I never really did buy into the whole damsel-in-distress-but-don’t-worry- your-prince-charming-will-come-and-save-you b.s. that goes along with a lot of fairy tales. The idea that all your problems in life will disappear when some handsome fella comes along and sweeps you off your feet really isn’t something young girls should be told to expect out of life and relationships. Certainly don’t think that perhaps if you just “behaved” in the way he wants you to then he’ll turn into that “Prince Charming” your favorite girlhood fairy tale promised you he would be. All of this fairy tale “one day my prince will come and make everything all better” nonsense that we’ve seen in recent movies seems to be a desperate attempt to go back to the old days when most girls actually believed in this and “waited” so to speak for this nonexistent guy to come along. Or do every little thing possible by way of their own behavior to make the man in their life to become more of a “Prince Charming.” Hence, this article from Bitch Magazine’s (S)HITLIST showing a very disturbing study concerning women and girls who obsessed over fairy tales.
Are people really surprised by the British study finding that girls enamored of fairy tales are more likely to be submissive adults…and, by extension, more likely to experience violence in romantic relationships? The study, by University of Derby masters student Susan Darker-Smith, is titled “The Tales We Tell Our Children: Overconditioning of Girls to Expect Partners to Change,” and poses an interesting causal relationship between a media diet solely consisting of literature and a greater chance of submissiveness in girls…[..]
More from the news story…
“They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partner’s behaviour,” Darker-Smith said. “Girls who have listened to such stories as children tend to become more submissive in their future relationships.”
The research, conducted in Leicester in the east of England, is to be presented to the International Congress of Cognitive Therapy in Gothenburg, Sweden, next month….[…]
Darker-Smith said she believed younger generations exposed to television and other entertainment media may react differently and be less submissive than those weaned solely on literature.
Sure, fairy tales can be fun and a temporary ‘high’ in order to escape the realities of life and relationships. But really, should we be subliminally teaching young girls that this is what to expect out of future relationships and to be submissive in a futile attempt to make ‘him’ a “Prince Charming?” I’m not advocating banning fairy tales as they can be a temporary “escape,” but just teach girls the reality of what relationships will be like. As in they’ll be tough and hard work as most relationships are if you want to keep them together. However that shouldn’t require them to be submissive which could be self-destructive and dangerous, should they find themselves in abusive relationships later on in life. And the ‘waiting’ thing is just ridiculous to do, because he might not come at all.
As I said earlier, the world needs more Xena and Strangers In Paradise. In some senses, it’s a shame that Harry Potter is a boy, but at least Hermione stands up for herself.
Outside of that, I know quite a few men with the “white knight” complex. You know, men who look for damsels in distress to save.
Any thoughts on that?
When my daughter was young(er) I did ban certain fairy tales. For all the reasons you mentioned. When she was about 10 she sneeked a copy of Cinderella (one of the worst offenders in my book) into the house which I noticed because of the label she had put on it titled “stupid girl!” I did something right =)
OK, banning doesn’t work, it just makes them want it more. I know that (it’s why I let her have Barbie dolls. ::shudder::) But I had to do something!
Hey, let them have Barbie dolls. I figured out how to make barbie fly by tying her to giant trash bags. They’ll learn about aerodynamics!
I recommend “Modern Fairy Tales” or even better, the orginal Brothers Grime and myths. Less gendered works (but Grime is a little…disgusting).
I think that modern fairy tales/children’s lit. is changing. Far more than television is, in my opinion. I agree that the old school prince charming fairy tales are harmful, but I also think that tv is worse… for babies, for toddlers, for children, for pre-teens, for teens, for adults…you get the picture. I think even watching sitcoms (e.g. Friends) or popular movies (pick any one) give impressionable youth (and adults) a distorted version of what is love.
(This is the short version. The long version vanished into the mists of ERROR a few minutes ago.)
1. This report defines its terms very poorly. “Darker-Smith said she believed younger generations exposed to television and other entertainment media may react differently and be less submissive than those weaned solely on literature.” Literature? What counts as literature?
