Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children's Entertainment Media ed. by CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Christopher J. Olson (review)

In 2014, Ellen Oh and over twenty other writers and publishing professionals launched the sorely needed We Need More Diverse Books movement. The campaign's definition of "diversity" is quite expansive and thereby, like this anthology, inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ community. However, while the former includes many historically disenfranchised groups of people and focuses exclusively on literature, the latter is concerned with representations of gender and sexuality in children's media, literature, and material culture.

Separated into an introduction, thirteen chapters by different scholars, and a conclusion, Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between references a broad array of media: television shows, film adaptations, cartoons, Webisodes, and music; fairy tales, comics, and children's picture books; and material culture such as the myriad of toys and dolls come to "life" from their media and literature portrayals. The authors all perform analyses, mostly qualitative in nature, within a range of frameworks and theories including, but not limited to, the (post) feminist, queer, reader-response/reception, genderbread, cultural, cultivation, and social. Ultimately, though, each has the same goal: to discover the extent that media, literature, and material culture reflect nontraditional representations of gender and sexuality and the messages conveyed by such representations.

Quite a few of the chapters in the book analyze media and literature produced by the Walt Disney Company, which has a long historical record of playing it safe and thereby maintaining the status quo. In chapter 4, Nancy Bressler references such a record, as do Annik Pellegrin (chapter 8), and Heike Steinhoff (chapter 9), but focuses more on recent counter-examples. Bressler analyzes five episodes from Disney Channel's domestic comedy Liv and Maddie that reveal opposition to dominant ideologies about representations of gender. Citing characters' actions and words in the episodes, Bressler maintains that the show reflects many of the philosophies of third-wave feminism. One prime example is how female characters break the gender binary by being complex, multidimensional characters who display individualistic and collective identities.

In chapter 8, Pellegrin debunks the myths circulated in fairy tales and romance novels, focusing in particular on French comics and fairy tales. She asserts that unlike French-oriented fairy tales such as "Sleeping Beauty," "Cinderella," and "Snow White," two comic series, Beaute (Beauty) and Le Royaume (The Kingdom), convey different messages: that neither beauty nor marriage leads to happiness.

Similar messages are at the heart of Steinhoff's piece, in which she focuses on the 2013 phenomenon Frozen. Like Pellegrin, she traces and analyzes the "Disneyfication" of fairy tales, which includes "a process of 'Americanization'" and "a systematic sanitization of violence, sexuality, and political struggle concomitant with an erasure or repression of violence" (qtd. in 161); her timeframe extends from "Classic Disney" to "Disney Revival" (late 1980s–'90s) to "Disney Today." Using Frozen as her case study, Steinhoff reveals how the film often serves as a parody of fairy tale myths of love, romance, and beauty. Instead, the film suggests that women do not need men to define themselves; that there are many types of love, including sisterly; that the banding together of women is fruitful; and that men and women can and do exist on a continuum between masculine and feminine traits. As Steinhoff so expertly reveals, Frozen can be read and interpreted with both feminist and postfeminist frames.

Similar to Steinhoff 's examination of the stages of film in Disney's history, Sara Austin (chapter 7) traces the history of fashion dolls and their scripted bodies, which influence gendered behavior in those who play with them. From Mattel's Barbie to the franchises Monster High, Ever After High, and DC Super Hero Girls, she analyzes changes in the narratives that the dolls reflect. Focusing especially on the latter three franchises, Austin reveals how these dolls—by their physical bodies and their roles in...