The Sexualisation of Tinker Bell
she is not an object
While doing research for this essay on the scholarly and objective website that is Reddit, I found that an overwhelming majority of the content about Tinker Bell was NSFW (not safe for work).
In this essay, I will be exploring the sexualisation of Tinker Bell and the pedophilic lens through which she is viewed.
The Origins of Tinker Bell
Peter Pan originally started out as a play written by James Matthew Barrie. On stage, Tinker Bell was simply a flickering light.
In 1911, Barrie released a Peter Pan novel in which he described Tinker Bell as “exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to embonpoint.”
From the get go, this iconic fairy was objectified and her ‘hourglass’ figure and large hips emphasised. Her curvy figure was immediately cemented as a central part to her character.
In 1953, Disney released an animated adaptation of Peter Pan. In the original production drawings, we can see that the character’s design stayed true to her description in the novel. She wears a form-fitting and extremely short dress to display her highly sexualised figure.
Behind the Scenes
The animators needed a live-action model to bring this fairy to life and at the age of 19, Margaret Kerry was selected for this role.
She stated that “they were looking for a young girl who was comfortable with dance movement” implying that the filmmakers decided to make Tinker Bell a child despite the fact that Disney never officially confirmed her age. Kerry further established this when she said in an interview that she “played her as if she was a nine-year-old/ten-year-old girl”.
Bearing this in mind, her subsequent sexualisation is all the more worrying.
She was sexualised even during her audition:
“One time they said, “What would it look like if she landed on a mirror and saw herself?” I figured the pixie had never seen her reflection in a mirror before, so I began to groom myself, taking the time to truly give myself a once-over. When I got to her hips, I pretended to measure them, then—upset by how big they were—stormed off. They liked that.”
Kerry would have to act out scenes from Peter Pan on a soundstage, occasionally with props. There was an overwhelming emphasis on capturing her flirtatious movements rather than simply using her as a reference for motion as was done for the other characters.
“At the time, I was five foot two and my measurements were a 35 bust line, my waist was 25 inches and my hips were 36 inches. I was a babe. I had just won the World's Most Beautiful Legs contest but, of course, I never told Disney about that.”
It is clear that Tinker Bell's curvy figure was the focus of how her character moved. Kerry even wore a one-piece bathing suit as “...what they needed to see was the outline of my body as I moved and as I twirled…”.
The fact that so much effort was put into capturing the movements of a character who is emotionally portrayed as a child, is concerning.
“This projection room was just jammed with people to see whether this curvy Tinker Bell would work because there was some concern that she was maybe too curvy. When it finished, there was applause because it looked great.”
Why were these grown men so interested in the body of a young character?
Sexualising young characters has real-life consequences and affects real people, one of them being Kerry.
“It was not pleasant, walking around the soundstage in my bathing suit all day. I did have a cover up I put on when I was not working. You never knew who might drop by the set.”
At only 19 years old, grown men took advantage of and commodified her body. Much of her praise is directed to her figure instead of her acting skills, reducing her to mere eye candy.
Not only was she exploited on screen, but on set as well.
“One day, I was talking to Kathryn Beaumont, who played Alice in Alice in Wonderland, and I asked if she ever felt anything unsafe, and she said she always felt 100% protected. And I was a pretty good-looking young gal in a bathing suit, under the lights, and sometimes the crew people could get pretty crude, but Marc Davis would not put up with it. He protected me.”
On Screen
She sways her hips and stares at us with her big blue eyes. Her dress is so short that we can see her underwear in a couple of scenes. The camera almost always includes a good view of her body in the shot.
There are 3 scenes in particular that oversexualise her unnecessarily.
Keyhole scene
Tinker Bell tries to fly through a keyhole, but gets stuck in it, providing the audience with a view right up her dress of her butt. She struggles to get free and shakes and shimmies her body all while the camera focuses on her behind.
On Youtube, a video titled TINKERBELL TWERK shows this scene and has around 38 thousand views.
Mirror Scene
She lands on a mirror and begins to inspect her reflection. She runs her hands along her body but when she gets to her hips, she measures them, surprised at how big they are.
A video titled Tinkerbell’s Butt, shows this scene and has around 176 thousand views.
Pixie Dust scene
Peter Pan repeatedly taps Tinker Bell on her butt in order to get more pixie dust. Why not just tap her on the head? Or shake her? Why specifically her butt?
Audience Reception
Upon the release of Peter Pan, hundreds of reviews were written where grown men would rave about Tinker Bell’s sex appeal and would lust after the young character.
Many compared her to Marylin Monroe due to her curvy figure and flirtatious manner however, both of these icons belonged to a much larger trend in media at the time: the simultaneous sexualisation of girls and infantilization of women.
Tinker Bell is portrayed in a very conflicting manner, with both child-like traits and adult sexuality. Her babyish face with big eyes and full cheeks, mischievous nature and emotional immaturity point towards a younger character. The fact that Kerry played her as a 9/10 year old girl reinforces this. However, she is also given adult-like traits like her mature body and flirtatious manner.
She caters to two predatory fantasies:
The infantilization of women
She is emotionally underdeveloped and yet physically adult, playing into this infantilization of women trope. She is someone who behaves like a child and yet is presented as an object of sexual desire. This trope was very popular at the time. Most of Marylin Monroe’s characters are dumb but sexy. Betty Boop, an infamous cartoon character, embodies this trope. She had a high pitched voice and child-like personality while in the body of a sexualised grown woman.
The sexualisation of girls
She could also be seen as a precociously sexual child or, one might say, a Lolita (due to misreadings of Nabokov’s novel). A child seductress. A sexy baby. Tinker Bell fits perfectly into these disturbing tropes.
The reason why she can embody both of these fantasies is because of a slight technicality. This is a fantasy world. And more importantly, we don’t know how fairies age. Perhaps they live for thousands of years while maintaining a youthful appearance. Perhaps fairies never grow up.
Her behaviour is childlike yet she is designed with exaggerated curves, reminiscent of an adult woman. Is she a child that looks like an adult or an adult that acts like a child?
Due to the ambiguity of her age, the filmmakers can sexualise her without facing the criticism from the public that usually comes with the sexualisation of a child.
The uncomfortable truth is that there is huge demand for pedophilic content in which children are sexualised. Tinker Bell caters directly to these fantasies and filmmakers can deflect the backlash that would normally come along with the sexualisation of children by saying that her age is never explicitly stated.
In an interview, Kerry explained the following:
“My husband (second husband Jack Wilcox) and I saw it in a movie theater. I remembered all the scenes and all the motions I did to create them. I kept elbowing my husband and saying, “That's me! That's me!” He just turned to me and said, “I know it's you. I'd recognize those thighs anywhere.”
Although it is fairly normal for a husband to take notice of his wife’s thighs, what is troubling is the fact that he could see her thighs enough in order to be able to recognise them. This just goes to show how much effort the filmmakers put into her body.
To this day, Tinker Bell is still sexualised. The internet is infested with NSFW content of her. Here is an example of the disgusting ways that people talk about her:
Tinker Bell has been infantilized, sexualised and objectified and yet the filmmakers haven’t been held accountable because “we don’t know how old she is”.
It doesn’t matter whether she is 10 or 10 thousand years old. She is not an object.
loved this article i was watching peter pan for the first time and thought the scenes were insane for a kids movie
loved this article i was watching peter pan for the first time and thought the scenes were insane for a kids movie