movies with boys in them,
with men and them to sell action figures to boys
because they would never buy an action figure of a
female character. So and these girls already have the princesses,

(24:02):
so we'll focus on like this category of selling toys
to boys. That's how entire stories get written. What a
what a gift? And that I mean that makes total sense,
and it's so frustrating that, um, you know, the same
princesses are still kind of like the princesses from the
nineteen fifties and nineties are still the ones most prominently

(24:24):
featured on all the princess merch, but it is, it's
it's weird. It feels like a catch twenty two to
some extent of like, I guess if you're a business
person lacking a moral compass, which is all of them, uh,
you would just be like, well, if this sells, this
doesn't cost me any money to come up with new
I p evil. Yeah, real bad. But then every once

(24:46):
in a while you do see like a character that, um,
I don't know. I think like Ray from Star Wars
is a good example of like a female character who
appeals to boys and girls and hopefully, I mean would
be the type of action figure and the type of
protagonist that would appeal to all kids and isn't so
intensely gendered to like a comical degree that all the

(25:12):
all the princess characters are. But do you remember the
controversy around that from a few years ago, where like
they were selling I forget which toy company it was,
but they were selling like a pack of little action
figures from The Force Awakens and Ray, who is the
main character of the movie, was not included in Wait,
I didn't know that, that's crazy. The idea was like, oh, boys,

(25:34):
aren't gonna want to buy this if a woman's in
these among these toys, and it's like character did the
story that's insane. Yeah. It was also they took a
financial gamble that failed because turns out kids did want
that toy Ray And they had all of this excess

(25:54):
of Kylo Wren, who they thought was going to be
the big selling toy, the male character, like, we need
more out the Driver dolls, and parents were like, my
kid wants this Ray doll, and toy sellers were like,
we don't have to make it. Yeah, that has happened
over and over again. Like they did that with the
monopoly of the Star Wars monopoly. They didn't feature her.

(26:15):
Um T shirts with like group pictures of Star Wars
characters don't feature her. Didn't they do that with like
wasn't there like a black widow? Yeah? And and then
even the princesses. It's as the princesses slowly become you know,
they're representing more realistic body types, They're representing something other

(26:35):
than unrealistically proportioned white lady. Uh, there's still like I
don't know if anyone remembers when the Merida from Brave
Um when she was released as part of the Disney
Princess Gang. They changed her appearance to make her skinnier
and change her hair from being messy to being very

(26:58):
like quaft and aunty, and they put makeup on her,
even though that character is supposed to be very young,
and they gave her the princess treatment, even though part
of the point of the movie she was in was
to subvert that. And that was a big issue because
that the women who wrote that character was like, no,
you can't do that. That was I was trying. Yeah,

(27:23):
but they'll always try. Man always try. Mm hmmm hmm.
I was gonna say that. That's another thing worth mentioning
about the way these Disney princesses have been animated and
drawn and just they're esthetic is that they often have

(27:44):
these body types that I mean, there's very little differentiation
among them. They are these like and especially I'm thinking
of Jasmine and Aerial, where they have these microscopic wastes.
They have these like very revealing outfits. And these characters

(28:05):
are supposed to be like teenagers, like Aerial is sixteen
sixteen basically or somewhere Jasmin unclear, but like young and
you know, they're wearing these like tiny skimpy outfits and
like if if people want to wear outfits like that,
that's fine, But also they're like really over sexualizing young

(28:25):
teen girls and showing these body types that, according to
the movie, is like presenting this ideal standard of beauty
and all that. Like little girls are going to see
this and they're thinking, oh, this is you know, this
is the body type that gets me the prince charming,
So I have to try to strive for that. And
it's just like placing these really and there's always this

(28:47):
moment where in a lot of the Disney Princess movies
where all of a sudden, you know, you start out
and I still think most of the Disney Renaissance Princess
movies at least start out in okay place of like
she's your everyday girl, except she's a princess. But there's
a moment where she gets not exactly like a makeover,

(29:09):
but you know it's like Bell comes out in a
dress and all of a sudden, she's romantically desirable in
a way she wasn't when she was in her everyday clothes.
Or that happens with ariel Uh and Eric sees her
in a pink dress and it's like, oh, I like her,
and you know it's so it's so ingrained, or the
second you know, Jasmine takes off that she's she when

(29:32):
she meets a lot and she's wearing this sort of
like potato potato sack and then she takes it off
and he's like, oh, you know, it's it totally catering
to the male gaze and and just kind of sells
out the work that they do at the beginning to
be like, no, she's not like the other girls. But
then they spend the rest of the movie treating her
exactly like the other girls. Yeah. Yeah, the Magical Movie Makeover.