2. There a lot of different versions of fairy tales. Personally, I like the older, bloodier versions of the traditional German tales, and some tales that few people these days have herad of. Most of the currently popular versions are fairly passive, “sit-back-and-wait” kind of stories, but others are certainly available. Modern retellings, like Terri Windling’s anthologies, are also interesting.
3. I very much doubt that the stories themselves have anything significant to do with adult personality. What I would expect to be going on is that families who encourage passive behavior in other ways — discussing the girl’s future relationships in romantic ways, encouraging traditionally feminine behavior, generally supporting the passive waiting role — are more likely to tell passive stories, like “Cinderella”. Families who encourage their daughters to be more active will do different things — discussing the girl’s future in terms of career or travel, hiking on the weekends, going out for soccer — and are more likely to tell active stories, like “Jack and the Beanstalk”.
All the more reason to love Revolutionary Girl Utena. It’s very much a commentary on how the assumed roles and beliefs of fairy tales affect both boys and girls.
(my favorite anime series which takes a typical fairy tale setup and turns it upside-down and backwards, turning it into this psychosexual surrealistic female hero’s journey, and also probably the most radical/feminist cartoon or tv show I’ve ever seen. Love. It.)
I once read where someone compared fairy tales and romance novels to porn. The theory being that just as porn gives unrealistic–and destructive–images of women and men’s relationship with them, f.t. and romance novels have the same effect on women–creating unrealistic and destructive images of men and women’s relationships with them.
My favorite fairytale is “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” It’s a sort of retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. I love it because this princess, after she loses her husband, walks the wide world over, carrying their baby, searching for her husband. She is the hero, she does the work, and she rescues her love. If anyone is interested, I can post a listing of some unpassive princess books; I have some at home. (I’m not there now.)
And yes, Utena ROCKS!!!!
Utena? What is utena? And I would love to have some online links to good strong girl fairy tales (money is tight…anyone who wants to send me books can feel free to do so ;-) ): I do have Tatterhood–my daughtre enjoys, and whoever stated the older version were darker…so true. I love the original texts.
Tiger Spot got it in one. The authors of the original piece apparently think “fairy tales” is limited to those out of which Disney has made a movie. Does anybody really think that girls who read about Baba Yaga are doomed to be passive?
Here here!
Waiting for a man to come along and make life all better is ridiculous. Submissiveness is only good for bedroom games. I don’t need to be a grown woman’s father. I want a woman who can stand on her own … somebody who can be a partner — somebody to help face all the crap that this life is going to throw at us. I’ll do my best to be stalwart and dependable, and I expect the same in return. Mousy little “protect me 24/7 and tell me what to belive” type women need not apply.
For the person who inquired about Utena – it’s a Japanese anime. You could write a lot about feminism in Utena, actually, but this is actually a good introduction, non-spoiling, with photos.
Amazon sells it.
/thread hitchhike.
I posted a comment in the Bitch Magazine post about this topic but I guess I can re-post it here.
I found the linked to article through Ms. Musings originally and was surprised by its amazing lack of details. A Google search resulted in not much more. Out of over a hundred sites, the only concrete information I could find about the study was that the experimental group consisted of 67 abused women, 61 of whom said they had identified with the fairy tales as children. 67 is a very small sample set, which the researcher acknowledges. Without any specifics at my disposal, its hard to know how accurate of a random sampling even that group was. Also, the study was not longitudinal, so the feelings these women had as children towards the stories are only measurable in terms of their own memories.
Questionable science aside, I think the base claim that this study makes is not too surprising: that “submissive” women are more likely to be the victims of domestic violence. I’m sure those 61 women did really love fairy tales, but I don’t believe it’s a case of cause and effect. Fairy tales could have appealed to these girls because they reinforced psychological characteristics or beliefs that were already present (i.e.: romanticism, submissiveness). Chances are, with or without the fairy tales, these women would have ended up in some sort of unhealthy relationship.
