So now we’re going to talk about when it’s important to tell people it’s not okay to invade your personal space. I mentioned in the last post that Aladdin may have this need not to be disliked (specifically by girls, it seems) that makes him hesitate to push others away right away. He’s used to being homeless, so when people are nice to him it’s important to not ruin the first impression.
However, he also keeps sending obvious signals, short of outright saying so, that he doesn’t want this person to touch him.
The more he pulls away (and he does, several times) the more forcibly she pulls him back.
On one hand, if he tells her to stop, he knows it will be perceived as rude – because this is rare instance where, because she is perceived as a “royal” – regardless of his gender, he is not in the position of privilege here. On the other, there are people watching him (including his friends who are given to being jackasses that laugh at any deviation from standard masculinity) who will want to know why he doesn’t want to be touched and fawned over by the hot woman.
I also understand that even if they wanted to try to send a message about not touching people without their consent and to listen to nonverbal cues that mean “no,” they might not have been able to get any episode into production that involved the same thing happening so blatantly to Jasmine. “The Spice is Right” comes really fucking close, but we’re also seeing this, here, coming from somebody that Aladdin doesn’t know is the bad guy. (They also made Ayam Aghoul more cartoony so that his advances would be less threatening and harder to tie to real people. Saleen is not like that. This is a conventionally attractive, seemingly normal woman and her attentions are perceived as totally normal if a bit boy-crazy. This and the last episode display facets of rape culture.)
I really don’t know how to feel about this, and I would love readers’ thoughts on this, because I don’t think this was intentional by the writers, but think about the messages these kinds of things send to kids who watch the show.
I am also really bothered by the fact that even though Aladdin is sending all these obvious cues that he’s not comfortable, and even though his friends are closely watching, Iago thinks that he’s a “lady killer."
The DVD Fairy 