(29:57):
And I there's studies after studies that show that young
girls take in those messages at such an early age
and to see this like, here's the ideal beauty standard.
Your entire goal in life is to find a man
and get married, and your value is only in your looks. Um. Yeah,

(30:21):
you get that stuff really early and it sticks with you.
What affected me the most when I was a kid
was definitely like the unrealistic bodies like that really resonated
with me as a kid. And then I think, god,
this is probably two years ago now, when they started
to release barbies with different body shapes. Um, there was

(30:42):
a long feature published about the focus groups of having
like very young kids playing with barbies with different body
ships or maybe four or five years old, and already
they had seen enough princess movies and and and taken
in enough media to be critical of different body shapes, uh,

(31:03):
and saying like, you know, like hearing out of a
four year old mouth, like that's not what Adell is
supposed to look like, and like she's ugly and all
this stuff, and it it gets to you so young,
Like that I was taken aback by like how young
the kids were when they had already internalized that's not
how a doll or an ideal looks, which just means

(31:25):
that they there needs to be such a huge reversal
in the way that movies and other media consumed by
children needs to present its characters and like show display
like many different body types and show them all as
being um romantically appealing and and it's think not that

(31:47):
that's the most important thing, but like, because that's what's
we're also conditioned to think, like, you know, that's at
least one of the messages that needs to get across right,
and it's like it takes so long and is to
some degrees impossible to fully untrained those thoughts. It's like,
you know, it's like we're all trying to do the
work and untrained. But there's like times where I have

(32:09):
to catch myself in something like that because that's how
I felt since I was three, right, you know. So
it's like, well for anyone to I mean, hopefully there
could be a generation that's completely untouched by that kind
of stuff, but they're not currently living apparents, so we've
all been conned by the patriarchate guess in the capitalists

(32:29):
and all the yeah do works. One thing another thing
that I I have realized through this show and that
I already sort of knew, but um, is how so
many of these princesses they're always in the passive role.

(32:49):
And um. I went back and I used to write
a lot as a kid, and every time I would
write something, the main character was male. And I was
always kind of confused by that, because you would think
I would write someone who was female like I was. Um,
And I think it's because I wanted this like active
character and almost all of the female characters I had

(33:13):
saw and consumed through media were passive. Um. Yeah, and
that's something that I have a lot of friends that
have echoed that, that statement, that they would write things
and the main character would be male. And it was
just kind of a strange realization for me that I had. Again,
it's another thing that I had just taken in and
had become a part of, like myself. Yeah, you don't

(33:34):
realize how much it affects you're subconscious until you're an
adult and you're like, oh no, I've been tricked, and
it truly happens to like everyone even Yeah, it's god,
I don't want to read what I wrote. I was like,
that's very brave of you. I had a good time.

(33:58):
I had a I mean, I had a long way
to go, we shall say, but I I enjoyed it greatly.
I used to write a character and I was a kid.
Her name was Neptune Starlet. Oh my gosh, she was.
She was really tall like me, and she I think
her thing was that she was a singer, but also

(34:20):
she was good at chemistry, and she would use chemistry.
She created some potion to make everyone thinks she was
a good singer. But she wasn't. So she was a
woman in stem. She was a woman in stem, and
she was a mediocre artist, so she kind of contained multitudes. Yeah,
I like it. Yeah, she would pick it up again
one of these days, I would read it. I recently

(34:46):
was watching um the new MST three K three whatever
it is. Oh yeah, yeah, And there was a movie
on there, and I know they picked bad movies, but
there's a movie on that it was so bad, like
I was getting angry. I can't which one it was called,
but it was the one that was obviously a knockoff
of Star Wars. No way, you could not see it.