I do think that repeated exposure to the messages in the Disney type of fairy tales is harmful to girls, but not to the level that this study is suggesting. I would wager that if hard data was made available, the number of women who liked fairy tales as children but were not victims of domestic violence would be higher than those who were.
Babette Cole has also written Prince Cinders, a Cinderella story about a nice young man who ends up marrying a rich princess while his obnoxious, macho brothers are turned into house fairies.
This article is terrible. It’s criticizing “fairy tales” — without specifying WHICH fairy tales — and then ends with “reading is bad.”
Re Cinderella: Several years ago the movie “Ever After” retold the story of Cinderella in a way that made Cinderella the author of her own fate. I loved it.
Re Barbie: I tried to ban Barbie until I realized that Barbie is an “imagination” toy, that is, it’s used in imaginative play much the same way legos are. I once found Barbie, naked, on an operating table with the Playmobil surgeons ready to pounce and I stopped worrying.
I am skeptical that merely reading fairytales would have this kind of impact, after all, it may be that women/girls who are already submissive selectively prefer this type of story. We do tend to read things that reinforce our existing view of the world. I knew a graduate student who did a serious study of adult romance novels and found that many women who read them were in unsatisfying if not necessarily abusive relationships, and plots often reflected the notion that the “cold and aloof” male who seemed bad often turned out to be the strong, good guy looking out for the female protagonist’s best interests, while the gregarious, and apparently caring guy turned out to be a jerk.
According to the information available about this study, I should be the poster female for “Fairy Tale Marital Syndrome.” Except that fairy tales have never represented safety or romance for me; they’ve always been about trickery, ambition, and self-preservation. Except that when I read other favorites from my youth, I’m much more struck by what bad influences they would be for my daughter. Except that when I watch movies, I’m even more often appalled at the meanings characters hold for me now, and at how badly I still want to believe in them. Except that my fantasies have rarely been about being rescued.
This study might be an interesting, useful beginning to inquiries about all kinds of media influences, but the press it’s gotten so far seems misdirected. The last thing bookish little girls need is to lose their books. I hypothesize that submissive little girls that love books and “traditional roles” need more books – books about women’s life through the ages, books about commoners, books about traditional arts, books about medicine, books about anything that could make them better able to get by “way back when.” On top of all that, they need books about today’s world, too, and they need plenty of present-day opportunities to practice all the things they’re learning about. The more I’ve learned about how precarious, and difficult, life used to be, the more I’ve been protective of my modern comforts and freedoms.
I further hypothesize that domineering little boys need to learn about society past and present, too, through fairy tales and common folks’ history, through hands-on learning, community involvement, and books (if they’ll read them).
And, I hypothesize that media attention on little girls’ reading habits is victim-blaming, big-time. Aren’t educated, idealistic women the very, very worst kind? If you’re demure, smart, and always rooting for good to triumph over evil, you set yourself up to marry a violent man? You know, even in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle doesn’t fall in love with the Beast while he’s a jerk. She falls after he cleans up his act. Abusers rarely start out acting (much) like jerks. They usually wait to soil themselves until after they secure their victims.
Barbara wrote: “the “cold and aloof”? male who seemed bad often turned out to be the strong, good guy looking out for the female protagonist’s best interests, while the gregarious, and apparently caring guy turned out to be a jerk.”
I think romance novels and anything following the formula “guy woos girl, guy upsets/hurts girl, girl takes guy back” are infinitely scarier than “girl and readers know nothing about guy but she decides to marry him because he can’t be much worse than abusive family and at least she’ll have food and clean clothes” stories.
Yep, I was just about to mention Princess Smarty-Pants but Bean beat me to the punch. As well she should, she got that one for Sydney for Epiphany, and it’s wonderful (though our copy is now decorated with crayon art).
