Thread by @AnaMardoll, Shameless blog plug: If you missed some or all of my "gendered [...]

Shameless blog plug: If you missed some or all of my "gendered eyeshadow for cartoons" thread, all 167 images are collected here.

http://www.anamardoll.com/2021/04/storify-gender-eyeshadow.html

Also, if you liked the "cartoon women are gendered via eyeshadow / fur-shadow / heavy shading of the eyelids" tweet thread, you may want to stick around for this one where I talk about queer-coded/feminine-coded villains and their eyeshadow.

Let's go through some Disney movies by date.

Snow White, 1937. Snow White has subtle eyeshadow, while the Evil Queen has darker and clearer eyeshadow paired with significantly longer eyelashes.

Pinocchio, 1940.

I can only recall two female characters in this: Cleo the fish and the Blue Fairy. Both have light eyeshadow, presumably in order to mark their status as Not Men.

Fantasia, 1940.

Fantasia has white centaurs who wear blush but are mostly without eyeshadow (I found precisely one white centaur with shadow: the red-coated one.) but the Black zebra centaurs have heavily shaded eyes.

Racists hypersexualize and villainize Black women.

(I find it interesting that the one white centaur with eyeshading is the red-coated one. Red-heads have traditionally been hypersexualized for multiple bigoted reasons, including anti-Irish sentiment. Is that in play here? I don't know and can't say!)

Fantasia has other eyeshading--most notably the "sexy" fish who has heavy purple eyeshadow. The non-sexualized Dew Fairies, in contrast, have none. Their gender is instead conveyed through hair accessories (the yellow flower on the yellow pixie).

Already we're seeing patterns:

- Eyeshadow used to convey gender. (Cleo)

- Eyeshadow used lightly or not at all for sympathetic or non-sexualized characters. (Aurora, Blue Fairy)

- Eyeshadow used heavily for villains or hypersexual characters. (Evil Queen, Fantasia Fish)

From this we can infer that *heavy* eyeshadow--as opposed to light use--indicates someone that the viewer is supposed to be wary of: either because they are villainous (Evil Queen) or because they are hypersexualized and therefore, per society, "temptresses" (Zebra Centaurs).

Let's see if later movies bear out these patterns and inferences.

Cinderella, 1950.

Cinderella has no eyeshadow. Her step-sisters, who are villainous but fall into the "childish, comical, and/or ineffective" sidekick trope, also have none. Lady Tremaine has heavy eyeshadow.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951.

This movie, which features a child and her imagination, has no eyeshadow anywhere that I can find. But the live-action reboot applied eyeshadow to the Queen of Hearts so effectively that I was surprised to find it wasn't in the original.

Peter Pan, 1953.

Not a single woman in this movie seems to have eyeshadow. Not Mother Darling, not Wendy, not Tinkerbell, not the (evil, sexual!) mermaids, not Tiger Lily (not pictured here).

Nana, a female dog, arguably has furshadow but that pulls double-duty as "tired bags under eyes" to indicate over-work and fatigue. But then you have the villainous Hook: full eyeshadow!

I believe this may be the first instance of eyeshadow being applied to a villainous *man*. And Hook is very queer-coded/feminine-coded. His villainy is one of soft whispers, lies, and social manipulation. He likes luxury and plays music. He talks in a seductive purr.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955.

The prim Lady and her sweet owner lack any touch of shadow on their pure eyes. Peg, the sultry dog who sings a lusty song for "The Tramp" has eyeshadow (that may double as a "street smart" black eye, per some readers. Unsure.).

Sleeping Beauty, 1959.

Aurora, her mother, and the good fairies have no discernable eyeshadow at all. Aurora will sometimes have shaded brows for emphasis (as when she's asleep), but no actual makeup. Maleficient, in contrast, is rocking loud purple shading.

If we compare Snow White ('37) to Sleeping Beauty ('59) we see how much the trope solidified in 20 years.

SW had a little purple on the Heroine and a little more purple on the villainess--a subtle difference. SB has NO shading on the Heroine and LOTS of purple on the villainess.

101 Dalmations, 1961.

Let's go through the good women: Anita, the loving wife and dog guardian; Perdita, the sweet dalmation mommy; and Nanny, the faithful housekeeper. No eye shading.

Then we have Cruella de Vil, whose heavy eye makeup is so iconic that it's been utilized in every live-action remake.

Sword in the Stone, 1963.

This one pulls an odd one on us: Madam Mim does not have eyeshadow, even in her sexualized form! I don't know what to make of that. We do still have "fur-shadow" to make sure we know that the girl squirrel is a Girl.

The Jungle Book, 1967.

There are no female characters in this movie at all that I can find except for the mother wolf (Raksha) and the little girl at the end (Shanti). Neither have shading, even though Shanti "lures" Mowgli out of the jungle.