(35:08):
And the main character, like all of the women, if
they were young and of a certain body type, they
wore essentially like leather straps um and then old women
wore potato sacks, and then the men got to wear
like actual real clothes. But the main character, who is
ostensibly that the lead character, the strongest. She was some commander.

(35:28):
She was well known. She got captured like six times,
and she had to get saved by like three different
dudes and a robot. All the time she's in these
like leather straps that make no sense. She was just
spent the whole movie. I couldn't understand. I knew it
was supposed to be bad, and I was still getting

(35:52):
Those are my favorite kinds of hate watches, where you're
just like multiple so many people could have stopped this
from happening, and there were so many people who were
involved in anything. But also like, yeah, that that sounds
like a horrible, like B movie that we can easily
make fun of, But that's also what happens in like

(36:13):
high budget Hollywood mainstream A movies, where like women are
so hyper sexualized and objectified, they are put in positions
where they have no agency constantly need to be saved,
Like this happens all the time in like just regular
Hollywood action movies. Yeah, I mean, like two of our

(36:33):
favorites that we've covered on the show are when Kirsten
Dunst is literally caught in a web and is like
a mobile for the entire climax of Spiderman Too, Like
she's there but she just can't participate, she has to watch. Uh.
And then it's which character in Pacific Rim gets launched

(36:54):
out of the climate. It's so like it's Macae Morey.
I couldn't. I did like that movie, but then but
it was like so agreed because she was a well
characterized like she we we knew a lot about her.
But then when it came down to the final battle,
I forget how it was made clear in plot, but
they put her in like this too be thing and

(37:15):
they were like, sea, it's not safe, and they launched
her out of the climax of the movie. I was like,
are you kidding, same thing happens with Ariel, where like, yeah,
well she's she's I don't know. I thought she's like
more of an example for me, as like someone who's
allowed to be like, oh, she can fight and do
one thing, but she never gets to win that like

(37:37):
Eric wins the battle, but she's she's there and like
doing stuff, but she doesn't get the Like is the
most crazy thing because she is the protagonist of the movie.
Like any good story telling class will teach you that
the protagonist of the movie is the one who drives
the narrative and determines the outcome and is participating in

(38:01):
the climax of the story. So for her to be
completely sidelined and for Eric, the love interest, to like
come in and save the day, like that's that's bad storytelling.
That's like horrible, it's bad side, it's yeah, it's frustrating.
It's frustrating that in these things that are sold to

(38:25):
young girls that the main characters supposedly the the young
female character, they still don't get like they're not It's
almost like they're not the main character, right, Yeah, Yeah,
that's annoying. Yeah. Um, well, we do have some more
discussion around all of this, but we're going to possibly

(38:46):
a quick break for word from our sponsor m H
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So I wanted to
come back to this conversation around women and I've been
talking around women around stepmother's because I've been talking about

(39:09):
it for a long time. I've been building it up
because I kind of went on this on the other
podcast I do Um Savor. We do this series called
Food fairy Tales where we do dramatic readings of fairy
tales that have food in them, and we found one,
Um it was pretty dark about a stepmother murdering her

(39:32):
stepchild and blaming it on the other child, um, and
then feeding the child to the family. It all works
out in the end, O good. But I got me
thinking about this evil stepmother trope. And I I went
on a research I just wanted to read everything I

(39:53):
could about it, and so I thought i'd include some
of this, some of the stuff I learned, and this
pisode because as we've been talking about, if you look
at Disney movies, especially the old school classic ones, the
evil stepmother trope and the idealized perfectly maternal mother trope
is so prevalent in all of them. And as I

(40:16):
was doing this research, I tried to think of a
Disney mother who isn't absent, dead or evil, and I
thought of Brave the Incredibles toy story. I guess she's
like there, And I mean these are like pis are Disney. Yeah, Yeah,
Princess and the Frog, although when I was reading about that,

(40:38):
she her mother is there, but the story again is
more like about her relationship with her dad. Yeah, Molanna,
And these are all newer examples. You'd be hard pressed
to name one from the like older from the nineties
and before. Yeah. I recently saw ralph To, which was