East o’ the Sun, West o’ the Moon, like Cupid and Psyche, falls into the “animal husband” family of fairy tales, of which Beauty and the Beast is the most famous example. What’s interesting about them is that they address the underlying fear many young women must have had about men and sexual experience in the past–and seemed to be soothing those fears by showing the horrible animal-men as actually less fearful and more beautiful than she had supposed. So I would hate to lose fairytales entirely. They teach us a lot about ourselves and what we fear.
Author Robin McKinley has done marvelous things with fairy tales, even the dreadful “Donkeyskin”, (which sh rewrote as “Deerskin”)* turning them into much stronger and more interesting tales with very strong female protagonists. And there are many other writers who have done the same. I think that’s probably a better solution than just banning them. And there are so many strong-female stories you can read to your child nowadays, I think it’s possible to keep the older stories from having too much influence.
*her books are at YA and adult reading levels, for the most part, just fyi. She does address some darker themes. But her books The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown are a great place to start for readers who are old enough to handle, say The Hobbit.
I don’t think the issue is submissiveness at all. I think the issue, if there is one, is that fairy tales teach that romantic behavior in a man is coming on strong and “rescuing” and other things like that. Which, as we all know, is the MO of abusers.
I recommend “Modern Fairy Tales”? or even better, the orginal Brothers Grime and myths. Less gendered works (but Grime is a little…disgusting).
Oh, I disagree that Grimms’ fairy tales are “less gendered.” They may be more gory than Disney’s, but they aren’t exactly enlightened. The women in them are usually broken into two categories: the really really good ones and the really really bad ones.
The really really good ones make huge sacrifices and are always polite and respectful and happy and uncomplaining and perfect and beautiful and are often youngest daughters. The really really bad ones are lazy and greedy and selfish and ugly and complain a lot; some have homicidal tendencies. There are a few good ones that do bad things, like go dancing all night, but they’re usually under some kind of spell.
So it’s not like a little girl is going to read one of Grimms’ stories and feel empowered to take over the world. She’s more likely to learn that she only exists to help other people, and if she expresses desires of her own, well, she’ll miss out on the prince and get coated with tar or something. (Well, maybe not learn, per se; I loved the Brothers Grimm when I was growing up, and I turned out OK.)
As Tiger Spot says, some of the older versions of fairy tales–in fact, most of the older versions–have active heroines. For instance, Little Red Riding Hood in the old European folk tales was a very active heroine. But when Charles Perrault rewrote the story for the educated elites, he tamed Red down to what his social milieu would find acceptable.
This dumbing-down wasn’t so severe in non-European countries. I suggest looking into Indian, Chinese, Arabian and Native American myths for fairy tales with strong heroines, as well as older versions of European fairy tales.
PS. I freakin’ can’t stand Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” Belle’s complaining about her “provincial” town, and yet her favorite books are about women meeting princes in disguise? Spare me.
My parents (both of them, oddly enough) read lots of romance novels. On occasion, I’ve leafed through some of them. They’re really, really awful. They’ve all got one of four plots:
1. Two middle-class people who are obviously perfect for each other meet, but can’t spend time with each other because of wacky misadventures. This one’s not so bad, except for being incredibly boring.
2. Rich woman owns “good” corporation; rich man owns “evil” corporation. They merge. No, really.
3. Woman meets man who is extremely rich and who falls in love with her instantly. She has to come to terms with the idea of a man taking over her life and solving all her problems for her.
4. “Historical” romances: man meets woman; man rapes woman; woman hates man; woman loves man. Yes, they really describe it as rape. It’s pretty shocking. “Bodice rippers” are literally about rape.
I used to read bodice rippers as a kid; I think that they are really about porn for women, and the rape thing is to make it acceptable, in a twisted way, for the young heroine to have sex. I also recall that when the man raped the woman, frequently he didn’t know he was raping her- he would assume she was a prostitute come to service him or there would be another convoluted plot device exonerating him somehow. I have read that these type of books have changed quite a bit with changed attitudes about women and sex and that the rape thing isn’t as prevalent anymore.
