Mirror mirror on the wall...

...who's the fairest of them all?

A phrase as children, regardless of gender, you probably could complete, whether you've seen Snow White or not. Fairytales are stories we see time and time again--cycled through generations, across mediums, and even now becoming live-action remakes of their original animated counterparts. They are money-making machines full of innuendos, some we, as adults, can recognize--a subtle crude joke, an adult plot element that goes right over the head of the child viewers--and others that take more investigating to discover their covert meanings.

As we look into fairy-tales and dissect the structure of our beloved childhood classics, we realize they are far more problematic than we give them credit for. These child-safe, Disney-magic filled films are deemed safe, appropriate, and desirable treats for our children to watch and grow up with--but what messages are they really sending? Looking at Snow White and Sleeping Beauty specifically, Disney sends us problematic messages about adolescence and womanhood that we probably do not wish to pass down to our children.

To begin dissecting Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, we must first examine the origin story of Princess Aurora.

Sun, Moon and Talia is an Italian tale from 1683 that depicts the story of a young maiden who was accidentally put to sleep by a splinter lodging under her fingernail. She awoke to a horrible surprise--she had unknowingly given birth to two children during her slumber. But, of course, Talia is delighted at the news of her single motherhood.

A man had raped her unconscious body and "he for a time thought no more about this incident." Sounds really familiar...perhaps Brock Turner, or a common occurrence in college nightlife. Luckily for Talia, her rapist was a King. Unfortunately for Talia, the King had a Queen who, upon hearing upon her husband's infidelity, attempts to murder Talia and her children--Sun and Moon.

The end of the tale is happy...for Talia. The King's (rightfully) angry wife is thrown into the fire she had prepared to burn Talia in, and Talia, Sun, Moon and the King live happily ever after.

The motifs that are present in this tale have prevailed in modern fairytales--and are just as blatant. These overt themes and characterizations of female characters are problematic and say a lot about our culture's feelings of womanhood, adolescence, aging, and beauty.

Firstly, we are presented with a sleeping woman. This is true of both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. In both traditional stories, too, both women are awakened when kissed by a man. It is only the kiss that breaks them from their slumber, and upon waking they ride off into the sunset.

The sleeping woman is always young, beautiful, naive and sweet. These is no divergence from these traits. She is 14, 15, or 16 years old, just becoming a woman both physically and psychologically. This sleep, or trance, always hits her at this pivotal time of her coming of age, but she is already "adult" in her ability to reproduce and seduce and entice men--as we see from Talia's ability to rear children even in her slumber.

This tells us that, unconsciously, a woman's coming of age is "scary". It is full of the unknown, of the possibility of her gaining autonomy of herself--both in choice and sexuality. How much easier is it for her to conveniently fall asleep at this time--only to be chosen by a man without the awkwardness of dating or getting to know each other. Her voice is gone. Her say is gone. She merely looks beautiful enough to attract a man without her doing so much as even opening her eyes. Her inherent value is on her appearance. When she is awoken, she has "come of age"--she is now to be a wife and subsequently a mother. Gone is the awkward phase of maturation. Compliance, beauty, and wifehood is what awaits her.

Poets, writers, and filmmakers alike all frequently romanticize the death of young, beautiful women. Edgar Allen Poe is even quoted to have said, "The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." Better yet is a woman who appears dead, still, quiet, and beautiful--a spectacle we can gaze at as voyers all day without any objectification from the subject, yet she is free from the decay of death. Eternally beautiful. An object to be gazed at. Free from having to put in relational work of any kind. Free from her own needs. Positioned to be taken and consumed.

The second major motif in fairytales is the good child/evil stepmother dynamic. Once again, these woman are strictly confined within roles. The child represents good, and the woman represents evil. The girl is bright, naive, kind, beautiful, young, girly. The woman is usually dressed in dark colors, is jealous, manipulative, desperate, and conniving. In Sleeping Beauty, she is literally monstrous. There are two key features of this evil stepmother: she is aging and unable to conceive. Therefore, she must be jealous of the young maiden who represents everything she is not--on the cusp of life, desirable, fertile and conventionally attractive. All traits are especially valuable in the eyes of men, under which is confined.

Our culture puts huge value and emphasis on women's attractiveness being her greatest asset. Youth, particularly, is celebrated and prized above all else. Plastic surgery is more prevalent than ever and anti-aging creams and supplements dominate advertisements targeted at women.

Youth, therefore, is synonymous with beauty, since our beauty standards are founded on looking as young as possible no matter your age--these ideas are completely dependent and even interchangeable. An aging woman embracing her natural appearance is something we rarely see--and is so deviant it's even dangerous. Though the relationship between women is one of the key elements of fairytales--which seems like it is progressive, the women cannot be friends. They must be pitted against each other.

Women supporting other women is a threat to the patriarchy. It leaves women independent and free from the desperate need of a man to rescue her. A self-sufficient woman derails the entire narrative of the need for a rescuer at all, and therefore undermines the traditional gender roles and even goes as far to dissolve the importance of a nuclear family.

Maleficent tries to rewrite these norms. The initial villain from Sleeping Beauty who curses Aurora to begin with is now our protagonist, and though she initially is the perpetrator of the curse that sets upon Aurora, she is also the one who ends up breaking it with "true loves kiss"--the maternal love that Maleficent feels for the girl. Bitterness is rewritten into a story of platonic feminine affection rather than the role relying on a man as rescuer.

As we progress further and further as a nation, we begin to see the revision of the oppressive patriarchal ideals fall away and the rewriting of our beloved fairytales, only this time, the princesses don't need a prince. She only needs herself, and maybe a female ally by her side.