So I’ve started brushing my daughter’s hair.

She’s 7. It’s time.

Some would disagree it’s past time. Some would disagree she has spent a improved partial of her life looking rather unkempt.

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I would respond with one word: Jessie.

Jessie is a ideally coiffed suggested star of a Disney Channel uncover about a 19-year-old Manhattan nanny. She’s discerning with a scathing one-liners, doubtful by her life and wracked with insecurities about boys and accessories.

Her hair, though, is fantastic. As illusory as London’s from “The Suite Life on Deck” and CeCe’s from “Shake It Up” and Ally’s from “Austin and Ally.”

I know all about their hair since my daughter loves their shows with a same turn of fervour that we persevere to hating them.

The Disney princesses are always entrance in for parental flack — they’re too doe-eyed, too empty-headed, too prince-reliant. But a princesses are child’s play. They might be abandoned of career ambitions, though during slightest they provide people well. (Animated people, though still.)

Disney’s tween and teen characters, finished for elementary-schoolers, are wretched. Many of them are derisive and disrespectful and petty, and they’ve jam-packed a marketplace so that even if we extent screen-time exposure, they and their hair will still call out to your child from wardrobe lines and lunchboxes and stickers during a pediatrician’s office.

What does all this have to do with brushing my daughter’s hair?

Until recently, she could not be bothered. Washing her hair was torture. Brushing it was a rubbish of her time. She eyed bows with a same disregard she leads during tomatoes.

I desired this. we desired that she approached birthday parties and open musicals and initial days of propagandize with nary a peek toward her hair.

“Should we brush your hair?” I’d ask, customarily on a proceed out a door.

“Nah,” she’d constantly reply.

And that always felt like a victory. Like she was headed out to suffer whatever we were about to suffer for a perfect experience. Not for a possibility to demeanour lovable in photos or uncover off her headband.

Once we arrived, she’d always dive in with desert — not a impulse spent wondering if her braids would come lax or her curls would drop.

She was a discord of Jessie. Now she wants me to brush her hair. Sometimes she brushes it herself. The other day she asked me to re-create a braid in an American Girl repository and didn’t worry stealing her disregard for my mild rendering.

Have a Disney gals’ glossy cascades of thick, poetic tresses tangled themselves around my daughter’s psyche? Is she reserved to years of station in front of a counterpart feeling defeated? Has she already alike beauty with recognition and recognition with power?

I suspect it’s time to proceed this subject with a small some-more nuance. Good bathing is frequency a same as shoal mania with one’s looks. Certainly we can concede her — inspire her, even — to take honour in her coming and suffer a small bursts of tranquillity that come from amatory a proceed she looks.

Certainly we can learn her there’s room for her coming on her list of priorities (just hopefully not during a top). And whatever form her coming takes — coiffed hair, pinkish hair, shaved hair, Jessie hair — it shouldn’t establish where she fits in a universe or how she treats a people in it.

Certainly we can do all in my energy to keep her from apropos scathing and disrespectful and sparse (plus doe-eyed, empty-headed and prince-reliant).

Which all reminds me of Jon Stewart’s new remark on “The Daily Show,” in light of a strap over Disney’s sexing adult a “Brave” character, Merida.

“You have an arrangement with a relatives of America,” he faux-scolded Disney executives. “Our pursuit is to make certain a children are sitting in front of a screen. Your pursuit is to lift them right. If we keep training them a wrong lessons, afterwards we’re going to have start doing it ourselves. And that’s not cool.”

hstevens@tribune.com

Twitter @heidistevens13

Abigail Disney was good into mature adulthood when she done her initial film, Pray a Devil Back to Hell, a documentary about women heading a assent transformation in Liberia. Now she is creation a name for herself over her famous origin by documenting women’s lives and presence skills in war-torn countries.

