This Post Was Written By Someone With No Respect For Aristotle
I should be in bed, but I'm not. Consequently, this is a stupid rambly brain-dumping kind of post.
Important shit: Happy belated birthday to hatefulsandwich, and also to X-chan, who got some sparkly seahorse stickers that have to be hidden from duokinneas.
So I came to Disney Princess Recovery via arisha (thx Sarah 8D) and while I was reading it, I found myself agreeing with some of the writer's points (specifically, that the more elaborate backstory there is behind a toy, the more likely the kid needs to be entertained). My favorite toys, as a kid, were ones that encouraged imaginative play, or ones on which I could project a story; X-chan and I had elaborate genealogies for our dolls and ponies and everything we played with, and we knew who lived on what street and who was born what year and how much a slice of pizza at the imaginary pizzeria in our imaginary town cost in 1986 and so on, spawning a bunch of in-jokes that occasionally still pop up today. We were still telling these stories for years after the dolls and ponies had been consigned to the garage sale, or the attic.
Next to some of my friends, I've occasionally felt a little weird because Disney movies don't mean as much to me as they seem to mean to other people around my age. I watched them and liked them as a kid, but I was never OMG DISNEY the way a lot of girls are; we never owned an extensive collection of the films (lolmom was cheap and liked to tape things off cable), and it didn't really inform my play life as a child. (It is possible that this might have been different if Mulan had come out when I was a kid. Mulan kicks ASS.) Also, we never went to Disneyland; the lolmom has severe motion sickness (to the extent that she couldn't watch us on nice relaxing rides like the merry-go-round, because she would start to feel queasy), and my father and I hate theme parks. Basically, I don't OMGH8 the franchise now, but the obsession puzzles me a bit. If you dig it, do it; it's just not a cherished childhood memory for me the way it is for a lot of people.
I also never wanted to be a princess*.
Granted, I might have felt differently if I had come to some of these fairy tales through their original forms and not through the Disney version. For the most part, however, I was already in my teens when I read the original versions. I remember having a long conversation with the lolmom about women in fairy tales when I was about 13 or 14; my question was why men don't have strong roles in most fairy tales. Cinderella's father is dead in some versions and absent in others; the prime villains are her stepmother and stepsisters, and her ally is her fairy godmother. Snow White's archnemesis is her stepmother. In the story of the Snow Queen, Gerda and the Snow Queen are the main players; in the story of Vasilissa the Beautiful, Vasilissa and Baba Yaga are more interesting than the cloth merchant who ultimately marries Vasilissa. Even in my favorite fairy tale, Young Tam Lin, the story is really more about Janet and the Fairy Queen than it is about Tam Lin. And Young Tam Lin is my favorite because the roles are reversed: Janet blows off all the warnings not to hang out at Carterhaugh because OH NOES YOUR HYMEN, she tells one of her father's knights to get stuffed because she'll let whoever she damn well pleases father her child, and she rescues the hero. It's almost like the husband or the prince is an afterthought, a footnote to the heroine's glory, and it amazes me that some of the violent, visceral original tellings have been sanitized for kids. (Oh, shit, don't even get me started on Little Red Riding Hood. That one is LOADED with sexual imagery.)
And, too, I grew up on mythology more than fairy tales, and women in mythology act; they are not acted upon. Medea told Jason to get fucked when he was all, "Hey, I met someone else and try to be grateful for everything I did for you." (Who did what for whom, I wonder? Read the Argonautica.) Clytemnestra is my favorite female character in the entire Trojan War cycle: she usurps, she murders, she acts. Hugh Lloyd-Jones says, in his introduction to the Oresteia, that in the Agamemnon you can see the Greeks struggling with the idea that women should be subjugated--and Zeus knows Clytemnestra is a lot more manly than Aegisthus will ever be. (Fanficcer moment here: I don't think she ever loved him. I think she was just using him to pay Agamemnon out.) Penthesilea is famous primarily for getting her ass kicked by Achilles, but she got out there and gave it her all before she died. Penelope isn't as forceful an actor as Clytemnestra, but she uses her brain to hold off the suitors. But you know, I can't see a single one of them sitting on her ass and waiting for the prince to kiss her. Penelope comes the closest to having a conventional happily-ever-after, but being married to Odysseus couldn't always have been sunshine and roses, and I suspect they had to work at that marriage. I've always tried to give that sense when I've ficced about them, anyway.
