The Happily Ever After Alternative

Now this may be because it is nearly impossible to “feminize” characters that are trapped in inherently patriarchal narratives. In other words, it is hard to make Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or the Little Mermaid appear feminist, when the entire tale culminates with each needing to be rescued … and always by men. Mae West put this rather well — “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

In her book Cinderella ate my daughter: Dispatches from the front lines of the new Girlie-Girl Culture, (Harper Collins, 2011), Peggy Orenstein describes in great detail how ‘princess culture’ has debilitated  previous generations and how far the trend has progressed today. The book depicts how legions of young girls are proving to be the perfect market subjects for an ‘Ever After’ ideology, all too conveniently packaged entirely in pink taffeta. The book, one that grew out of Orenstein’s 2006 article in The New York Times titled “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?”, goes on to explore how Disney’s princess franchise has been a key factor in the meteoric rise of little girl pageants across America and addresses questions of early sexualization and self-esteem of the tween generation.

Over the years, the very words ‘fairy tale’ have somehow become synonymous with romance, perfection and happy endings, completely side lining the much darker stories of the Ugly Duckling or the Snow Queen penned by Hans Christen Anderson. Fairy tales today mean princesses, they mean ball gowns and they mean tiaras… all eventually followed by a ring and a wedding. Note, that I use the term “wedding” and not “marriage” because these stories never traverse beyond happily-ever-afters and what actually happened later. They don’t need to. This trajectory forms the premise of nearly all Hollywood romantic comedies and today one doesn’t need to be a princess to find a fairy tale ending. The ‘fairy tale’ can be framed for single women, having “sex in the city”, working and paying their bills and battling street crime. All independent women in every aspect, save their overwhelming reliance on that ‘happily ever after’ crutch.

One might ask what is so bad about happy endings, considering nearly every person on the planet secretly or not-so-secretly longs for one? It’s the build-up and hype that are both troubling and misleading, such narratives presuppose that life ends in that ellipsis after “and they lived happily ever after…” and it doesn’t. If anything, reality begins after, which is why this account is so damning. It has damned generations and little girls who believe in princesses and fairy tales ought to be cautioned. Not for believing or hoping but for placing faith in the allegories of princesses and magic wands, because this prevents many from recognizing their very own fairy tales when they happen to arrive in a pair of jeans and a pick up truck. Fairy tales tend to set a premise of what one expects of men and of romance in one’s own life and people are almost always disappointed in the grandiosity of that expectation.

As for feminism, it is an absurd twist in tale-telling — that a damsel in distress be painted as a dominatrix (sic) simply because calling a spade a spade seems too itchy a subject. Fairy tales by their very construction sell make-believe and romance. Sadly, there really is no politically correct, feminist version of “old school” romance. Attempting a feminist fairy tale would either mean modernizing it and thereby losing the romance or gender neutralizing the content… and somehow a fairy tale about a business mogul who finds a suitable partner after having eliminated several candidates and deciding to move in together to test their compatibility as a couple before rushing into the business of commitment, just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a kiss complete with back lighting and an Elton John score. Fairy tale princesses  need to be rescued either from centuries of sleep or poisoned apples or trapped towers. The recreation of such narratives for modern generations is problematic because the lowest common denominator in such romances remains a ‘boy saves girl from–‘ equation. The check-list never changes: must find prince; must get kissed; must live in palace; must be ridden (sidesaddle, of course) off on preferably white horse; must have giant, floral fiasco of a wedding; must fade into the sunset, with the ‘And they lived Happily Ever After’ in italicized script as the picture fades to black.