“When we make your initial film during 47 and anybody though your mom goes to see it, to me that’s a miracle,” Disney pronounced in a speak Wednesday in Washington, D.C. that was during turns humorous and self-deprecating, eliciting meaningful delight from a ballroom of mostly women even as she widespread a summary that has spin a running light of her life.

“I was a bit of a mislaid lamb in my twenties, perplexing to find my aloft calling,” she confessed. She had everything, degrees from Yale, Stanford, and Columbia, a family that is mythological in filmmaking, though with 4 immature children she was “tethered” (her word) to New York. She removed going into neighborhoods in Manhattan and a outdoor boroughs where she found women “pushing behind opposite a quite severe capitalism we find in a cities, generally New York.”

Years later, as her children got comparison “and a control was longer,” her seductiveness in how women survived in a many daunting conditions led her to film stories in war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Bosnia, Congo, and Liberia. She filmed what she saw “to widespread a good news”: that women can make a disproportion by grassroots activism. She directed to reinstate a images of fight that her era was lifted on—“images that captivate us into conflicts… with a energy of regretful captivate scarcely unfit for immature organisation to resist.” She shows a grittier design formed on a day-to-day practice of women.

“If we take yourself out of your comfort zone, no matter how prepared we are, we haven’t a idea about how a rest of a universe lives,” Disney told a assembly convened by The National Democratic Institute. Time spent in places diplomats courtesy as hardship posts have given her “a life of definition along with [knowing] some of a best people on earth,” she said. Casting her eyes upward, she added, “I can hear my father shouting from somewhere adult there when we call myself an artist.”

Asked after her debate what she meant by that—did her father, Roy Disney, consider of a family business as party rather than art, and maybe he didn’t take himself that seriously? She paused a prolonged impulse and said, “He didn’t take me all that seriously.”

Well, Disney is creation adult for any time she competence have mislaid in her routine of self-discovery with what she does to gleam a light on a genuine casualties of war—the women and children. The nonprofits she has founded assistance women make their lives better: a Daphne Foundation supports grassroots activism and grew out of her early forays into New York neighborhoods;

Peace Is Loud focuses on women in dispute zones. It all creates her a ideal luncheon orator during a launch of a Madeleine K. Albright Women’s Project to mangle down a barriers that keep women from enchanting in politics.

A morning row contention about how women can advantage from record and amicable media examined a plea of “moving from Tahrir Square to governing,” as Albright put it, and either it’s probable to spin a bloggers’ series into a government.

Summing adult a row in her antagonistic way, Disney said, “Women speak and speak and talk. There is no organisation of people some-more matched to this technological plea than women. …This is a moment.”

Her prolongation company, Fork Films, got a name when her son, Eamon, afterwards only a toddler, wanted to call a new kitten “Fork,” one of a few difference he knew. The name didn’t work for a cat, and to lessen her son, she bestowed it on her association in a gesticulate customary of her big, comfortable celebrity and her quirky clarity of humor. She self-funded her initial film—a mistake, she says, since people primarily saw it as a self-centredness project. Pray a Devil won Best Documentary during a Tribeca film festival in 2008, and Disney has taken a film to 32 countries, sparking discourse and seeding grassroots activism. “I have a crony who tweeted ‘I wish to cuddle we with my drudge arms,’” she said, smiling like someone who had found a pot of bullion during a finish of a rainbow.

She admits a pang of jealousy toward associate documentarian Ken Burns, whose projects are heavily promoted. He was even a difficulty on Jeopardy!, she exclaims.

All a some-more reason for women to support any other, she said. “When women approach a film, we go to a film, and afterwards we don’t reason it to a aloft customary than a man,” she chided. And when a Washington Post highlights a stiletto-shoe collection of a White House counsel, write them a letter: “Let them have it.” And when your daughter asks for a doll, give her a computer, too. And when your son asks for a computer, give him a doll, too. And if a lady runs for boss in 2016, “For God’s sake, can we leave her pantsuits alone!” she declared. “Talk about what she’s articulate about, not what she’s wearing.”

