A few years ago, I received an International Women’s Day message that said something like this: “Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who actively fight for what they want rather than waiting for a prince to wake them up from sleep.” The message was sent via WhatsApp printed on a picture in Turkish. I unfortunately no longer have the picture, because I tend to delete such over-shared WhatsApp picture messages, so this may not be the exact quote, but the theme was along the same lines.
I have identified as a feminist
as long as I can remember. It is probably one of my pre-existing conditions. I
am a feminist who believes in sisterhood, and I am grateful for the sisterhood
I get to be a part of in my life. I love International Women's Day mainly
because it is a day to celebrate this sisterhood. I receive and send
more messages on International Women's Day than my birthday.
I also love Sleeping Beauty and many
other heroines of the fairy tales. This message was clearly a stab at them,
which I had an issue with.
I didn’t pay much attention to
fairy tales back when I was a kid. My mom preferred making up her own stories
to tell me instead, the one I remember most vividly had a worm who lived in an
apple. My dad was more interested in stories rooted in Anatolian and Greek mythologies.
And Disney’s influence wasn’t as strong back then where I grew up. I knew the
famous fairy tales like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty,
etc. from the books I was gifted. I read them, but they didn’t make me think
much, I was just practicing reading.
From my teenage years till the
start of my 30s, my attitude toward the fairy tales was similar to the attitude
of the International Women’s Day message that I received. I remembered (or
rather misremembered) them being only about ladies saved by men and ended up
with a prince/king. Hence, relating to those stories were difficult. I have neither
dreamed of being a princess (unless you count Xena: Warrior Princess)
nor getting married to live happily ever after (unless maybe to Frodo at some point). Being the queen
would be nice, but not a princess, even though one is a very likely
precondition for the other unless you marry a king as a non-princess, which
does not necessarily sound like the better deal. Anyway, most of my royal
family info comes from Game of Thrones universe, not sure if I am right here.
Then, roughly one month before my
30th birthday I moved to Denmark, and shortly after, while my dreams
didn’t change much, the way I consumed fairy tales did.
My first year in Denmark was the most
isolating time in my life, even the first COVID lockdown wasn’t that isolating.
Sure, some of the friends I made that year later became additions to the
pillars of my support system, but the feeling of safety and comfort near them
has something that has evolved over time and wasn’t yet fully formed back then.
Maybe I write about that year in more detail one day, but I won’t get into more
details here.
During those isolated days, one of our adopted family members, I will call her Sister Blue, which is close to her nickname in my phone book, recommended me a podcast about storytelling. The podcast host was a French lady called Judith Liberman, who was a storyteller and lived in Turkey. She spoke Turkish well and she interviewed people about folk tales and told a folk tale herself in most episodes.
As I followed the tales told in
her podcast,
I started thinking more deeply about them and the popular fairy tales with
princesses without the cynicism of my teenage years and 20s. Since I was for
the most part isolated, I had plenty of time to spend in my own head. According
to Sister Blue, as an introvert, I am more naturally gifted when it comes to
self-analyze reasons for my actions in my own head. The folk tales started to
become a catalyst for such self-analysis and stream of consciousness writing
inspired by the tales. In turn, this created a form of therapy for me, which
was both cost- and drug-free. It reduced the feeling of isolation without me
having to fake being a social butterfly. It reduced my self-doubts about my
actions and inactions since I could trace their roots easier. It made it easier
to make peace with my failures and weaknesses as well. I can’t claim it worked
perfectly all the time, but so doesn’t regular therapy. All I know is I needed
help, and this was the type of help my inner stubborn bitch welcomed without
resistance.
In the early days of following
the podcast, as far as the popular fairy tales go, I thought about Sleeping
Beauty the most, because I could relate to her sleeping state.
First, let’s make something
clear. Sleeping Beauty wakes up because the curse is over not because the
prince kisses her. This is one of the things some people mis-remember from the
tale. Second, the big accusation against Sleeping Beauty is her passivity. This
is why the picture-messages like the one I received on International Women's
Day exist and some people think fairy tales are actually bad influences on
children, especially girls.
Well, have you never been in a
state in your life where it was even too difficult to get out bed day after day?
Danish winter alone can cause some people to enter that state. Have you never
been depressed? Have you never grieved? Have you never focused on one part of
your life too much causing it to overtake all the other parts creating a
sleep-state for those neglected parts in you? Have you never needed time to
recover and therefore shut out the external world?
When Sleeping Beauty finally
wakes up, she is once again open to experience the world. Her sleep wasn’t for
vain. She isn’t the child she used to be. She is still herself, but a different
person at the same time. She has grown.
You can say that “well, how is a
kid supposed to relate to that.” That is fair. I didn’t relate to this when I
was a kid either. It took me to reach my 30s to relate to it. But let’s think
about a different perspective around the same theme. Have you never experienced
something good after patiently waiting for a long time? Not everything in life
requires aggressive action all the time. Everyone who observes the changes
across seasons in a year should be able to relate to that. Or what about bears?
They sleep in winter, and no one thinks they are passive.
Maybe what a child can get from
this tale isn’t a princess being saved by a prince, but the value of waiting
and taking time for yourself. You can emphasize this when telling or reading the
story to the child. You don’t have to give all the control to Disney when it
comes to these stories.
Let’s also briefly address Snow
White, since the picture-message I received may also be referring to her
instead of Sleeping Beauty. I haven’t thought too much about Snow White myself
yet. But regarding whether she is passive or not, I can give an alternative
narration based on one of Judith Liberman’s interviews. Snow White is a child
who experiences parental abuse because of the way she looks. She somehow
escapes that abuse by either convincing the hunter to let go of her or hunter’s
tenderness depending on the Snow White version you listen to. She manages to
survive in a forest on her own and finds a hut. After all that trauma and
despite being someone who was raised in a castle, she learns to live together in
harmony with seven random dudes (or the forty thieves depending on the version)
without any issues. None of this is really passive. It requires a lot of
strength. It is the type of strength we tend to under-value over physical
strength in this world. Therefore, we under-value Snow White.
Originally none of these tales
were for children. There were tales for the folk in general. We are the folk
who tells the tales, and these tales have variations across regions based on
the folk who tell them. None of these will badly influence children or include
anti-feminist messages as long as we take control of how we tell them.
I would rather include the ladies
of the folk tales in my sisterhood. Princesses, queens, witches … are all
welcome.
P.S. I am well-aware that there
are many books that psychoanalyze folk tales creating archetypes and viewing
all characters in the context of a single person. I love reading those books. I
prefer having my own less-scholarly analysis first, though, when I can, so that
I am not too influenced by others.
