March 19 2014, Wednesday
Princess
Snow White and Cinderella
As a child, I was brought up
reading and listening to a lot of fairy tales. Some of these are still the
favourites of many children. Two such examples are “Snow White” and “Cinderella”.
There are movies, cartoons, picture books and online games telling their
stories and a range of products from dress-up dolls to household items bearing
their images. Even my grand-daughter, Hayley has a lot of “princess” stuff such as
blanket, rug, school-bag, lampshade, chopsticks, lunch box, water bottle etc.
Parents and of course, grand-parents are intentionally or unintentionally immersing
their children especially girls in this “princess mentality”!
But if we educated adults are
actually using our head, we will discover a lot of imbedded biases which as
parents, we would not want to instill in the young minds of our children.
As a woman, I detest all the
feminine stereotypes depicted in the stories. Physical beauty is associated
with virtues while ugliness with evil. Princess Snow White and Cinderella are
both beautiful and virtuous while the antagonists, the Queen or the step mother
and her daughters are all ugly and therefore, wicked! Also, both heroines await
the handsome princes to save them from their misery and then they live happily
hereafter! I bet no mothers upon reflection would want their daughters to
develop such wrong beliefs or prejudices.
The stories of "Snow White”
and “Cinderella” were folk tales known across Europe centuries ago. The Grimm
Brothers collected them in Grimms' Fairy Tales, first published in 1812. That
was a different time when women’s only career was their marriage and family! So
when read by 21st century children, these stories need to be re-interpreted
or read under parental guidance.
The one moral we want modern
girls to learn is that while it is great to be born beautiful and intelligent,
we can still build our future without these traits and that we should not judge
people by their looks!