Disney’s code of activism is substantially not what her father had in mind, though she’s stretching a family name in ways that women opposite a creation conclude and applaud.

Two weeks after Universal Orlando Resort became a initial Orlando thesis park to mangle a $90 threshold for a single-day, single-park ticket, Walt Disney World Resort has announced adult acknowledgment to a Magic Kingdom will boost $6, to $95 ($89 ages 3-9), effective Sunday.

Single-day acknowledgment to a other Florida parks, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, is somewhat reduce during $90, adult and $84, ages 3-9.

Related: Theme parks bark behind to life, assemblage jumps

This outlines a initial year in what has turn an annual rite, that Disney has introduced dual opposite rates for single-day admissions to a Orlando parks.

At Disneyland, cost of a one-day one-park adult sheet will boost from from $87 to $92 and a one-day park hopper sheet goes from $125 to $137. Disney has also dangling discounts before given to Southern California residents.

Multi-day acknowledgment tickets, that are some-more renouned — and some-more careful — have also increased. Overall, cost hikes operation from 1% to 15%.

By Suzannah Mitchell DiMarzio and Beci Mahnken

Disney deals are back, including adult to 30 percent off this summer and giveaway dining packages too. You can save adult to 30 percent this summer during Walt Disney World. Save even some-more with a vacation package that includes a smallest four-day Magic Your Way sheet during a ignored price. Savings are current for stays many nights Jun 13 to Aug. 14, 2013. Book by Jun 14.

Here’s a tasty approach to make your vacation dreams come true. Book a non-discounted Walt Disney World Magic Your Way package and get a name Dining Plan – free!

Book a value review – Get Quick Service Dining Plan free
Book a moderate, fine or villa – Get a Disney Dining Plan free

Valid for stays many nights:
Sept. 2 – Sept. 25, 2013. Book by Jul 31.

If we would only like a hotel for after this summer, we can stay and knowledge a sorcery adult close. Be tighten to a heart of all a magic, from a thesis parks and party to nightlife, selling and more. Save adult to 30 percent when we stay during a name Disney World Resort hotels.

Save adult to 20 percent – Select Value Resort Hotels
Save adult to 25 percent – Select Moderate Resort Hotels and Cabins
Save adult to 30 percent – Select Deluxe and Villa Resort Hotels

Book this special understanding by Jul 31, 13 for stays many nights Aug. 15 to Sept. 28.

Also, this fall, Disney Cruise Line will contend farewell to a homeport in Galveston, Texas. Your can still get onboard and take advantage of a good lead rate, and accept an onboard credit and half-off deposit.

Book a Disney Wonder sailing and accept a $100 onboard credit with an inside stateroom, a $150 onboard credit for oceanview stateroom, or a $200 onboard credit for a Verandah stateroom—and accept half-off your deposit.

Valid on many 7-night sailings from Sept. 28 to Nov. 16, 2013 Book by Jun 30, 2013.

A 7-night Bahamian or Western Caribbean journey starts during $699 for an inside stateroom, $749 for oceanview stateroom and $899 for verandah stateroom (per person, formed on double occupancy).

• Suzannah Mitchell DiMarzio and Beci Mahnken work for MEI-Travel and Mouse Fan Travel, an Authorized Disney Vacation Planner featuring a group of some-more than 75 associate end experts located opposite a U.S.A. They’ve been providing enchanting vacation practice for over 12 years, specializing in vacation packages and cruises to all vital vacation designations.
For Disney destinations, visit: MouseFanTravel.com or follow them on chatter @MouseFanTravel. For Universal Studios revisit UniversalFanTravel.com and for vacation packages and cruises around a creation revisit MEI-Travel.com or follow them on chatter @MEITravel.

