Apparently You Can Get a Man With a Gun

Contrary to what Warner Brothers might have you think, apparently you can get a man with a gun. As a little girl, I watched a depressed Betty Hutton sing “Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun” in the classic 1950 film, Annie Get Your Gun. Although I knew Annie Oakley was an actual historical figure, I never gave much thought to the film’s historical accuracy. I recently discovered just how far from history the classic musical had wandered.
The film version of Frank Butler’s character finds Annie Oakley’s superior talent and country-bumpkin ways disturbingly unfeminine until Annie deliberately loses to him in a shooting match. Now that he’s defeated her, he magically realizes his undying love; they marry and live happily ever after. In short, if you want a man to fall in love you- don’t emasculate him by being better at anything.
It seems the real Frank Butler was not so chauvinistic. In fact, quite to the contrary of the film’s premise, his losing a shoot-out to Oakley was the catalyst for their entire relationship. Was it really necessary to mangle a true love story that has an empowered woman at its focus into a fictional sexist treatise on how women should behave if they want to find love?

Yeah, the movie was made in 1950 when most everyone agreed women belong in the kitchen, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising. But really, what happened to Oakley’s true story isn’t some lone anomaly from a sexist bygone era. Has anyone else noticed that nearly every Disney princess is a helpless git until Prince Charming comes to the rescue?
Remember Sleeping Beauty? She’s literally asleep until that “someday” when her “prince will come.” Snow White too. Of course, that’s after she escapes her unhappy life in order to play house keeper to the dwarves. Cinderella? She cleans her step-mother’s house till Prince Charming comes charging in with her glass slipper. The Little Mermaid actually gives up her family, her life, and her fins to be with the man she loves. Jasmine is locked inside a castle until Aladdin comes along to “show her the world.” Sure, she got out on her own, but without Aladdin coming to the rescue, she would have soon been returned to her palace/prison by her father’s guards and probably have had her hand chopped off for stealing.
Then there’s the Disney version of Mulan, which I would contend is the exception that proves the rule. Mulan saves China from the Hun invasion, and in the end saves the life of her emperor despite the fact that no one would heed her warnings on account of the discovery that she was a woman. She’s a strong female character who essentially saves her world. So what’s my problem? Just like the story of Annie Oakley, Disney’s Mulan is a reworking of the actual tale to make it more “marketable,” and ultimately, more sexist. In the original Ballad of Mulan, she doesn’t go off to war to restore any damage to the family honor she caused by not being good enough for a matchmaker. In the Ballad of Mulan, she never falls in love with her general- she becomes a general. In the Ballad of Mulan, she doesn’t sneak out in the middle of the night to become the ultimate self-sacrificing daughter- she tells her parents she’d like to go to war. If Disney’s Mulan isn’t sexist, then why was it rewritten to fit the fairytale norm?
Nearly sixty years after Annie Get Your Gun was made, there’s still a strong cultural intuition that women are inferior to men. Maybe it’s not always blatant or obvious, but it’s definitely there. If you walk down the toy aisles of your local store, for girls you’ll see a plethora of toy vacuums, easy-bake ovens, baby dolls, and Barbies that either look like princesses or cheap hookers. For boys you’ll see spaceships, super heroes, and guns. So, in their play-time, girls across the country can dream about cleaning house, raising kids, meeting Prince Charming or turning tricks. Their male counter-parts will dream about becoming an astronaut, Spider Man, or someone that gets to shoot stuff full-time. Maybe parents today don’t tell their children that women belong in the kitchen, but you’d never guess that from the toys they buy them.
Not only is it socially acceptable for girls to play with toys geared towards boys, but the cool ones usually do. On the other hand, if a boy wants to play with My Little Ponies or sign up for dance class, he’s a sissy and his parents might want to get him to a therapist ASAP. According to essentialbaby.com (an on-line parenting guide), when a toddler boy likes to play with dolls or dress up in mommy’s clothes, it may be a sign of stress, abuse, or an absent father. Excuse me, but what exactly is an action figure if it isn’t just another type of doll? When, as a society, we believe that something designed for boys is good enough for anyone, but girls’ things are only good enough for girls, I don’t think there’s any other conclusion that we can come to: we are a sexist society. If only we could stop sending subconscious messages to little girls that if they want to be like Annie and “get her man” they better keep practicing on their Easy Bake Ovens, then we might be a little less so.