I have three older sisters. Yes, I’m the baby boy of a mostly female family and yes, they smothered me, a lot. “Whoa, what was that like?” is usually the gut response. The short answer is that it was tough when I was younger, but it’s great now. It seems like it was just yesterday that my sisters would dress me in skirts, high heels, tights, and a thin layer of make-up. I can vividly recall, one night, my dad coming home from work, seeing what they had done, and punishing them for their sins. At the time, I hadn’t thought of it as an act that required scorning or disciplining. After that night, they never dressed me up again. If this happened today it would be on the front page of the newspaper. I can see the headline now: “Sexist Father Decides Son’s Sexual Orientation For Him.”
In my late adolescent years, I truly came to appreciate my sisters’ presence in my life. They taught me things that nobody else could have taught me and they did so in a way that was unique to them. But man, I used to pray—yes, actually pray at night when I went to bed—for a brother. All I wanted was another male figure to talk to me, to play games with me, and to watch movies with me.
I watched a lot of television. Perhaps it was my “escape” from the suffocating clutches of my sisters; who knows? We had a small box TV in the kitchen. It must have been 11 by 11 inches and was probably no bigger than any standard black and white clock on the wall. I used to drag a high stool from the family room and position it directly in front of the TV. So, if I had too many girly cooties in my life, what would you assume my favorite childhood movie to be? G.I. Jo? Peter Pan? Star Wars? Nope. I watched Mulan, and I watched it a lot. I watched it after school, I watched it before bed, and I watched it when I went over to my grandma’s house.
I insisted on watching Mulan, a Disney movie with a female protagonist about female empowerment that, on many levels, shattered gender stereotypes. At the time, was I aware of this? Of course not. It had enough action and excitement in it to not get me made fun of on the playground. After all, it was about Chinese fighters taking on a group of Huns, essentially nomad terrorists, who strived to undermine greater China. There were clear bad guys (with a badass leader named Shan Yu) and obvious good guys. There were enormous battles, fight scenes, an avalanche, and even a talking miniature dragon. Sounds pretty cool to me.
Taking a step back, why was Mulan so appealing? It clearly had enough action, but there was a girl as the main character. That had to deter boys from watching it, didn’t it? Taking a closer look at Mulan, and any progressive Disney movie for that matter, while there might be many liberal aspects of a given movie, these liberal adjustments can be seen through a larger traditional lens. In short, sometimes Disney gets certain parts right, but never the entire movie.
Take Mulan. While it was incredible to watch Mulan, a woman who had no place in the battlefield, defy the expectations of her society, she had to do so dressed as a man! Throughout the entire movie she had to disguise her true identity because it was not suitable for a woman to do what a man could do. Women and men were not equal. In fact, throughout the movie Mulan must submit to male stereotypes in order to ultimately succeed. That doesn’t sound gender-stereotype shattering to me.
Mulan pushes back against the traditional gender roles that are engrained in Disney movies and society. It is a shining light among older Disney films.
Mulan is disguised as a progressive Disney movie; in reality, it portrays a woman who needs to change herself in order to conform to the expectations set by men.
This dichotomy rings true when taking a closer look at the climactic song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” As a child, I loved this song and sang it all the time. It tells the story of an underdog woman who has been struggling to “fit in” with the men. The other men in her unit aren’t exactly ideal fighters, but she is conveyed as the weak link among the unit. She is about to give up when she decided to climb a wooden pole using only two gold medallions, something that nobody else in the unit is able to achieve. Once she accomplishes this feat, the rest follows. Suddenly, she and the rest of the unit become elite soldiers and “transform into men.”
Thinking about this song almost 20 years after it was written, I am still drawn to the song’s emotion. I want to scream “Hell yeah!” at the end of it because Mulan achieves the impossible; she proves to herself that she, a woman, can be a leader among strong men. While she doesn’t need to be a man to fit in with the other men, does she prove to everyone that women can do it? Not quite.
In fact, this song puts “being a man” into a narrow, concrete box. And when I look closely at the lyrics, it leaves me feeling a bit nauseous. It’s disgusting. Why must she, and everyone else, prescribe to being a man. What does it even mean to be a man? Be a man. You must be swift as a coursing river. Be a man. With all the force of a great typhoon. Be a man. With all the strength of a raging fire. Mysterious as the dark side of the moon. It’s like Mulan is shoving what it means to be a man down your throat. Be a man, be a man, be a man. Enough already!
According to the lyrics—to be a man—you must be swift, you must have force, you must have strength, you must be mysterious. What kind of message does this send to children? This sends a distressingly narrow and traditional message: boys must be strong. In order to become a man, you must mirror the stereotypical man.
And if you cannot do that, then you're a spineless, pale, pathetic lot. If you aren’t a man, according to this song, you are weak, you are feeble, and you are not fit for society. If you are a boy, you need to eventually become a man. You can bet before we're through Mister, I'll make a man out of you. Hard work, brutal training, hardship, fighting. That is what will make a man out of you. This is what will make you toughen up. If you can’t act tough, confident, brave, heroic, then you have no place in society. What if a boy doesn’t want to be a man when he grows up?
After thinking about this song and the film as a whole from a contemporary perspective, Mulan’s struggle resonates with me. In the beginning of the movie, she sings a song about identity entitled, “Reflection.” In this song, she speaks about how she wants to be on the battlefield fighting, but she can’t. Societal norms forbid her from doing so. When will my reflection show who I am inside? Both in the beginning of the film and immediately after “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” Mulan doesn’t feel like she can relate to a man, to a soldier. She feels pressured into being a specific kind of a woman, one who must cover up her face with makeup, who must behave properly, and who wears dresses.
She simply wants the opportunity to take a step outside the box that society raised her in.