(41:01):
fun because they hadn't seen the first one um. And
also they're not on the Internet, so I'm sure that
a lot of that went over their head. But it's
even a joke and wreck it Ralph too that like
none of them had mothers almost that was my favorite.
There's two scenes and this isn't a spoiler for anyone
who hasn't seen um Ralph Breaks the Internet, but because

(41:22):
one of them they were using as like a trailer
for the movie basically, but there are two different sequences
in the movie where all the Disney princesses are like
hanging out, and in the first one that they've viewed,
they used as like promo for the movie. They what's
her name? Penelope Yes, and little Sarah Selverman she finds

(41:48):
herself among all these Disney princesses and they're like questioning
the validity of like her being a Disney princess also
or like or something like that, and they're like, wait,
are you only identified by your relationship to a man?
And oh, do you have an evil stepmother? Like all
this different stuff. So they're like, that's calling it having

(42:08):
it both ways, because it's like, Okay, you're calling out
like all our most popular properties are problematic. It doesn't
mean they're not going to stop making a jillion dollars
off of it. They're just referencing their own properties and
like using that to seem cool and make more money.
It's like when I don't know, like a lot of
times on like shows on and this is more like

(42:30):
adults media, but like on TV when they let the
show like when The Simpsons pokes at the Fox Network,
it's supposed to be like, hey, yeah, we're an evil
corporation that enables the horrible president, but we're like in
on it, and it's like, well, so what like then
stop doing that? You know. I don't know. I used

(42:52):
to think that was like really edgy and cool and like,
oh wow, the people who are like doing horrible stuff
like no it, but that's worse. I don't know. I
was like, oh, cool, so they know it and it's fine.
They're still capitalized. They're still like, yeah, we're not going
to like stop promoting rape culture, but we're like aware

(43:14):
we're doing it. You're like, okay, that's terrible. Cool. Yeah, yeah,
that was That was an interesting thing of that whole
that scene of the Disney Princesses in Ralph breaks Internet
of um yeah, being aware, And I mean I guess
a few if the criticism is enough that it is
just generally assumed that these characters are problematic. Um, what

(43:37):
do you do but poke fun at it? But it
is odd because it's like you're still doing it though.
And I know several listeners have written in and said
that they like the new the newer Disney princesses, but
they're afraid that it's like almost too much of a
course correct of liked humanizing princess things that are kind

(44:02):
of coated as feminine and being like, oh, I hate
all of these girly things, which yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
I hadn't really considered it in that way. Um, because
most of the new princesses, Yeah, I really I don't
want to be a princess. I hate all this stuff.
But then what about like the kid who's genuinely feminine
and enjoys that. Yeah, right right, it's tricky. Yeah, I

(44:25):
mean it does seem like movies in general. And I
don't dislike this at all, but they're leaning kind of
hard on again. It's kind of like a different version
of than not like the other girls, trump of like,
oh I don't like feminine stuff. I'm not like the
other princesses. And it's I mean, it's not the princess's fault.
It's the fault of the story. Yeah, princesses are, and

(44:47):
but people love to blame women for things easier to
make it the princess as fault did they was see
is Utopia. Yeah. I feel like that was an interesting
kind of deviation from a Disney movie, but like in
no way Disney princess. And also like they're all animals,

(45:08):
so you know, but also you know, it's a female character.
She's a cop. She's like hell bent on like justice
and stuff like that. So if I shouldn't say hell,
but she's if they say if they could say in
Sleeping Beauty, you can say it. We recently did an

(45:32):
episode on tabletop games, and there are two studies that
confirm that you're more likely to find a farm animal
on the cover of a tabletop game than a female character.
Oh that's cool. Yeah right, well we all love farm animals,

(45:53):
so that makes sense. Yeah, nothing against the farm animal community, right,
So all your farm animal listeners, we don't mean to age,
but like, who's playing the game's farm animals? Come on?
Come on? All right? But I went on a tangent here.
Let's get back to your stepmother's stepmothers. I do have

