To think fairy tale promote a dangerous narrative.

[Mollymoostoo]

My DD (aged 10) has been reading the book series 'The school for good and evil' qnd this has prompted discussions about how dangerous fairy tales are in perpetuating stereotypes and outdated attitudes. For example....
Prince Charming kissed Snow White whilst she was asleep (consent issues)
Red Riding hood naively trusted a stranger in the woods and had to be rescued by a father figure.
Belle put up with the beasts behaviour even though he was aggressive, falling in love with her captor.
Beauty is seen as good, ugliness evil.

AIBU or is it time to rewite the narrative with balanced perspectives. I am not saying go to the extreme of getting rid of heros, but we need to stop putting pressure on boys to be rescuers and girls to be passive in their own stories.

Conveniently didn’t copy the rest of my post!

Fairy tales are not biographies. Maybe you could take The Little Mermaid as an allegory about transgender people if you’re intent on representation?

Thanks for the suggestions.

Just read Bruno Bettelheim’s ‘the use of enchantment’
see also catharsis/pity and terror.
People really need to get over themselves.

Depends on the child.

Still the best ad imv. Guardian spin on 3 little pigs

m.youtube.com/watch?v=cnnmc9nBeOY

there is also a children's book that has an alternative take on 3LP - very sympathetic to the wolf and funny

m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=m75aEhm-BYw&feature=emb_logo

and great to see all the Angela Carter fans👋🏾

Thanks for the suggestion.

But they were never in date. There was never a time when this was the norm. Maybe we should be offended by the sub text of these plots.

Thanks for all the responses. I won't respond to all as I am now planning to sit down with my kindle and some of the suggestions.

Thank you for all who have responded, it is so great to have suggestions and read people's viewpoints.
I agree that we shouldn't erase these stories as they are teaching tools in themselves. I do still think simply reading them without critique is dangerous and potentially damaging to children, though some may think this is an overreaction.

I think Roald Dahl re-addressed the balance very well in his revolting rhymes...didn't Cindy draw a pistol from her knickers not a euphemism ?

I agree. As a historian, I think one of the really dangerous things we do is to presume everything negative in the world must be 'outdated' (and, implicitly, therefore unable to hurt us any more; something we've moved on from). Sometimes the past (and fictions from the past) is better; sometimes it's worse. What it isn't, is a convenient container for all the negative ideas that we'd like to pretend don't influence us any more.

Most fiction promotes dangerous narratives. Children's fiction is full of kids with terrifying freedom and a complete lack of safeguarding. Adult fiction isn't any better. At least fairy tales are obviously bullshit - what with all the fairies and trolls and witches.

I'm less concerned with traditional fairy tales than I am with the Disneyfication of them. The tales themselves are generally one-dimensional morality tales with no real scope for identifying with characters, and generally pretty bloody outcomes. I do think there's probably an issue with how they're presented to children in terms of gender stereotypes and superficial stereotyping. I'm uncomfortable with the "my little princess" treatment some young girls get from their parents, and that probably goes for boys with the other side of it too.

I wouldn't want to see fairy tales banned - they're a cultural constant, with parallels between different cultures and threads back through history and literature. Children need to explore all sorts of ideas throughout their childhood, and fairy tales are a part of that. If adults are reading them to children as though they're a textbook for how life should be lived, the issue is with the adult's outlook, not with the fairy tales.

Please don’t give a ten year old a copy of The Bloody Chamber or The World’s Wife.

But I agree, you’re articulating this as if it’s a brand new revelatory idea, OP, and The Bloody Chamber was written in the 70s. Marina Warner’s From the Beast to the Blonde has been around for nearly thirty years. You say ‘is it time to rewrite the narrative’ - it’s been being rewritten for decades now!

Both my son and daughter - I followed advice from the mighty girl fb page.

but they also see me a scientist with a phd at the top of her field and my box of drills and proudly I can say my son and daughter knew how to use a drill at 4. Likewise neither are allowed to say they have done house work for me (I hated it when my ex husband did that!) they have there own jobs according to their age and they are NOT reminded to do them.

my daughter has to Hoover the hallway once a week and clean the dog bowls out daily with a scrub. (15)
my son put on the laundry when needed and sorts it and puts it on - having checked the weather to see when it is dry as we normally peg it out (9)
both peg out laundry together
they alternate who cleans the toilet and who does the shower
they pick up dog poo in the garden together
daughter puts out the bins and brings them in

🤷‍♀️we correct language all the time
eg refer to a nurse as she we ask why

both can use a sewing machine

we call out as much day to day racism or sexism as we see it and we discuss

eg when doing Africa in school we talked about racism
we went to visit the Colston statue and debated on why it was built in the first place, if it should have been removed and if the people should have been found of guilty of criminal actions for damaging it.

