The ugliest truths about the fairest of them all

Our fairy tales can destroy us.

If you think of it, fairy tales are usually not about fairies per se, but about magical thinking: “If only I were __________________ (for males, powerful, strong or rich; for females, beautiful — it’s pretty limiting, isn’t it?) then __________________ (happily ever after).

In other words, if we’re not happily ever after, it’s because we’re not (for males, powerful, strong, or rich; for females, beautiful) enough. We’re not enough.

The implications of fairy tales get uglier, though. Beautiful women get rescued from evil stepmothers, ravenous wolves, and wicked witches. By implication, if women are left in harmful and abusive situations, they’re not beautiful enough. And women who find their own ways out are not honored with stories. (To be fair, recent Disney fairy tales, among others, have found ways to honor strong heroines. But they’re still beautiful, and a guy is still involved in the picture.)

The most basic, ugliest implication of fairy tales is this: If you are beautiful, someone will love you. If you are not beautiful, you will not be loved. Obviously, in real life, people who are not beautiful find true love, and many beautiful people get stuck in superficial relationships whose narratives sell movies and other media. But we still stick to the fairy tales as informing human experience.

What if we didn’t have to be beautiful, strong, powerful, or rich to be loved? What if we didn’t have to do anything but be ourselves to be loved?

Why aren’t fairy tales like that?

Of Fairy Tales

We long for what we wish to be,
Our crushes a heady potion,
A periapt to ward against our fear
That we are not enough, that we are
In need of rescuing — we rub the lamp
and the prince comes and kisses us.

The prince will never come,
And if he did, he would bear discord
On a silken pillow, and the ugly fairies
Would chant, “You get what you wish for.”
The illusion would break,
And you would feel you never were enough.

We need our crushes, our illusions
So we will be enough in our own worlds,
So we will be enough.

Divergence — Trauma and Fairy Tales

“No amount of something you don’t need will substitute for something you do need.” — Bernard Poduska

I wrote the following essay to explore why I felt jealous of Grace, my current protagonist. Because she has been strongly focused on developing her musical talent, adolescence was something she had little time for. However, on her adventures, she has to deal with Ichirou, who is about her age, and Greg, who is a few years older. She’s definitely starting to notice the opposite sex as I write. And I got jealous of her:
*****

I suspect everyone has a fairy tale of their own writing that they hug to themselves, as a spell against trauma. The existence of the fairy tale fills that hole in their heart that the terror tore out of them, the recitation of that fairy tale to themselves chains and locks the dungeon door so their demon can’t escape. Moreover, if they could live their fairy tale to the end, the demon would be slain and the hole in their heart would be healed.

The fairy tales are as varied as the people who hold them and the trauma they’ve suffered. But they include this one word, as an incantation: “If …”

If the prince would fall in love with me, it would take away the terror and pain of my adolescence. That is my fairy tale.

My adolescence resembled Stephen King’s “Carrie”, without the ability to torch my tormentors. One of the acts perpetrated against me obliterated my innocence and stunted my adolescent development. I was thirteen at the time. I had all the crushes a typical teen girl entertained, but shame at even thinking of men as men shrouded my reverie.

Hence the fairy tale — if the prince would fall in love with me, I might be normal …

But no amount of something I don’t need will substitute for something I do need. The prince will never be enough, because only in fantasy does the prince truly understand the extent of damage
I suffered, and understanding is the key to the fairy tale. The prince can only interact with me at the current moment, and I am married, no longer that adolescent who needed healing. The hole in my heart will be there, will always be there, although it doesn’t ache as much as before.

The reality of life beyond the fairy tale is that everyone has a hurt that their fairy tale will never fix.