Beauty and Its Beast In today's beauty-obsessed society, unhealthy body image in adolescents is on the rise. Media of all types plays an important role in labeling exactly what it means to be beautiful. This brainwashing of unrealistic expectations of what beauty is begins at a young age with fairytale films like those from Disney. “The Walt Disney Company is one of the largest media companies in the world. It dominated the world of children's films for decades” (Lamb & Brown 2007). Disney films have been notoriously overloaded with gender stereotypes. These films are the very basis of what children aspire to be. Little girls around the world emulate the princesses Disney has created over the decades. But you see that little girls are not the only ones emulating these fictional characters, but little boys are forced to feed lies about what it means to be a hero. However, the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast seems to move away from this trajectory by depicting an intelligent female protagonist, a handsome "villain" and a brute as "Prince Charming". Walt Disney's 1991 animated production of Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1756 French fairy tale La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, is an example of a fairy tale. Beauty and the Beast is the story of a beautiful but humble girl named Belle whose father is imprisoned by the Beast. Belle bravely sacrifices her freedom for her fathers in the Beast's castle. The Beast treats her well, with plenty of food and water and enough books to fill a library. Belle learns to love the Beast for who he truly is. Belle soon becomes homesick and the Beast only allows her to leave if she promises to return a week later. The Beast gives Belle a ring that allows him... middle of paper to......build, meaning that what we think males and females should do or how we think males and females should behave is not based on your own behavior. biological sex” (185). In other words, Barnett argues that gender roles are learned from a young age and taught by one's society. At a crucial time in the learning age, the child begins to recognize what is considered "male" and what is considered "female". Therefore it is very important what is exposed to. Children have been, and continue to be, influenced by Disney's overly stereotypical gender framing. This taught behavior is then reflected in society as the population ages and blends into all aspects of society. These same principles are directly related to the vast number of people who are falsely under the impression of what it means to be beautiful, along with what it means to be a man, or even a hero..