I blogged about this last week, too. Like Amanda, I don’t think it’s about submissiveness. I think it has more to do with unrealistic expectations. (No, I don’t mean the abuse part, I mean the fairy tale part.)
So, now I feel better about telling my daughter that the girl in Rumplstiltskin was a stupid, stupid woman for marrying the king after he imprisoned her and then made her do what she wanted.
emjaybee,
Yeah, that’s a good thing in “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and I like her stubbornness, and the fact that she rescues him.
In addition to Utena and Robin McKinley, many of the women in Charles de Lint’s stories (more for adults/ older teens) are cool. And the Terri Windling/ Ellen Datlow edited series that starts with “Snow White, Blood Red,” is good too, but also not for little kids.
hot damn! someone else remembers east of the sun, west of the moon!
as I recall as a child, my favorite books as a child were that, an absolutely wonderful version of Monkey’s Journey to the West, Toad is the Uncle of Heaven, and this one creepy fairy tale structure I recall vaguely but don’t recall the exact title (I think it was “The Bells of Ys,” which is not unlike what would happen if Sleeping Beauty suddenly woke up on her own to find her palace abandoned. I believe it ended with her bringing about the physical destruction of the City of Ys.)
I think the work has come up here before, Clive Barker’s Abarat series, is a great fantastic story with a strong female lead.
I await the day some good friend or sibling has children, thus allowing me the chance to play uncle and tell a good story, the kind children need to hear.
and I’m gonna make it up on the spot, because the best children’s stories are made up by smart people doing improv…
that might be an interesting project, were I less lazy. If I manage to motivate myself, I might start volunteering my services to collecting and posting children’s short stories by you lot. you all seem to have a lot on the ball, I’m sure we’d get some good ones.
I’m puzzled by one comment that seemed very odd.
It’s a rare child that is completely denied all access to entertainment other than literature. My sister and I were voracious readers, but we watched television too. It was only the children of extraordinarily strict parents who didn’t get to watch television. I’d expect that parents who barred their children from any entertainment but reading would in general be far, far more repressive and controlling than most parents — and that would be more significant than what stories their children actually read. I wonder if this reflects some bias in Darker-Smith’s study.
I genuinely believe that as long as a child can has the opportunity to know the difference, then there will nto be a problem. After all, if a child who had recently read Harry Potter jumped off the roof of his tenement building with a broom between his legs, is it really the fault of the author? Or whoever is in charge of his education for not teaching him/her tryth from fiction?
P.S. I adore classical fairy tales, especially the Gothic novels! I am a dark and brooding type, in case anyone missed it.
I think the issue, if there is one, is that fairy tales teach that romantic behavior in a man is coming on strong and “rescuing”? and other things like that.
Well, yes, the handful of fairy tales that Disney made into movies teach that. Although according to the second-hand account of this study, a little girl who was ‘exposed’ to the Disney movies would be sure to be less submissive than one who read the literary antecedents.
For newer fairy tales (well, maybe not so new anymore), try:
Jack Zipes, ed., Don’t Bet on the Prince
Patricia Wrede, Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons & Talking to Dragons)
Relatively cheap in paperback, cheaper if used, and if money is tight go to public libraries and ask for interlibrary loans.
I’m sure my daughter got tired of watching Disney movies with me (especially the older ones) because I would explicitly counter-program while the movie was still running.
as in “You see Belle? you’re smarter than she is, sweetie, so for god’s sake, if some creep ever tries to lock you in some castle, kick him in the groin and call the cops.”
Or was your counterprogram more sophisticated?
Life is crap, which gave birth to fairy tales of all kinds. I mean, good conquers evil, when? In stories mostly, occasionally real life, but evil wins most of the time. Corrupation prevails. That handsome prince might beat the crap out of you.
Life is hard. Fairytales can be an escape, or they can impart important survival lessons, like folk tales. Unfortunately at the moment, I’m having trouble figuring out what the lesson of Sleeping Beauty is. :p
Sleeping beauty is a messianic metaphor.
kinda like The Matrix.
