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This article aims to explore gender roles in Disney’s full-length animated movies and the perception of these roles by a young audience. The analysis focuses first on the characteristics, the origins, and the evolution of gender representations in Disney movies over the last 75 years. It then examines the reception of these movies from three successive angles. First, we examine the relationship between age, gender, and cinematographic preferences, assuming the existence of gendered preferences and expectations. Then, we focus on children’s ability to step back from fiction and their mastery of the conventional narrative rules. Finally, we analyze the links between gender, criticism, and spectator expectations, in other words, the observable relationship between gender identity and the children’s everyday experience on the one hand and the ethical criticisms they address to the movies in question on the other.