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Plenty of others can and will go to Disney World and lapse disappointed. But nothing of this means that anybody seeking to know and conclude American enlightenment as a whole—its aspirations, a excellences, and a defects—can omit Disney World. As a existence approaches a half-century mark—the 42nd anniversary of a opening is in October—Disney World has turn a critical square of American enlightenment that’s good value saying for a possess sake. Disney World, utterly simply, isn’t only a place to visit, but, for improved and for worse, it is a biggest relic that American enlightenment has built to itself.  

Almost each good civilization, by pattern or accident, builds such a relic during some point. The Egyptians, spooky with a torture and pharaonic power, left us a huge (though now mostly ruined) church formidable during Karnak. Rome’s comprehensive majestic state, with a dressings of a republic, left us a Forum. Medieval Europeans built mountainous cathedrals and surrounding complexes (which infrequently grew to turn cities, in places like Chartres and York) that reflected good technical skill. All of them concerned radical alterations of a sourroundings to emanate fake worlds removed, roughly as if by magic, from daily experience. 

The church during Karnak had room on room built on mill and good mountainous pillars during a time when many people lived in sand huts. It embodied a comprehensive energy of a pharaoh and a bend for a gods. The Gothic cathedrals, a largest buildings assembled in a West given a tumble of Rome in a fifth century, were distant some-more than elementary palaces to a divine: They were whole environments surrounded by towns and gardens that offering shun and remit from a disciplined and misery of Gothic daily life while concurrently portion as a pointer of a wealth, power, and amicable prevalence of a church. 

The list could go on—the Palace of Versailles embodies a l’état, c’est moi opinion distant improved than any created request ever could—and that’s a vast partial of a reason why, hundreds or even thousands of years after these places were built, they are still places that people revisit and investigate in huge numbers. 

And Disney World is such a place. 

A brief road into a complex’s story creates it transparent that it was always dictated to be a full-scale place, not only a playground. That said, Walter Elias Disney, a terrifically gifted animator and organizer with graphic manic-depressive tendencies, can’t unequivocally take some-more than a smidgen of credit for a specifics of today’s Disney World. The land on that a review sits was purchased during Disney’s insistence to comprehend his prophesy for something called a Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a loyal “city of a future” where people would live and work regulating technologies decades from widespread open use. This vision, whatever a worth, valid distant too dear for anybody to execute. Indeed, a biggest sign of it currently is a large indication of a antecedent village built during Disney’s insistence in a Tomorrowland territory of Magic Kingdom Park, that is clinging mostly to past visions of a future, along a lines of Jules Verne. 

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — It usually takes a splendid suspicion to spin one nation’s rabble into another’s treasure.

A organisation of Memorial Park Middle School students designed bottle lights – plastic, two-liter bottles filled with H2O – that were commissioned in a home in Nicaragua to yield an inexpensive, swap light source.

The plan warranted a organisation and a coach, late clergyman Larry Lesh, expenses-paid trips to Walt Disney World to contest for money prizes and a $25,000 extend to enhance their project.

The Bright Idea organisation of eighth-grade students Emily Zion, Lily Weaver, Tessa Hudelson and Jack Bixby worked for months building a project, contrast it and essay 10- to 25-page entries for dual competitions. The organisation will leave Jun 9 to contest in a Christopher Columbus Awards, a inhabitant module that hurdles center propagandize students to try opportunities for change in a community.

Instead of operative in their possess community, organisation members opted to pursue a plan that helped in communities of building nations, privately Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Honduras and Jamaica. The H2O inside a bottles, commissioned in a roof, refracts sunlight, providing light homogeneous to a 60-watt illuminated light bulb. The bottle lights are some-more effective than holes in roofs since they don’t concede insects or H2O into a home.

“We suspicion (the bottle light idea) was cold and had a lot some-more definition than other projects,” Weaver told The Journal Gazette (http://bit.ly/11ebePy ).

Each organisation member took on a different, though equally critical purpose in a plan from brainstorming ideas to contacting village members who could assistance and building directions for installation. The organisation has connected with Associated Churches and Anthony Wayne Services to assistance enhance a plan if selected as a leader of a $25,000 grant.