(46:18):
some Disney history that I would like to share it
because I found it really interesting. But first we're going
to pause for a quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor. So let's get back
to it. When Walt Disney first started making money after

(46:39):
this success of Snow White, he purchased a house for
his parents, and within a month, Disney's mother complained of
a leak in the furnace, and Disney sent someone out
to fix it, but still Disney's mom, she voiced these concerns.
In a couple of days pasted and the housekeeper found
his parents unconscious. His dad survived, but his mom did not, unfortunately,

(47:01):
and he never really spoke about it, but I would
say his guilt over it shown through into a lot
of his works that he was involved in um which
was most of them, most Disney movies up until his death.
And I'm not the only one saying that. I'm not
a scholar by any means, but I read that more
than one place. And if you I I love this.
If you take into account our children's movies and movies

(47:22):
in general work, you've got about eighty to ninety minutes
to tell the story, and then you really have to
get your audience invested quickly and often at the heart
of it, Disney movies are about growing up and the
quickest way to catalyze growing up is to remove the parents.
It raises the stakes of the story and it makes
the character more sympathetic. Um. So the evil stepmother represents

(47:47):
so much and she she ups the drama. The protagonist
believes they have some solace, someone that the that will
comfort and care for them as their mother would have,
but instead they get the opposite. And it's another lesson
in the way of growing up to that you can't
trust everybody kids. It deepens the emotional investment too, because
evil done by someone you know that should care for

(48:09):
you is more dramatic storytelling when we're talking about this
genre of film than evil done by some some random,
not not connected person. Um and it does go work
great for hard movies that I gotta say, like the
random villain is terrifying. I feel like there is a
subtext there too that like has to do with There
is such a strong vibe in uh most kids movies

(48:33):
that like the love of biological parents is the purest,
truest form of love. And then when it's one step
removed and it's like more of I mean not that
like a stepmother is like an adoptive role, but not
a direct biological connection. It's somehow like sinister or removed
or like not as possible to be as like true
and powerful because you didn't like breastfeed on them or something.

(48:55):
You can't trust anyone that you didn't breastfeed on advice
of the episode and Jamie, that's why I don't trust you.
I didn't breast fed. I don't trust anyone that's a
formula baby. I do think and we've talked about this
a lot, that kind of what touching on what you
were saying earlier, that um, the father figures get to

(49:18):
be more complex and they get to have this redemptive arc,
whereas like mother figures and stepmother figures do not. Like
we just in general have a real anxiety around um,
basically anything in between the perfect mom and a bad mom.
Like we have this bifurcation of it's either this or

(49:39):
this and there is nothing in between. And I think
it's easier to villainize an evil stepmother. It's like a
way to deal with that anxiety, sure, which isn't fair.
First and and Jamie. You might have brought this up
in different episodes that we've done, usually on Disney movies,
but like that's the way like villainizing divorced almost or

(50:04):
just like the idea of like parents splitting up and
then you know, getting remarried and introducing like step parents
into the scenario and it's like a way to be like, no,
divorce is bad and you know you should stick together.
It's nuts to me that there isn't more divorced parents
and even like amically divorce divorce parents because there, I mean,

(50:27):
it's that's more kids than not have divorced parents, and
you never see that. And it's like once we see uh,
divorce parents, that we can get into sub sects of
divorce parents of like you know, some are more difficult
than others others or just become a co parenting thing.
And it's just like, yeah, the the way parenting is
represented in all these movies, Like it's easier for a

(50:51):
writer to kind of like where you were saying, get
the parents out of the way to raise the tension.
But it's like, no parents are tense there. That's true,
there's a lot of come from there um or you
could go full Jimmy Neutron and have the kids take
over the world. Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy Neutron Stand I Love

(51:11):
Jimmy Neutron on an all female reboot of Jimmy Neutron,
Jamie Neutron, Jamie Neutron, I can get behind that um.
And another thing that you you both mentioned earlier is um.
A lot of these are these Disney movies are based

(51:32):
on Gram's fairy tales, and most of those stories were
orally translated, transcribed and published, and sometimes the grand brothers.
They made these serious creative decisions, and most of them
were moral like based in their morals, their personal morals. So,
for instance, in the oral stories of Sleeping Beauty and
Snow White, there was not an evil stepmother. It was