(Come to think of it, a lot of women in the Odyssey are in positions of power, in ways that they aren't in the Iliad: we meet Helen early in the book, when Telemachus and Peisistratos stay at the house of Menelaus. Calypso and Circe are so obvious as to require no mention. It's the sea-goddess Leukothea who rescues Odysseus when Poseidon has shattered his ship--again--and when he washes ashore in Scheria, he asks Nausicaa's protection first, and she tells him to apply to her mother, Arete. BUT I DIGRESS~)
But like most kids, I grew up with the watered-down versions, in which the princess wears pretty dresses, sings a few songs, and is ultimately rescued by a man. I was always vindicated when I read fantasy novels in which the heroine did manly things, and I always felt betrayed when she got married at the end. (Also, not to get into personal layers of wangst here, and this is something I probably wasn't able to articulate at 12 or 13, but I was usually reading these heroines as queer** because of my own queerness. The effect, for me, was kind of like, "Hey, she's like me! Finally, a female protagonist I can identify with!...wait, what, WHAT IS THIS I DO NOT EVEN AAAAAAAAH THIS BOOK SUCKS DDDD:".)
I always wanted to do the rescuing. I always wanted to do the acting. I always wanted to make the decisions. (Nobody tells you when you're a kid that this sort of thing will get progressively more complex and WTFy as you age.) When I grew up, I wanted to be Achilles and Odysseus, not Helen (who was beautiful, and may or may not have been of dubious morality). And I think this tendency towards activity rather than passivity has informed a lot of my attitude towards relationships--I'd rather be alone than with someone who is less than what I deserve, and my life has always been about things other than that kind of love. I like women, and I like men who are quieter and gentler and more low-key and less about spastic arm-flailing than I am (...you know, kind of like women).
I was, at this point, going to talk some more about romance novels and how the male/female roles in there shit me too, but I think that belongs to another post which I largely have written. Or sketched out on the back of an envelope. Anyway, I have now reached the point where my train of thought has been derailed and there is no logical conclusion, also it is 4 a.m. and I REALLY need to pack my goddamn suitcase and go to goddamn bed.
*Well, I'd totally be Princess Leia. But she's not exactly Disney standard, is she. And I can't rock that gold bikini, at least not with my current body.
**I was not reading Elizabeth I as queer when I discovered her at the age of 9, but I was reading her as TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME, a reading which has amply repaid multiple forays into Tudor England.
Important shit: Happy belated birthday to hatefulsandwich, and also to X-chan, who got some sparkly seahorse stickers that have to be hidden from duokinneas.
So I came to Disney Princess Recovery via arisha (thx Sarah 8D) and while I was reading it, I found myself agreeing with some of the writer's points (specifically, that the more elaborate backstory there is behind a toy, the more likely the kid needs to be entertained). My favorite toys, as a kid, were ones that encouraged imaginative play, or ones on which I could project a story; X-chan and I had elaborate genealogies for our dolls and ponies and everything we played with, and we knew who lived on what street and who was born what year and how much a slice of pizza at the imaginary pizzeria in our imaginary town cost in 1986 and so on, spawning a bunch of in-jokes that occasionally still pop up today. We were still telling these stories for years after the dolls and ponies had been consigned to the garage sale, or the attic.
Next to some of my friends, I've occasionally felt a little weird because Disney movies don't mean as much to me as they seem to mean to other people around my age. I watched them and liked them as a kid, but I was never OMG DISNEY the way a lot of girls are; we never owned an extensive collection of the films (lolmom was cheap and liked to tape things off cable), and it didn't really inform my play life as a child. (It is possible that this might have been different if Mulan had come out when I was a kid. Mulan kicks ASS.) Also, we never went to Disneyland; the lolmom has severe motion sickness (to the extent that she couldn't watch us on nice relaxing rides like the merry-go-round, because she would start to feel queasy), and my father and I hate theme parks. Basically, I don't OMGH8 the franchise now, but the obsession puzzles me a bit. If you dig it, do it; it's just not a cherished childhood memory for me the way it is for a lot of people.
I also never wanted to be a princess*.
