The Most Beautiful of All: A Quantitative Approach to Fairy-Tale Femininity

Abstract

Feminist folklorists have long asserted that women's bodies are represented in fairy tales differently than men's bodies, in normative and sexist ways. By using computational approaches to analyze a corpus of canonical fairy tales, I assess these claims and establish that women's bodies are depicted in distinctive ways in fairy tales. This finding is important for scholars interested in fairy-tale studies, gender studies, and computational approaches to folklore studies.

Cuentos clásicos vs. cuentos actuales

“…En esta línea de investigación, el estudio que se presenta dirige la atención hacia los cuentos de hadas, un recurso educativo ampliamente utilizado en la educación infantil, con el objetivo de analizar el papel que juegan en la reproducción de estos estereotipos y desigualdades. Se parte del supuesto de que estos cuentos reproducen estereotipos de género discriminatorios (Graíño, 2014;Jorgensen, 2019;Noviana, 2020;Ortells, 2021;Navarro, 2019), por lo que se hace necesario conocer estos relatos, saber qué tipo de cuentos son los más adecuados para el alumnado y aprovechar este conocimiento para crear nuevos cuentos que se adapten de manera más efectiva a la delicada realidad que tenemos entre manos.…”

Getting “Woke” With Each Joke: Black Comediennes and Representational Resistance on YouTube

“…Another aspect of colonization that has continued to persist can be found in the practice of white women as the pinnacle of beauty. The white feminine beauty ideal posits that the European features of whiter skin, straight, blonde hair, thin noses, and light-coloured eyes are the epitome of beautiful (Bryant, 2013;Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003;Jorgensen, 2019;Robinson-Moore, 2008;Harper & Choma, 2018).…”

“…The closer you are to that European standard, the more beautiful you are. This white feminine beauty ideal has been historically documented through cultural products like classical art and paintings (Ribeiro, 2011) and fairy tales (Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003;Jorgensen, 2019), and has continued to be perpetuated in advertising (Duke, 2000;Duke, 2002;Sypeck, Grey & Ahrens, 2003;Frith, Shaw & Cheng, 2005) and other media like film and television (Harper & Choma, 2018;Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2012;Swami et al, 2010).…”

“…This type of presentation allows the researcher to show how and why certain categories and themes were teased out from the data (Drisko & Maschi, 2015). The white feminine beauty ideal is the notion that the European features of pale white skin, straight, blonde hair, thin noses, and blue eyes is the epitome of beauty (Bryant, 2013;Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003;Jorgensen, 2019;Robinson-Moore, 2008). As discussed in Section 2.3.2, this notion asserts that a woman is more beautiful the closer they are to that European standard.…”

“…Hughes and Ramsey are cognizant and reflexive of these beliefs and confront and decolonize these oppressive ideologies by satirizing beauty tutorials as one of the media forms that uphold white feminine beauty ideals. Their satire rejects notions of white feminine beauty (Bryant, 2013;Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003;Jorgensen, 2019;Robinson-Moore, 2008), beliefs that purchasing products is the only way to attain that look, and that women's beauty is only for the onlooking men. As they create videos that feature themselves as characters, they address how these ideologies affect Black women in particular.…”