(51:54):
an evil biological mother, but Graham changed that. It has
been that way ever since. At the time when these
stories were being transcribed, marriage was less about romantic love
and much more of an economical decision. If you were lucky.
There was romance too, but it was the secondary thing.
And since women for the most part had no way

(52:15):
to make money or to own property, marriage was their
only option in the world. Which is this story that
we're seeing in Disney play out over and over again
with these princesses. And another thing to consider is that
at the time, the mortality rate of childbirth was really high,
and it wasn't uncommon to grow up without a mother
and for a stepmother to enter the picture, and if

(52:37):
the stepmother had a child of their own, they might
prioritize that child to make sure that they got some
inheritance or just make sure they got some inheritance themselves.
Um so, yeah, I remember it was a financial thing. Yeah,
that's true. But the fact that these Disney movies introduced
romance into the narrative where you know, in airy tales

(53:00):
there might have been and might not have been. You
can also, like when you're adapting things what which is
what Disney has often done. You can change the source
material and like make adjustments to it and you know
the era it's being released in, and like introduce mothers
and back into the picture and stuff like that, which

(53:21):
they do, but it's like very selective the things that
they do to Like, the happy ending in most Disney
movies is not an adaptation of the text, like The
Little Mermaid ends with the Little Mermaid a coded suicide
where she turns into ocean foam because she can't be
with the prince. So it's it's not that they're not there,

(53:44):
that they're like, no, we have to be loyal to
the text. There they're disloyal to the text, which is
which is fine. But it's like, well, if you're going
to change it to like the happy ending in the
marriage and the whole bit, then like change others f
t like it's nine for crying out out currently today
I think it's Yeah, I think that's correct. Yeah, I

(54:09):
mean yes, so much of the violence of the grim
fairy tales they did change, but not the other things,
not the women you're needed to get married. But um Also,
children were treated differently at the time, too much less affectionately.
They were seen as like a source of labor. And
if you look at the case of Cinderella in the

(54:31):
context of when it was written from the eyes of
the evil stepmother, the only chance her daughters had for
success was to marry into money. And so when the
ball comes around with the chance to marry a prince
which Cinderella is too young to go to, of course
the stepmother is going to say no. And of course
Cinderella isn't gonna like that, and of of course it's
not an excuse for abusive behavior. But I did find

(54:53):
a really interesting essay looking at Cinderella from the stepmother's perspective,
and it was a fund read. A fund read. Also
that story posits that perhaps Cinderella will one day be
a stepmother herself, and her journey will begin a new
I'd be down. I'd be down for that adaptation of

(55:13):
like can she break the cycle or will she just
perpetuate the boxic cycle that has taken up her family?
And that's another movie where you know, Disney changed a
lot of this source material or made it less violent,
because like in the original one, that's like the step
sisters are like song off their toes so that they
can fit into the glass slippers and stuff like that

(55:36):
are weird, Just like, oh god, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, honestly,
like they were trying to they had a goal, trying
to get the call accomplis. Kudos to them, you know, Yeah,
I love there. I'm sure that there's been I mean,
there's been plenty of like, you know, what's the word

(55:59):
I hate? Oh jeez, I'm going to use a word
I hate and I can't even remember what a post
modern geez louise horrible. But like the sort of things
where it's like wicked or you know, a look back.
It's just why Gregory McGuire is a bazillionaire, but like
a look back, like all the bad ladies who actually

(56:20):
were bad asses, And it's like, al right, sure, I
mean it's like a step in the right direction and
like analyzing, you know, oh, the way these stories are
originally written or adapted or whatever. We're reductive and we're
villainizing uh, female characters usually for just being female characters,

(56:44):
or you know, amping up stereotypes and all that. Uh.
Although you know I would I'll say, I don't need
any more Gregory McGuire's takes on why the bad girls
were actually good. I'd prefer more of like the moan
attack of just creating a new female character that instead

(57:07):
of you know, going back a hundred years and continually
because the more you like, whether you're making a good
point or not, the more you talk about uh stuff
like this, you're still giving them staying power to some extent.
By uh So it's just like, yeah, if you ignore people,
they eventually become irrelevant or angry if they have money.

