Is Esmeralda from the Huncback of Notre Dame a prime example of this verision of feminity that Disney is trying to sell us?

A prime example of a Disney female character that illustrates this is Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. This Disney film insists on “visually defining Esmeralda on the sum of her sexual parts: breasts, stomach, hair, and pubic area” (Bean, page 55). Esmeralda epitomizes the “1990s body: trim, athletic, and voluptuous – an Olympic runner in a Wonder Bra” (Bean, Page 57). Although in this particular film Esmeralda is portrayed as a product of desire, she is considered to be “slutty” and “prostitute” like. To further illustrate this, she makes her living dancing on the street seductively for coins like a stripper dances for dollar bills. Aside from her dress and physical form, her dance is seductive and highly sexual. In one particular scene a male villain Frollo, stares into a fire where Esmeralda appears, and is sexually excited. As Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan state in their book “Deconstructing Disney”, in relation to how she appears out of the flames “her body's further sexualized by the lack of detail: her breasts and lips exaggerated, her hair let loose, her body language erotic and flirtatious like a cartoon-lap dancer, her shirt is tight and cut lower” (Byrne and McQuillan, page 11). Besides from her dress and physical physique Esmeralda’s dance is seen as seductive, erotic, and highly sexual. In one particular scene, at the Annual Fools Celebration, her overabundant sexuality is further demonstrated by a seductive dance she performs for Frollo as “She flies into Frollo’s lap, playfully kissing him on his pointed nose” (Bean, page 57.) She unintentionally performs what would be perceived as a striptease in today’s world. As the dance increases, her physical sexuality becomes more prominent and her clothes become more revealing thereby able to manipulate her male audience.

-[exert from paper]