Your life, be it good or bad, will, because of a certain evil (original sin or curse from evil witch or whatever) will eventually end.
but this end is not permenant, and someday, everything will be made right by the arrival of some bearded guy or some creep who humps you while you’re asleep as some sort of CPR.
BTW, Pseudo-Adrienne…
I like your new location very much…
Will you be getting your own cartoon head also, now that you’re an official person on the blog…
Good luck…
Thanks folks for the feedback. And thanks NYMOM. I don’t know if Amp will make me a cartoon or not. I could ask him though.
Hmmm. Found this site quite by accident and now has me thinking of my own childhood in the 60’s and 70’s. I was not allowed to have my own Barbie’s for fear that my perception of what a woman ‘should’ look like would be warped. So I went to my friend’s house and played with them. Sssh don’t tell my mother! Come to think of it, I can’t remember having books of Cinderella or Snow White.. however I do remember Where The Wild Things Are, Wind in the Willows, and of course all things classic as my mother has a masters in English Lit. Now I’m a parent of three daughters and a writer of… (eek!) a tale of three fairy sisters. I give my girls a little more credit for making up their own minds rather than forcing my own beliefs. My girls are empowered by making their own choices about what they like and dislike. Actually I consider myself somewhat submissive, not due to keeping my nose in books about the helpless heroine, but rather not being allowed to read them.
My mother was also the type that never exposed me to “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty”, or “Snow White”. It wasn’t until I was 15 years old that I say cinderella for the first time. Somehow I do believe that those type of movies are great escape from reality which movies are more than likely intended to be, but in ever movie there is an underlying significance and I do believe that “if I wait long enough, this man will rescue me and be everything that I could Ever Dream of “, is the underlying message of these types of movies. It teaches every little girl who view them that there is a ‘prince charming’ for her. The things that we learn as children do carry over into our adult hood and yes as women we do want to live ‘Happily Ever After’ whatever the hell that is, and if that indeed where not the case everyone would not be so hung up on finding a mate. It’s okay to want that but, we have to teach our little girls that it doesn’t work like that in reality.
I think some are missing the point of fairy tales. Fairy tales provide a developmentally appropriate medium for children to learn that their conflicts and anxieties can be solved and eased. Fairy tales provide normality for the child who is struggling with his or her own destructive impulses and desires.
Children do not interpret the external world in the same way adults do-they are cognitively and psychologically unable to-hence childhood. Children are aggressive, destructive and hateful whether or not you shield them from fairy stories. To take away the chance to learn that they and their parents whom they love and depend on will survive these impulses is irresponsible.
Through following the survival of the hero-child in a fairy tale, a child learns (albeit unconsciously) to integrate the “good” and “bad” parts of the self, learn that they will prevail from what is most perilous at the time and learn that perseverance, hard work and faith and hope will result in success. If one analyses fairy tales for their social/political implications based on the manifest content of the stories then one can not appreciate the psychological relevance fairy tales have for children.
Children do not enjoy fairy tales because they are an escape from reality-that is why adults enjoy them-children enjoy fairy tales because they make meaning for the confusion caused by their external world on their internal world.
This is a very brief summary of some of the views in “The Uses of Enchantment” by Bruno Bettelheim and I agree with him whole heartedly. Check it out-broaden your minds, stop taking everything so literally. Good luck.
Utena is great, not least because the women aren’t really feminine so much as designed to fit the series’ aesthetic, The Twelve Kingdoms also features a strong female heroine, but is stuck with a bunch of bollocks relating to it being about a Queen and not say a female president.
What would you recommend for college students, an adult level subversion/destruction of fairy tales and the archetypes contained therein?
I’ve seen a piece of fanfic that interprets Utena as FTM… which is kinda cool, though I’m not certain whether I agree, as there are many versions of female masculinity (see book by such title.)