The Cinderella fairytale is bad for little girls; do not read to your daughter the story of Cinderella unless you want to send your child the wrong message. If you have a daughter, do not let her watch any stories depicting the Cinderella fairytale.
For the life of me, why is this coward of a woman endeared so much? Cinderella is unable to assert herself and stand up for what she believes in, yet little girls are taught to want to be like her. They are dressed up like her for Halloween. Recently, my 3-year-old niece came home from a birthday party for another preschooler, wearing a fairytale-like long puffy dress that she had acquired at the party. Right away, my father told her she looked like Cinderella.
And that got me thinking. Let’s look at the facts of the Cinderella fairytale. Sure, all girls would love to meet Prince Charming without ever having to apply any effort in finding him. We’d all like him to come to our doorstep, and the only requirement for getting him to want to marry us would be to simply fit our foot into a slipper! Can’t get easier than that!
We wouldn’t have to meet his parents; wouldn’t have to prove ourselves in any way during courtship; wouldn’t matter if we looked like a dog or had warts on our face — as long as our foot fit into a shoe!
But the bigger problem is Cinderella’s total lack of self-esteem, total absence of self-confidence, total lack of backbone. She allows her two stepsisters and stepmother to push her around, to bully her. Cinderella gets down on her hands and knees and scrubs the floors because she doesn’t have the spine to stand up to these three nasty women.
We expect our daughters to resist the peer pressure to do bad things, and we wonder how a teenaged girl could get mixed up with an abusive boy, or how a woman can stay with an abusive husband, even though they were raised on Cinderella. The only reason Cinderella gets out of her abusive situation is because, by sheer dumb luck, the prince finds her glass slipper.
Cinderella is not a self-made woman. She allows herself to be trapped in her stepmother’s home. What kept Cinderella from simply standing up to these witches, giving them a piece of her mind, telling them off, smacking them around a bit, and then packing up her scant belongings and getting out of there?
So she had no place to go? Many abused teenagers have no place to go, yet thousands of them every year run away from corrupt homes, because they know they deserve better.
Cinderella’s story will not empower your daughter. How can young girls be empowered by learning about Cinderella, who’s fate in the first part of the story is because of her own cowardice and lack of backbone, and whose glory at the end of the story is due to pure luck?
What can this possibly teach young girls? That it’s okay to let mean people step all over you? That you’re not allowed to assert yourself and try to work your way out of an abusive situation? That if you have good looks, all you need do is just be patient and that silver platter will eventually be handed to you?
It’s time to revise the Cinderella story. How about she one day puts both fists on her waist and looks her stepsisters hard in the eye and says, “You want me to clean up your mess? Hah! Make me!” She then boldly steps towards them, eyes glaring, and hisses, “I said make me!” She pours the bucket of mop water over them, grabs her little suitcase or whatever, then proudly marches out of there, reciting, “I believe in myself! I won’t let anyone take advantage of me. I am strong. I am woman. I am invincible!”