(57:29):
Another thing I read when I was doing all this
research is uh that four children blended families can be
more difficult for them to figure out if you're watching
it from a young age um and it involves these nuanced,
complex feelings and conflicting emotions. And it kind of reminds
me that argument about some people I know say that
that's why so many people love zombie movies is because

(57:51):
they think that it's simpler, Like it's more I don't
have to worry about getting money. I just have to
worry about surviving. Perhaps that's just me. I watch a
lot of horror, but it didn't remind me of that
that kind of like, well, it's it's simpler to dislike
the step mom. And these these fairy tales that Graham

(58:14):
was the grand brothers were transcribing did represent anxiety's children had,
like wondering where their next meal was coming from and
handling Gredel subconsciously wanting to be rid of the parent
when reaching adolescence. This makes the story more authentic emotionally
to a child. I feel like I did a whole
I could do you teach a short lecture on how

(58:36):
to write movies for children one oh one. The point
worth making is they weren't meant for children originally, but
when they were repurposed four children, it did it translated well,
those parts of it. And while modern movies have made
strides and having a positive mother figure as part of
their stories, these trips are still everywhere finding emo. For instance,

(59:00):
the mom dies in like two minutes, and it's used
as a way to showcase how great the dad is
because he becomes the main character um and our society
laud's men for being a great dad. And it's just
sort of expected that women will be mothering a child
in their care, and like any imperfect mothering is immediate villain,

(59:26):
where like perfect fathering is so tolerated and almost expected
in the like You're tritons and potents and all in
all one article I read about this whole thing positive
that a single father ups the drama because in a
probably subconscious part of our brain, we expect him to
fail and to mess up, whereas a single mother we

(59:49):
subconsciously think is too capable and we'll be able to
figure things out. Again, I read this, it isn't a
point I'm making but I did find it an interesting
point worth including in here. Yeah, and that's tricky because
it's like, yeah, women are askedome and we're good at things,
and men's stink and are bad at things. But like,
I mean that's a huge oversimplification. Yeah, Like, yeah, it is.

(01:00:15):
It's not okay that these like, um, these standards are
placed on men and women and and moms and dads
and and how it's like, yeah, if you're a parent
who's a woman, you're a You're automatically expected to be
like the best mother in the world, whereas like if
a father puts in like a tiny bit of extra effort,

(01:00:37):
we're like, wow, good job, daddy, You're the best dad
in the world. So yeah, it's weird. Yeah, And something
else we kind of touched on earlier is this whole
like woman versus woman thing, because I do think it's
interesting that in a lot of these examples, the villain

(01:00:57):
is a woman, even though well, yeah, and the protagonist
is a woman too, and the villain is usually an
older woman who envies the protagonist. Youth and beauty are
talents perhaps or all of that, and that is what
drives her dash really decisions like snow white mirror, mirror
on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? And
when the mirror says snow white, that's when her stepmother,
of course, like we'll kill her. Then the most reasonable response.

(01:01:23):
It's so fast she does not have to think about it,
and she's like, well, then of course we're gonna want
to kill her. It's just such a It drives home
how our value as women, the value of beauty, like
that is your power, that is your value of youth
and beauty that she would just immediately there's this threat

(01:01:45):
destroy it. Yeah. Yeah, it's so bizarre. And it's like
that feels like as like crappy as that is, that
feels rooted in some like sort of grounded things that
still happen today. Right. I feel like there's even like
a you know, who's the fairest of them all argument

(01:02:06):
that could be applied to uh, female coworkers, where it's
like female coworkers are very frequently put against each other,
um and that being rooted in that's what you're told
and also rooted in there's just less space for women
in any marginalized group in the workplace. So it's like, yeah,
all the white guys in a workplace are usually all

(01:02:28):
friends because there's always going to be enough room for them.
But it's like a weird it feels like a weird
subtweet of a narrative to see, like women turn on
each other so quickly, and that's the expectation because there's
only so much room in the world for us, we're told. Yeah,
And I want to add in here that in the