Team members pronounced that a splendid mark in a work was conference from a Nicaraguan family of dual grandparents and 8 grandchildren who benefited from their bottle lights. Weaver pronounced being a partial of a organisation looks good on a college application, though her favorite partial of operative on a plan was saying a feedback from a family.

The knowledge authorised a students to not usually learn some-more about scholarship though themselves.

“I schooled we could do a lot some-more than we suspicion we could,” pronounced Zion, describing a plan as her initial knowledge with energy collection and light meters.

Hudelson pronounced a plan taught her some-more about science, a theme she hasn’t always excelled in.

Bixby pronounced his comparison sister had upheld on a event to be a partial of a team, so when he was nominated he took a possibility to apply. To acquire a mark on a team, teachers during a propagandize commission students, and meddlesome students request for 4 spots. Lesh, a late clergyman who has led a organisation for 16 years, interviews students and palm picks a team.

“It’s only a lot of fun for me to work with intelligent immature people,” Lesh said.

The module also allows Lesh to watch a organisation grow.

“They schooled to work together even when their personalities are different,” he said.

___

Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net

This is an AP Member Exchange common by The Journal Gazette

Tom Bell | Posted: Jun 1, 2013 | Updated: Jun 1, 2013 – 11:35:59 AM

The DisneyParks Blog has announced an boost to prices during both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, effective Jun 2, 2013.

An adult 1-Day sheet to a Magic Kingdom will be $95 (plus tax), while a 1-Day sheet to any of a other 3 Florida thesis parks will be $90 (plus tax).

An adult 1-Day sheet to Disneyland will be $92.

The biggest boost comes in a Premier Passport, that is current for all Florida and California parks. The Premier Passport will be $979 (plus germane tax), adult from $849.

More sum to come.

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While some competence indicate to Disney’s branding as “child-friendly” to explain a miss of representations of odd sexuality, a 2009 study by University of Michigan sociologists Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak found that distant from being asexual, Disney films are steeped in sexuality — heterosexuality. According to Martin and Kazyak, a tract of Disney films overwhelmingly revolve around heterosexual romance. Heterosexual adore — including, of course, a rarely esteemed heterosexual kiss — is presented as “exceptional, powerful, enchanting and transformative.”

When Beauty and a Beast kiss, a whole dominion transforms from winter to spring, with sleet melting, flowers lush and teacups, clocks and candlesticks magically returning to their proper tellurian states. In The Little Mermaid, a supposed “kiss of loyal (heterosexual) love,” as deemed by Ursula, is so absolute that it is a usually proceed Ariel can sojourn human. When Nala and Simba kiss in The Lion King, the act is so pivotal that it empowers Simba to change his mind and confirm to quarrel to save his kingdom. In any of these moments, Disney teaches us that heterosexual love, quite as voiced through the prized heterosexual kiss, is fantastical, transformational and sublime: It can revive a chairman from death, awaken someone from a low sleep, bring together cultures and create verbatim fireworks.

Unfortunately, Disney cartoons learn us that a conflicting is loyal when it comes to a odd kiss. Far from violation spells and sparking fireworks, signs of odd sexuality beget usually gibe and disgust. When Timon and Pumbaa accidentally hold lips in The Lion King, both immediately seem stunned, frightened and even queasy. The opening stage of Princess and a Frog similarly remarks on a diverting inlet of odd sexuality. When Tiana exits a travel car, she leaves a would-be swain to make an allege on a masculine who’s taken her place (see a 1:00 mark), causing a masculine to scowl with low condemnation and a swain to ashamedly cringe away.

Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, which notoriously includes an reference to a happy slur directed during aneffeminate villain, and Toy Story, that mocks delicate men, are likewise guilty of insulting odd sexualities. Toy Story 3 presents a Ken Doll impression as the ultimate happy stereotype — a fashion-obsessed “metrosexual” who loves disco, campy wardrobe and wearing Barbie’s clothes. His delicate appearance, demeanor, and mannerisms are steadfastly mocked by a other toys, thereby sending a message that organisation who violate gender norms are estimable of ridicule.

