“I Never Wanted to Be an Ashley!” Androcentrism and Gender Entitlement in Disney’s Recess

Abstract

The commercially successful Disney animated television series Recess featured a bold and physically active tomboy character in a leading role. Ashley Spinelli (referred to only by her surname) vocally disdained all things feminine. Spinelli’s nemeses were a clique of snobbish, scheming girly-girls, all of whom were also named Ashley. This dynamic is significant when read against the Walt Disney Company’s overall investment in discourses of normative femininity. It is also historically contingent with the ways in which North American popular culture has used the tomboy to address various perceived societal needs, including healthy lifestyles, masculine dominance and childhood innocence. The Recess episode “First Name Ashley” displays an androcentric and gender-entitled representation of girlhood, predicated upon the understanding that normative femininity is synonymous with cruelty. The liberatory possibilities in this representation are thereby compromised by the representation of female agency as dependent upon maintaining distance from femininity.