Dec 02 2008
Why Cinderella Is The Worst Story Ever
I may get a lot of hate mail for this, but Cinderella IS the worst story ever written–especially because of its popularity. I say this as a father raising three girls. My goal as a father is to raise strong, intelligent women who feel good about themselves. The Cinderella story sends all the wrong messages.
- I want my girls to make things happen in their lives, not wait for someone or something else to fix it for them.
- I want my girls to get out of a bad situation, not sit in it and hope for the best.
- I want my girls to be DAMNED picky about who they marry and not fall for the first guy that comes along, prince or not.
It’s the popularity of the story that bothers me most. It isn’t cute. It isn’t sweet. It isn’t harmless. It dates back to a time when women were barely more than servants and had almost no chance of changing that.
I hope you’ll excuse this rant. It’s quite a deviation from my normal content here, but I just thought that it needed to be said.
Lesson Learned:
Be the driver of your own life, not a helpless passenger.
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Most of the movies about women bother me because they tend to be shown as needing someone else to rely on >.< Women are stronger than they realize and it makes me sad that they don’t know it D:
Thanks for sharing this post. I never really thought about it other than being a fairy tale so you make a good point.
@daggers4zidane: That’s absolutely my point, and even though I’ve spotlighted just one aspect of our culture that still teaches that, a lot of the worst stuff happens in the home as children grow up. Women who try to change their negative view of themselves as adults have to overcome a lifetime of bad habits like self-fulfilling self-doubt.
@jodapoet: It’s a fairy tale that’s become a large part of our cultural subconscious. It doesn’t teach you to act. It teaches you to wait and put up with things on the hope that they’ll somehow magically get better. They don’t. You just get used–or worse.
Interesting! Your daughters are lucky to have you thinking of these things.
@Rebecca: Telling ‘em isn’t the problem. Getting them to listen is the problem.
@msterri: They don’t always agree with that, but thanks for the sentiment and for stopping by to comment.
you’re right. I grew up on all those fairy tales, then Disney made them all into movies and glorified it even more, making them into heroes to little girls everywhere.
It’s a catch-22 to most of us because every girl wants to feel like a princess. And most dads treat their daughters like princesses. Yet, you do want them to be self-sufficient, intelligent, strong, decisive and able to rescue themselves, not wait on the man to rescue the damsel.
It has created problems for a lot of grown women who expect the fairy tale. I just want to say to these women: It’s just not going to happen so wake up for the pixie dust someone sprinkled on you and do it for yourself.
~Kelly
http://www.30somethingandsearching.today.com/
@Kelly: Every girl IS a princess. Consider it a birthright. But even a princess should know how to take care of herself. (You have just received my standard Dad Speech #27.
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