While Toy Story 3 includes jokes about Ken hidden Barbie’s headband and even wearing her high heels, Disney’s Aladdin, Robin Hood, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Lilo and Stitch all embody attempts for laughs during a shortcoming of organisation attempting to pass as women. In protesting the transphobic, cross-dressing formed sitcom Work It — that ran on ABC, a network owned by Disney — GLAAD released a matter indicating out how such jokes “invite a assembly to giggle during … organisation perplexing to adopt a delicate appearance,” thereby “giving permit to identical diagnosis of transgender women.”

At a same time that Disney films equivocate presenting plainly odd sexuality, quite as anything some-more than a punchline, a association doesn’t bashful divided from attempts to distinction from odd consumers. Since 1991, Disney has played horde to a exclusively orderly “Gay Days,” a supposed “world’s many renouned happy and lesbian celebration” that brings some 150,000 odd families to a Magic Kingdom any year. But if income is what Disney is after, a increase of Archie Comics’ incursion into odd representations should have a execs saying dollar signs. When Kevin Keller’s impression debuted in 2010, a emanate was so in direct that it led to Archie Comics’first-ever second printing. Even amid protests by a regressive organisation One Million Moms, a company’s 2011 emanate featuring Kevin’s wedding also sole out, attractive prices adult to $60 on Amazon. It would be startling if a arriving emanate featuring Kevin and Devon’s many talked about lick doesn’t follow suit.

According to Archie Comics, a association motionless to embody Kevin’s impression as an try to keep adult with a times. The CEO of Archie Comics, Jon Goldwater, has pronounced that presenting odd characters and their plights helps a comic array stay current with “what’s function outward a windows and in a homes.” Indeed, odd prominence is consistently apropos a partial of mainstream culture, such that President Obama recently — and ever so subtly — recognized same-sex couples in his derivation debate during Morehouse College. Yet even when a U.S. presidentopenly supports happy marriage, 6 in 10 Americans say they have a happy friend, and the majority of Americans themselves approve of same-sex marriage, plainly happy characters sojourn absent from a “wonderful universe of Disney.” In signs of a transparent direct for odd representations, many Disney fans have taken it on themselves to odd their favorite Disney characters, formulating portrayals of Disney same-sex kisses, reimaginings of Disney heroes as happy masculine models and even queerings of a many heterosexual of Disney tales.

“There have been characters on [the] Disney Channel who we consider people have suspicion were gay,”said Gary Marsh, president and arch artistic officer of a Disney Channel. But that’s all Disney feels it owes viewers: ”[It’s] for a assembly to interpret,” pronounced Marsh, jolt off any purpose or shortcoming in providing happy visibility.

This kind of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” truth of sexuality is a drastically opposite proceed from that of Archie Comics, that recognizes and respects a stress — monetarily or differently — of presenting plainly happy characters. “If Archie continued on in a burble of nostalgia, [the array would] run a risk of apropos an anachronism,” said Goldwater.

Amid a country’s flourishing acceptance of odd sexualities, this is a risk that a Walt Disney Company appears entirely prepared to take.

Florence Welch a frontwoman of Florence and a Machine has been sloping for a vital purpose in J.J Abrams’s Star Wars: Episode VII.

According to The Sun, a prolongation insider said “We consider Florence has a accurate character we are looking for.

She has finished some behaving though it was her singing on theatre that primarily held a eye.
Almost each singer in Hollywood wants a purpose in a new cinema though we are penetrating to expel people who are unexpected.

Florence is being deliberate for a vital partial that would spin her into an A-list singer overnight.”

Disney’s Star Wars: Episode VII will film in a UK and flog start a code new trilogy in a intergalactic saga. It is slated to arrive in cinemas in 2015 and Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are approaching to lapse to their particular roles.