Happily Never After
“And they lived happily ever after. The End”. In anticipation of my father arriving home from work and reading me a story, I’d anxiously wait as if every evening was Christmas. Sadly, this tradition began to fade away as the pains of maturing overtook the satiety fairytales gave me. It came hand-in-hand with actuality: poles apart from the fiction I spent my childhood dreaming about.
J.K Rowling’s quote, “Cinderella? Snow White? What is that? An illness?” made me realise how some fairy tales set unreasonable standards for “beauty”. Comical, isn’t it, that besides the fact that both characters could communicate with animals, they share a common enemy: the wicked step-mother. Not so long ago, in a world with cyber-trolls and one life-changing Apple, I realised that fairy tales distort a young mind’s perception of gender roles in society.
“Girls with worse body esteem engage more with the Disney Princesses over time, perhaps seeking out role models of what they consider to be beautiful.” Professor Sarah Coyne from Brigham Young University’s conclusions lead me back to my memory as a little girl, holding up a mirror, unable to see skin as white as snow. Think about it! How unfortunate is it that when we close our eyes, the word princess immediately translates to just fancy clothes and a perfect figure? Similar tropes can be viewed in the Ugly Duckling, who’s beauty defines how he is accepted by others.
First-time stepmother Leslie Jamison’s In the Shadow of a Fairytale was an eye-opener to the dark side of the stigma surrounding this familial role. “It’s as if the step-mother relationship inevitably corrupts — it is not just an evil woman in the role, but a role that can turn any woman evil”. Amongst Snow White, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, fairy tales have always portrayed these women to be toxic, abusive and jealous. These notions have been indoctrinated in children over decades! It saddens me to see no effort to reconstruct this cliche. I’m disappointed. From the Brothers Grimm to the internet era, our approach towards conceptualised characterisation has failed to cope with time.
The concepts of beauty that we are introduced to early in our lives lead to some unrealistic standards of how one should act and be. One’s inability to satisfy these expectations results in friction; in turn, poor self esteem for many. With the increasing prevalence of social media 87% of the participants who took part in a survey by Broadband Search reported that they’d witness cyber-bullying, which includes name calling, body shaming, and such heinous actions against several social media users.
While these stories do impart valuable morals through a multitude of plots and characters, readers must highlight the negative archetypes surrounding appeal and step-mothers. Although I wholeheartedly recognise the efforts of contemporary media channels to promote a new definition of grace through Frozen (2013) or Brave (2012), the efficacy of the media’s ability to disfigure only a millennium of conformities is debatable.
To further elaborate on the aforementioned point, Disney’s Frozen was a phenomenon that took the world by a storm. Making over 1.2 billion USD in all it’s years, this movie has set forth new morals and standards for all its young viewers. “In the movie Frozen the monster that we see is Elsa, she was a young princess but had strong magic of creating snow and ice, she tried to save her sister but hurt her in the process” (Berhanu, Medium.com). This has brought about a new perspective on what and who we define as a “princess”. Still, I believe that the appearances of the characters stick to the slim body type and do not contribute much to the deconstructing of an ideal appearance.
With all these factors respectfully taken into consideration, I would also like to mention the efforts of contemporary authors who have created feminist retellings of these age old fantasies. Sleeping Handsome and the Princess Engineer by Kay Woodward and Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Sonlit are just two of the thousands of wonderful, equalist and ethical examples of what the fairytales we read should look like. With this being said, I wish for you to open your eyes and dream on with the awareness of a distinction in reality and fantasy. I wish for us all to live happily ethical, happily sensitized and happily informed thereafter. The End.