(01:02:50):
fairy tale version of snow White the Stepmother, I think
it's snow White. Um, she is sentenced to execution and
they put these stone clogs on her feet and there's
like hot holes in them, and she has to dance
to death as her feet burn vaguely oh no, which

(01:03:12):
is brutal, brutal to death. Mm hmmm. Yeah. Man, let's
just way today night. I feel that way sometimes dancing sometimes, Yeah,
on the on the dance floor, feet just wildly boiling

(01:03:34):
about Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we've all experienced it.
We could also go into a whole thing about what's
seeing this, This story of the evil stepmother says about
our anxieties around adoption and non traditional families. I think
that is worth a whole episode. And these tropes have

(01:03:56):
real world impact. I read account after account written by
stepmother's about how they see children internalize these tropes pretty
much from the time they can see Cinderella, and how
they step mothers have had to deal with them, and
how it undermines their confidence as a parent. It's reflected
in our language too. For many of us, the word
stepmother automatically comes with evil before it. If you just

(01:04:17):
think of stepmother, it will co locate with the word evil. Um.
In some languages, stepmother translates to lesser mother, and in
American sign language it's a combination of the words fake
and mother. And how can that not impacts how you
see yourself and how confident you are in your ability
to be this child's mother? And what is already a

(01:04:38):
difficult situation? Yeah, right, that I mean, that's such. Yeah,
I mean divorce and like introducing you know, new family
members into your family dynamic is already a tricky situation
to navigate. And then to also like have all this
language that supports Yeah, stepmothers are yeah, like evil and

(01:05:04):
in lesser than and fake and you know, wannabes and
all this stuff. Is that's not good. We've got to
change that. Yeah, it's like there's yeah, like what we
were saying a little bit of just like yeah, the
only pure form of love is from biological parents to
biological child and anything. And even within that, fathers can

(01:05:26):
still be kind of bad at it. Um, But like
the love of a biological mother, there's no there's no alternative, right,
which is just, I mean hurtful to a lot of people.
I mean everyone knows someone who's stepmom, uh did did

(01:05:47):
more for them than their biological mom. Like, it's just
it just it is the world sometimes. That was my
favorite part of Frozen was when like, because I've been
wanting them to do that forever, when her true love
was their sister. Yeah, it was just refreshing finally something different, right. Um.
And one last note on on stepmothers is that I

(01:06:10):
also read because if it wasn't clear, I am not
a mother or a stepmother. So this is through through
things that I read online, Um, that they often contend
with the lack of support, lack of role models, lack
of clarity about their role, and those higher expectations that
we've been talking about that we place on women as parents.
So we don't need to add all of these these

(01:06:32):
Disney movies were the only stepmother we're seeing is not
a good one? Right? Yeah? Yeah, well I think we've
we've just about we've covered a lot of a lot
of ground, I think, so, I think. So, um, is

(01:06:54):
there is there anything else you want to touch on
before we close out here? Thanks? This was really fun.
Yeah yeah, thank you both so much for joining us.
This has been wonderful. Of course we had a blast. Yes,
anytime I can. I have said before, I have like
a feminist movie night where I make my friends and
like I'm sorry, we're going to get drunk and we're

(01:07:16):
going to watch this movie and I'm gonna tell you
all of my feminist thoughts about it. Any time you
want to be on the show, I am going to
just go ahead and throw out there that if you
want somebody as a guest when the Avengers is coming out,
I got it. I got it. Will be should because
there's a the fourth Avengers movies coming out I think

(01:07:37):
in April. Avengers. Yeah, we'll have you on for that.
That'll be great. Yeah, so excited. Where can people find you?
You can find us online across all of the platforms
at back, delcast, B, E, C, H, D, E, L,

(01:08:00):
m M, and you can find us individually. I'm on
Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Durante Kate with a se
uh and I'm on Twitter at Jamie Loft as Help
and Instagram at Jamie christ Superstar Awesome. Well, thank you
again for joining us. Listeners go check out their show

(01:08:23):
um and if you would like to write to us
and listeners, you can. Our email is mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. You can also find us
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram at
stuff I Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you for listening