THE HIDDEN TRUTH
Melida Garcia
For the most part, we can all say that we grew up watching Disney everything, Disney
movies, shows, etc; but what is Disney all about? Disney. What is Disney exactly we may ask
ourselves, how have they become so successful over the years? Has it been because of their
brilliant marketing ideas or just simple luck? Or maybe both. When people talk about Disney,
they usually get involved in the fairytale and the love part of it all, but little do they know that
there is always a hidden message behind all of that. I grew up watching a lot of Disney movies
and I remember asking my parents to paint my room pink and tapping a poster up on my wall
that had some princesses in it, I would ask for heels and dresses so that I could look like them,
even my bed cover was Disney inspired. It wasn’t until recently that I started to look at things
with a more critical eye and realized a few of the hidden messages within the movies. The real
question is do Disney movies affect how we see the world as kids? For this, I decided to focus on
Cinderella because that movie has a better step-family scenario to be analyzed.
My own family is blended, I have two half-brothers which means that my mother has two
step kids, for about the first ten years of our lives we lived in separate houses, and we only saw
each other every other weekend, at this point, I already had watched the movie Cinderella but I
didn’t really pay attention to the details at the time since I was just a kid I just focused on the
“big picture” of the movie. After we moved to the United States we rewatched all the Disney
movies including Cinderella but I never saw my mother treating my half-brothers any different
than she would treat her children and I know she’s my mother I could never see her in a bad way
but neither would my brothers.
During my data research, I asked my brothers if they remembered watching Cinderella as
kids while living in The Dominican Republic and of course they did. I also asked if the movie
changed their perspective on how they saw mom as their stepmother, but it didn’t, again we were
just kids and only watched the movies for the fun of it. I asked them if they could watch it again
so that they can gain a different perspective on the movie and its overall message. They were
shocked as to how badly Cinderella got treated by her stepmother, and they got emotional with
me for a while, they told me how lucky they have been to have had the best stepmother “in the
world” she has their respect and love, they even call her mom, and we don’t see each other as a
stepfamily anymore, in the beginning, we probably did because we knew that we came from
different mother, but at the end of the day we love each other, and that’s the only thing that matters.
While looking into the movie a little more, a came across this one paper that talked about
the “Cinderella effect” and how stepparents are represented in the movie Cinderella. They talked about how parents are more inclined to take better care of their biological children and that it had to do with the order of natural selection and genetics. The paper analyses the effect of child maltreatment and how that is portrayed in the movie, (Beyond the “Cinderella effect”) explains how stepparents are more likely to maltreat their stepchildren when they have their own offspring present; but they couldn’t conclude which one is more likely to happen if the
biological parent or the stepparent.
Speaking for the people, I interview within my whole family, including aunts, cousins,
and my brothers who are either stepparents or stepchildren I have a different perspective on this
topic. Going with what I heard my family talk about is hard to ever believe that a stepchild
can be treated the way Cinderella was treated and how many children in the world are treated, we
grew up for the most part in a rural area of The Dominican Republic where family is the most
secret thing, it doesn’t matter if we are biologically related or not all we did was give each other
love and support. I grew up watching my aunts and my mother give the most love to their
stepchildren just like they would their biological children. My take on this topic is that it all
depends on your background and the way you were raised by your family and the things you
grew up watching.
Citation Page
Burgess, R. L., & Drais, A. A. (1999, December). Beyond the "Cinderella effect" – human nature. SpringerLink. Retrieved December 7, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-999-1008-7#citeas
Crawford, C., & Krebs, D. (2008). Foundations of evolutionary psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis Group.
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (n.d.). The “Cinderella effect”: Elevated mistreatment ... – UC santa barbara. The “Cinderella effect”: Elevated mistreatment of stepchildren in comparison to those living with genetic parents. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/buller/cinderella%20effect%20facts.pdf