Makayla chooses a book to read together before bed every night and tonight she presented me with “The Virtue of Humility.” At the bottom of the title, “Cinderella” was written so I started off highly suspicious that this book would not be a good book to be reading. I was right. She wanted me to read it to her and I got through the first page with only minor annoyance. It wasn’t too bad, just talking about how Cinderella was the most beautiful, sweetest, kindest person to ever walk the face of the earth and that she had two unfortunate looking step-sisters and an even more unfortunate looking step-mother who were evil and treated her like a servant. It discussed how Cinderella loved to sleep and dream and she always dreamt that a Prince of some sort would come rescue her. I wasn’t able to get past the second page, describing how abusive the step-sisters and step-mother where but Cinderella didn’t care how badly they treated her because she was so kind.
“Listen,” I told Makayla, “you can be an extremely kind person and still have respect for yourself. The thing about this girl is that she has no self respect if she doesn’t even care that people are being cruel to her. She also has no brain if she thinks that it’s OK to live a life of misery just hoping that someone will come rescue you. Smart women are able to get themselves out of bad situations. Sitting around being miserable hoping some dude will come rescue you is insane. This girl is an idiot.”
Makayla just kind of looked at me and I said, “anyway, do you want me to keep reading? I can teach you some lessons about how not to act.”
She kind of mumbled and shook her head.
“Did I ruin it for you?” I asked.
She nodded and looked at me like I was a crazy person and went to get another book. She returned with a book about animals and before we started reading it, I told her, “Remember The Princess and the Frog movie we saw last year? Now THAT was one smart girl. She worked hard and didn’t let people treat her badly and she was kind and honest. That’s a good fairy tale.”
“I know!” Makayla shrieked, “she liked her job and she was really smart. She worked a lot of jobs so that she could make a restaurant!”
“And when she got into trouble she figured out what to do. And she asked for help from people when she needed it and that’s a good thing to do. But she didn’t just sit around and wait like a moron. Also, Jasmine in Aladdin was a good princess in a Fairy Tale. She respected herself and expected other people to respect her too.”
“And Thumbalina,” Makayla said, “she’s good too.”
“I’ve never seen that,” I told her, “also, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are not very smart people. They just sit around and wait for some guy to come get them out of bad situations. Smart women figure out ways to get themselves out of bad situations. Expecting some guy to come save you when your life gets hard is not cool.”
“Nope, we have to be smart and ask for help and get our own selves out of bad stuff,” Makayla said, “and if people are mean to us we should not let them do that.”
“Exactly. The reason Cinderella is always sleeping and dreaming so much is because she is severely depressed. Depressed people sleep a lot. She is depressed because she has no self esteem or self worth and allows herself to be treated badly. She and the prince got divorced because she has no self esteem. You have to love yourself before you can love someone else.”
We read her new book and after we were done, she said, “let’s give that silly Cinderella book to Goodwill. I am NOT a girl like that.”
“We are throwing that book away because no child should ever have a role model like that put into their head,” I told her, “and it is awful to portray pretty people as good people and ugly people as bad people.”
“It’s so mean Mommy,” she said, “but you said that it is terrible to ever throw a book away.”
“Well, not that one,” I told her as I took her to bed, “the girls in those books are portrayed in a way that makes them look like they should be looked up to. We should feel sorry for them, not want to be like them. I don’t care if you are thirty, if you were acting like that, I would bend you over my knee and spank you.”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” Makayla said, “and I would never be like that anyway. I can take care of my own self and you can take care of me too.”
“Strong women love themselves and are kind and respectful to others. Weak women might seem like they are kind, but really, they are just afraid. And when you’re married, it’s OK to let your husband take care of you and take care of your husband too. But Cinderella was miserable and just sat around sleeping all the time, hoping some guy would get her out of her situation. A smart girl would have gotten a job and told the people being mean to her to leave her alone and she would have taken care of herself. She would have made friends who could help her when she needed help, just like the princess in The Princess and the Frog.”
“But in the movie, Cinderella and the prince love each other when they meet each other and he rescues her anyway,” Makayla said.
“In the movie, they say they loved each other from the very second they saw each other, which isn’t real, number one. And if she loved him and she knew he loved her, then why didn’t she tell him about what was going on at her house that night? Why would she lie to him about who she was? If he really loved her, for real loved her, she would have known that she could tell him ANYTHING and he would still love her anyway. But she wasn’t very bright. If she had told him the first time they met what was going on, she wouldn’t have had to go back home. He would have understood and never made her go back home. He wouldn’t have had to search the whole kingdom for her. When a man loves you, you know for a fact that you can go to him with anything and he will always take care of you and never let anything bad happen to you. He will protect you and take care of you. I feel sorry for the prince, really. He’s the one who ended up with that silly girl and he’s the one who she lied to.”
“That’s why they got a divorce,” Makayla said, “because she didn’t have a brain. And not telling him that her dress was from her fairy god mother was a lie.”
“Showing up in a carriage and horses that weren’t real and making him believe she was a princess was a HUGE lie,” I told her, feeling like an idiot over the whole divorce thing, “if they really fell in love that night, she would have been able to tell him about everything. But Cinderella is just a very silly Fairy Tale and it is not a healthy thing for little girls to believe.”
We hugged and kissed goodnight and Matt determined I was basically a lunatic and said I went way over board.
“It’s just a little kid’s book,” he said.
“Those idiot heroines in those books are portrayed to be something little girls should look up to,” I told him, “books aren’t just books. They influence you and help shape who you are. I don’t want some garbage like that crap being in her head.”
He just kind of looked at me.
“Do you think she will grow up and think I am a raging weirdo?” I asked him.
“No sweetie, because she will think you’re normal. Whether that’s true or not.”
Hardy har. So the result of my youthful parenting may in fact be a severely disturbed individual. Maybe I am a raging lunatic and maybe Makayla was disappointed that I disliked the book and maybe she was just trying to agree with me when she was agreeing. Which is why I am not throwing this idiotic book away, but will offer to read it to her tomorrow. I’ve already got my lines planned out:
“You know, it’s OK to read things you don’t agree with. It’s even OK to enjoy things that are just totally silly. If you want, we can read Cinderella for real and I won’t say anything.”
At this point, I’m assuming I’ve brain washed her enough that she will not idolize the idiot heroine.
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