Another interview was conducted with Bobby:
Bobby is a 37-year-old father of two children. The oldest one, his son, is 11 years old and the youngest one, his daughter, is seven years old. Bobby does buy his daughter Princess items, but most of the items come as gifts. Bobby is also from Southern Illinois, with a high school education and a very strong patriarchal conservatist view on life. He believes gender is not a social construct, but is more biological. He said, "women are born the way they are and they are supposed to be that way".
When asked how he felt about sweatshops he responded, "if they don't want to better themselves to get a better job, then I am fine with them willing to work in these [sweatshops]". He also feels that helps to lower the prices and sweatshops are helping more people than hurting people. This just shows the dynamic of the sweatshop phenomenon. People use them to keep prices lower for consumers to afford the products. With this idea of "cost efficiency" in mind, how about lowering their profit margin. Who will that hurt?
Since gender is not a social construct to this man, his answer to the Princess Line being gendered was very predictable. Bobby said every little girl should be a princess, waiting for her prince. If she won't be a princess she will be a wicked and lonely woman. He was than asked what a "wicked and lonely woman" was. He responded with, "ugly, mean, prude, bra burner, passion-less, no personality, uncaring, unmotherly, unable to keep a man, and lonely". This dichotomy of princess and wicked woman is very rigid. Further questions on this dichotomy were asked. He was then asked, "So every girl/woman falls in either the princess or the wicked woman category?" He fumbled around with thoughts and said that this question was not important to answer. He did not answer and was not going to answer.
He feels Disney is not causing an issue in our society. He was then asked about the relationships in the movies he can recall. He said they were "true love stories". He was asked about his own relationships, if they were parallel with Disney's relationships. He said his first two marriages were not as "happy ending" as the Disney ones, but he thinks he got this one, the third one, right. He was asked if the Disney relationships were a model for all relations. He responded, "Yes, every relationship had a man and woman, where the man was a man and the girl was a girl". He was asked why he used man and girl. He said that is what they were a man and a girl. To go a little further, he was asked why he didn't use woman. He said, "Princesses are women they are girls".
Bobby's interview was unscientific, but yet it can still show a lot about the role Disney plays in our society.
Our last interview was Peggy:
Peggy is a 58-year-old mother of two children. She has son and daughter who are both now in college. Peggy says she bought Disney products more when her daughter was younger but still purchases from Disney for gifts for her younger nieces and nephews. She admits that she purchases more clothing items from Disney for the girls she is buying for and buys more toys for the boys. She only purchases about one hundred dollars worth of clothing or from six to seven items a year from Disney because they are so expensive. Another reason she is sometimes hesitant to purchase clothing from Disney is that their clothes are based on television fads which make the clothes short lived.
She does choose to buy from Disney as gifts to others children because she feels that Disney is a company that upholds good morals; so she feels that whatever she buys from them will be taken well by their parents and others unlike if she bought a toy gun for a child; which may raise issues. She sees the clothing as an easy link to what children want that she can buy even if she is not in the loop of what is the most popular thing at the time.
Peggy tends to think of clothing as clothing not as a statement of how someone should act. She sees that the clothing is obviously gendered but believes that even children have enough judgment and understanding to realize that these are fictional characters and not real ideals to live up to. She feels that Disney as a company has very little to do with the gendering of our youth but that it almost solely falls to those that are closest to them: parents, teachers, relatives, and friends.
When asked if she knew that Disney employed sweatshops to do the labor for their clothing she said that she did not know that but that she was also not surprised. She thinks that most companies use sweatshop labor to make their products. She sees the practice as wrong but feels that there is very little she can do to change the “way things are”.
