Sleeping Beauty–I’m sure we all know the tale. Beautiful young princess, cursed by an evil fairy, trapped in an eternal sleep when, lo and behold, a prince happens upon her castle and falls in love with the sleeping girl. He then proceeds to rape her in her sleep and runs off to marry another princess. Only when awaken by the pains of childbirth does the sleeping beauty realize she has been assaulted… Oh! That’s not the story you know? Well, it’s the only one I know.
Ever since I was little I have always wanted to be a princess. I wanted to be that desirable damsel in distress. I wanted to be rescued by a knight in shining armor. I wanted to live happily ever after. When I was in Sunday school it was explained to me that the five most important moments in my life would happen in church; my baptism, my confirmation, my wedding, my children’s baptisms, and my funeral. I don’t remember my baptism, and I knew my confirmation would be a rather solemn event so I focused all of my creative energy on planning my wedding, my children’s baptisms and my funeral. I picked out dresses, flowers, cakes, and rings. I thought about which of my friends would make good bridesmaids or godmothers. I thought about who I trusted most to give my eulogy. I never thought about what I would be when I grew up or what I would do with my life because I simply didn’t exist as a three-dimensional character in my own life story. It wasn’t really anyone in particular who had reduced me to such a state but rather a choice on my part to buy into the fantasy of living happily ever after as someone’s wife and someone’s mother rather than work to carve out my place in the world as someone.
There is this photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt that Time magazine runs often. It shows a young sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, New York on V-J day. It’s not just any ordinary kiss, he has one strong arm wrapped tight around her waist and the other supporting her head because she has fallen limp against him, seemingly lost in a moment of complete passion and euphoria. For the longest time I had wanted to be kissed like that, out of nowhere in a moment of pure elation. Or so I thought.
Because you see, that wasn’t a kiss of love or shared passion in the moment. That was one drunk man grabbing a young woman in the street and kissing her without her consent. Yet the entire world seems to celebrate it because we choose to ignore the reality of the image and focus instead on the fantasy we project upon it. We brush it off when someone catcalls us on the street, we internalize the fury of being groped on a packed subway, we roll our eyes and keep on grinding when someone finishes a compliment with the lovely addition of “…for a girl”. We tell our daughters and sons stories of damsels in distress being rescued by knights in shining armor.
My parents always told me things like, “if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all”, “you should be seen and not heard”, and my personal favorite in response to my passion for politics and dreams of the presidency: “we would be so proud if you were the first lady.” I wonder who I would be if I had been raised to be brave, strong, and to fight for myself. If my parents had read me books like Not One Damsel in Distress, if they taught me about women like Naomi Parker Fraley from my hometown of Alameda, California (also known as Rosie the Riveter) or Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or any number of the strong, smart, and amazing women in our world who are someone who does something, not someone’s thing to whom things are done.
Strong female characters in fiction and the real world are not just for little girls. As I recently learned, Wonder Woman was intended to acclimate young boys to the idea of powerful women, to help pave the way for a social upheaval of the patriarchy as well as teach young girls that they can be the heroes too. We could all benefit from women being represented as anything but ordinary, but that is not to say we should throw out old fairy tales or images of our history. We need them all, the good and the bad, in a balance so we can both learn from our mistakes and hold the greater example to guide us into a better world. A world where we are all strong, smart, and amazing, where we treat ourselves and our fellow humans with the respect we all deserve, and where fairy tales and fantasy can be the fuel to get us all there.