The Truth About Fairy Tales

Finalist in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

This is the truth: inside every female villain, lies the shell of a broken girl. This is the truth about how they took the shrapnel from their soul and reconstructed it as armour so no one else would see the still-bleeding wounds. This is the truth about forging twisted thrones and an identity, and about how little girls were never made of sugar and spice, but stardust and strength and millions of untold stories.
Did you know, of Medusa, and Maleficent, and the Wicked stepmother? Or of Ursula, and The Evil Queen?
Have you seen the radiance with which Medusa glowed, before it was destroyed in all but a moment by a man who did her wrong? Have you seen the resilience of Maleficent; how she arose from her ashes like a phoenix reborn? Or learnt from the Wicked Stepmother - Lady Tremaine - that no love is greater than a Mother’s?
Have you seen Ursula with new eyes as I have, alone in the darkest depths of the ocean, teaching herself to be a mermaid when her true essence was of the wild, untamable sirens? Or heard the Mirror on the Wall whisper poisonous thoughts to the Evil Queen till they plagued her daydreams and nightmares? Did you wonder why it was a man’s voice, as I have, that came from the Mirror and stoked her vanity and destroyed her self-esteem?
I have read between the lines and divined the truth. I have admired how, unlike men, these femme-fatales could not depend on brute strength, but their beauty and wisdom, and have brought the weak-minded and strong-willed alike to their knees. I have cheered them on when it seemed as though their beauty and brains might trump the brawns of a foolish Prince.
But I think the men who wrote those tales were frightened of women like that; women with power and prowess who knew what they wanted and pursued it like a predator pursues prey. So they have their careful plans thwarted, and these powerful women slaughtered by a silly Prince, to reassert that even in fairy tales, traits that demonstrate strength of character such as independence, ambition and cunning are the equivalent of sin when exhibited by women. And as these seeds of sexism are planted in the minds of children, they take root quickly and become the weeds that leach off on open mindsets. And then we sit back and condemn ourselves to this injustice, not arguing when someone tells us, ‘that is how women ought to be,’ and wonder why the world is so.

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