Haven't read tft so it may have already been pointed out, but you do know fairy tales have been rewritten many times already -

The prince did way more than kiss sleeping beauty, she woke up giving birth.

Rapunzel's witch did not find out she was having a visitor by seeing him climb up, she noticed Rapunzel was knocked up and thre the prince into a bush of thorns where he lost his eyesight.

The wolf died a gruesome death after Red Riding Hood got cut out of his stomach and replaced by rocks, which dragged him under water.

Snow White's step mother got killed by being forced to dance in red hot iron shoes until she collapsed.

Cinderella's sisters both cut parts of their feet off so they'd fit into the glass slipper and later on both got their eyes pecked out by ravens.

And don't get me started on Brother and Sister, which gave me nightmares as a child.

The truth is, fairy tales were horror stories people used to retell for entertainment and they got tones down a LOT before becoming acceptable children's tales. I still have some of the originals in their original language here, books over 150 years old.

www.amightygirl.com/books

My husband has always spoiled Disney films with his view similarly to these. Beauty and the beast - Stockholm syndrome at its finest

They are fiction, written a long time ago, and there are thousands of more modern works available for children to read.

We should not tamper with historical fiction. That is a very slippery slope.

But the point is we already have, see my post above.

All the fairy tales you can buy now have much happier endings, with most people walking away alive rather than the gruesome endings in the original stories. So much so that many people don't even seem to realise that they have never read the real thing.

But mermaids aren’t real.

Fairytale only promote a, dangerous narrative if you're raising your kids to think these are their life lessons. They're fun books amongst a plethora of more politically correct fun books and a perfect opportunity to talk about stereotypes etc.

Why does everything have to be a rules-to-follow educational experience

American ‘Disneyfied’ fairy tales are crap, they always just have goodies and baddies and you can tell who is who by how good-looking they are (clue is in the term ‘good-looking’!). They are most dangerous because they encourage that mindset held by the police, CIA etc that you can do what you like because you are a goodie and therefore everything you do is good.

The original much darker fairy tales, I’ll defend. Yes many have problems but there is also a lot of good advice in them about

• not trusting strangers
• not making bad bargains
• staying on the path
• striving to achieve greatness
• not giving up when obstacles appear
• and for girls, choosing a good guy. Every woman I know personally, her life has been defined not by her career but by the man she chose. Whether he was into drugs, or a workaholic, or a happy kind man who loves his mum. I don’t mind that fairy tales encourage girls to aim high in their choice of life partner and not just say yes to the first guy who asks.

Fairy tales are simple stories that each generation has retold and adapted. The versions we know were written down about 200 years ago, the Grimms got rid of some of the sex in them but not the violence, then Disney removed the violence but kept the gender roles. But the basic stories are very old with multiple versions across the world. They are teaching us something about ourselves, not 19th century European morality but something deeper. The stories allow multiple retellings and multiple interpretations. So Beauty and the Beast could be Stockholm syndrome or it could be a poor but brave and beautiful girl saving her father from death, and breaking the curse on the Prince by teaching him how to treat others with respect. And in the end she ends up marrying the (now handsome) Prince who adores her.

As for a transgender character you can pick The Little Mermaid or The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing depending on your viewpoint. There's a fairytale for everything.

I got my girl Gender Swapped Fairy Tales. It's hilarious on first reading. It shows up how sexist fairy tales are in a brilliant fashion.

If I'm ever put into an enchanted sleep from which I will not wake up unless I'm kissed, I am hereby giving blanket consent for every member of the human race to kiss me.

I think we need to put the woke Disney world into perspective. Before that came along children were reading fairy stories with no harm whatsoever. They are more intelligent than we think they are and certainly more intelligent than the woke idiots who imagine apparently that children take these things as reality. Children know these things are fiction. As a kid I was more likely to believe that Robin Hood was a real person than I was in fairytales.