Granted, I might have felt differently if I had come to some of these fairy tales through their original forms and not through the Disney version. For the most part, however, I was already in my teens when I read the original versions. I remember having a long conversation with the lolmom about women in fairy tales when I was about 13 or 14; my question was why men don't have strong roles in most fairy tales. Cinderella's father is dead in some versions and absent in others; the prime villains are her stepmother and stepsisters, and her ally is her fairy godmother. Snow White's archnemesis is her stepmother. In the story of the Snow Queen, Gerda and the Snow Queen are the main players; in the story of Vasilissa the Beautiful, Vasilissa and Baba Yaga are more interesting than the cloth merchant who ultimately marries Vasilissa. Even in my favorite fairy tale, Young Tam Lin, the story is really more about Janet and the Fairy Queen than it is about Tam Lin. And Young Tam Lin is my favorite because the roles are reversed: Janet blows off all the warnings not to hang out at Carterhaugh because OH NOES YOUR HYMEN, she tells one of her father's knights to get stuffed because she'll let whoever she damn well pleases father her child, and she rescues the hero. It's almost like the husband or the prince is an afterthought, a footnote to the heroine's glory, and it amazes me that some of the violent, visceral original tellings have been sanitized for kids. (Oh, shit, don't even get me started on Little Red Riding Hood. That one is LOADED with sexual imagery.)
And, too, I grew up on mythology more than fairy tales, and women in mythology act; they are not acted upon. Medea told Jason to get fucked when he was all, "Hey, I met someone else and try to be grateful for everything I did for you." (Who did what for whom, I wonder? Read the Argonautica.) Clytemnestra is my favorite female character in the entire Trojan War cycle: she usurps, she murders, she acts. Hugh Lloyd-Jones says, in his introduction to the Oresteia, that in the Agamemnon you can see the Greeks struggling with the idea that women should be subjugated--and Zeus knows Clytemnestra is a lot more manly than Aegisthus will ever be. (Fanficcer moment here: I don't think she ever loved him. I think she was just using him to pay Agamemnon out.) Penthesilea is famous primarily for getting her ass kicked by Achilles, but she got out there and gave it her all before she died. Penelope isn't as forceful an actor as Clytemnestra, but she uses her brain to hold off the suitors. But you know, I can't see a single one of them sitting on her ass and waiting for the prince to kiss her. Penelope comes the closest to having a conventional happily-ever-after, but being married to Odysseus couldn't always have been sunshine and roses, and I suspect they had to work at that marriage. I've always tried to give that sense when I've ficced about them, anyway.
(Come to think of it, a lot of women in the Odyssey are in positions of power, in ways that they aren't in the Iliad: we meet Helen early in the book, when Telemachus and Peisistratos stay at the house of Menelaus. Calypso and Circe are so obvious as to require no mention. It's the sea-goddess Leukothea who rescues Odysseus when Poseidon has shattered his ship--again--and when he washes ashore in Scheria, he asks Nausicaa's protection first, and she tells him to apply to her mother, Arete. BUT I DIGRESS~)
But like most kids, I grew up with the watered-down versions, in which the princess wears pretty dresses, sings a few songs, and is ultimately rescued by a man. I was always vindicated when I read fantasy novels in which the heroine did manly things, and I always felt betrayed when she got married at the end. (Also, not to get into personal layers of wangst here, and this is something I probably wasn't able to articulate at 12 or 13, but I was usually reading these heroines as queer** because of my own queerness. The effect, for me, was kind of like, "Hey, she's like me! Finally, a female protagonist I can identify with!...wait, what, WHAT IS THIS I DO NOT EVEN AAAAAAAAH THIS BOOK SUCKS DDDD:".)
I always wanted to do the rescuing. I always wanted to do the acting. I always wanted to make the decisions. (Nobody tells you when you're a kid that this sort of thing will get progressively more complex and WTFy as you age.) When I grew up, I wanted to be Achilles and Odysseus, not Helen (who was beautiful, and may or may not have been of dubious morality). And I think this tendency towards activity rather than passivity has informed a lot of my attitude towards relationships--I'd rather be alone than with someone who is less than what I deserve, and my life has always been about things other than that kind of love. I like women, and I like men who are quieter and gentler and more low-key and less about spastic arm-flailing than I am (...you know, kind of like women).
I was, at this point, going to talk some more about romance novels and how the male/female roles in there shit me too, but I think that belongs to another post which I largely have written. Or sketched out on the back of an envelope. Anyway, I have now reached the point where my train of thought has been derailed and there is no logical conclusion, also it is 4 a.m. and I REALLY need to pack my goddamn suitcase and go to goddamn bed.
*Well, I'd totally be Princess Leia. But she's not exactly Disney standard, is she. And I can't rock that gold bikini, at least not with my current body.
**I was not reading Elizabeth I as queer when I discovered her at the age of 9, but I was reading her as TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME, a reading which has amply repaid multiple forays into Tudor England.