In Disney’s “Aladdin,” Princess Jasmine is thin around the waist with curving hips, a large bosom and huge seductive eyes. In “Beauty and the Beast,” Bell is shaped almost identically. It’s the same with Ariel in “The Little Mermaid,” Cinderella and Snow White. On Fanpop.com you can get a rating of the top 10 hottest Disney women.

This trend of posture perfection in Disney’s fairytale females was noted by Nancy Cheung, a 2002 UC Berkeley history graduate, as she spoke about how the media affects a woman’s self-image, during a presentation titled “Not Just a Face” last Friday in the Cesar Chavez Student Center. Cheung, the event’s only speaker, encouraged the 15 women in attendance to question the portrayals of women in the media, even media geared towards children.

“Disney movies were my favorite growing up,” said 26-year-old Cheung. “I would say, ‘I want to be like so and so in that movie’ and I didn’t realize I was taking in certain messages about what a woman should be like,” she told the audience.

In 2006 the National Women’s Health Information Center listed culture at the top of their list of anorexia nervosa causes, confirming, “Women in the U.S. are under constant pressure to fit a certain ideal of beauty.”

“Every little girl plays with a Barbie, “ said Whitnee Baker, an SF State freshman business major, who attended the presentation. “And that’s who she’s influenced by and that’s who she wants to be.”

But, according to Media-Awareness.ca, a media and Internet education resource, “Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions, found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body.”

Possible consequences of the bombardment of the Barbie stereotypes are a disconnection with a woman’s own body and a disconnection with other women, said Cheung.

“It starts really young,” said Eileen Ahn, president of the S.F. State chapter of Koinonia, the group that sponsored “Not Just A Face.” “But it’s never too late and it’s always good to remind yourself.”

This was the second year Koinonia, a Christian campus group, put on the event, which was originally developed by a friend of Cheung's. Koinonia would like to expand “Not Just A Face” and attract a larger audience, said Ahn.

“I’m just going to be more aware,” said Baker, 19, after the presentation. “If I’m watching TV with people, [I’ll] just point it out to them and bring it to their attention.”