(To be very clear, I think it is a *good* thing that Disney didn't add *extra* hyper-sexualizating eyeshadow to girls of color like Tiger Lily and Shanti.)

Robin Hood, 1973

[racist imagery]

None of the women have eyeshadow in this movie (not Maid Marian, not Lady Cluck), but notably Robin Hood wears eyeshadow when he dresses up as a "traveling fortune teller" and implied woman of color.

There's also something going on with Prince John (villain) and King Richard (hero)--Prince John has darker eye shading than his brother the king.

The Rescuers, 1977 / The Rescuers Down Under, 1990.

Returning to our Snow White roots where "light" eyeshadow equals good and "dark" eyeshadow equals bad, we have The Rescuers with Bianca and Madame Medusa. (Though I think Bianca's shadow was added in the 1990 sequel.)

The Great Mouse Detective, 1986

TGMD gave us the hero Basil (no fur-shadow), the charismatic flamboyant villain Ratigan (purple eyeshadow and image-obsessed) and incidental sexualized tavern-dancing mouse girls.

Oliver & Company, 1988

O&C has child Jenny and various human characters with no eyeshadow. Then we have Rita, the sexual street smart dog who is voiced by Black women, and the pampered rich-bitch Georgette.

The Little Mermaid, 1989.

Ariel and her sisters have no eyeshadow. None of the human servants in the castle seem to have eyeshadow. Even Vanessa, the false bride who steals Erik, doesn't have eyeshadow.

But Ursula. Oh, Ursula. Ursula has more eyeshadow than she knows what to do with. Being banished from the palace hasn't hurt this villain's cosmetics stash. (Ursula was, notably, based on famous drag queen Divine.)

Beauty and the Beast, 1991.

So much eyeshadow in this movie and yet so little. Let's go through some main characters.

Belle, our heroine: No eyeshadow.
Beast, our hero: No discernable fur-shadow.
Gaston, our villain: No.
The "Bimbettes", his sexy groupies: None.

Then you have Lefou who has always been arguably gay-coded (and which Disney chose to make extra-gay-coded in the live-action, a choice I did not appreciate). Something is going on with his eyes here, but I cannot tell you what.

The castle has the usual cast of animated objects where the women have been heavily shaded because it's very important to know the gender of a tea kettle and a dresser and a feather duster. (Note that Chip, a child and a boy, is not shaded.)

But then you have these two: Lumiere and Cogsworth. Both men, both on the side of the heroes, but both heavily queer-coded in different ways. A rare example of a Disney queer-coded character who isn't a villain?

Aladdin, 1992.

The good characters are light on the eyeshadow, if at all. Jasmine, the lone woman in the movie, has occasionally-shaded lids that might be makeup or might just be "These Be Eyelids" shading and it's hard to tell.

Then we have Jafar, a villain who is queer-coded *and* a dark-skinned evil foreign man. His coloring and clothing is always substantially darker than the clothes worn by Aladdin, Sultan, and Jasmine, and he has heavy eye-makeup.

The sometimes-very-good-writing-but-somewhat-cheaply-animated cartoon series sequel to Aladdin fell right back into eyeshadowing women left and right, particularly villainous ones. (In order: Fatima, Saleen, Jackal Girl, and Mirage.)

Interestingly, and also from the show, we have Sadira who is a female villain who is sympathetic and eventually joins the good guys: no eyeshadow. Then, Mozenrath who is a male queer-coded villain who is not sympathetic: eyeshadow.

The Lion King, 1994.

We compare Mufasa (good father, little shadow) to Scar (evil uncle, queer-coded, heavily shaded). Then Nala (love interest, no fur-shadow) to Shenzi (villain, Black-coded, fur-shadow).

The sequel, Simba's Pride (1998), doubles down on this. Nala and Kiara are members of the "good" pride and have light shadow; Zira and Zuri are members of the "bad" pride and have much darker fur.

Pocahontas, 1995.

Pocahontas and John Smith have no shadow, but the heavily queer-coded male villain (AND HIS DOG) have eyeshadow and purple clothes/accessories.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996.

No one in this movie wears eyeshadow (at least that I can find, not even Esmeralda) but the queer-coded and villainous Frollo has eyes that just... are naturally shaded, even in the bright of day.

Hercules, 1997.

This movie has SO MUCH EYESHADOW. First there are the sexy women who need their eyeshadow so we *know* they're sexy and alluring: Megara, Aphrodite, Hera, a random horse.

Among the female cast, the Muses have the least amount of eyeshadow, which is noteworthy because they are Black women. I'm not sure what to make of this; a deliberate attempt to *not* hyper-sexualize them?

Then we have the queer-coded villain Hades, who is wearing more eyeshadow than all the female characters combined, somehow.

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