When I was a little brat, I mean boy, I used to love the super heroes, their cartoons, the television shows, and of course, the toys. I loved Batman & Robin, Spider-man and especially Superman. I have pictures of myself in my Superman Underoos, with a red kitchen table napkin safety-pinned around my neck, with my hands on my hips, and a super power look of pride on my four year old face. My Aunt still gets the biggest giggle laughing at me every time someone brings up the stories of me in that outfit, bitch.. haha..
It’s strange to me though, how female children are geared more towards the fairy tales. Yeah, boys end up knowing them all too, but it’s not quite the same. My precious little niece, Hannah, turns three in a few weeks and for over the past year, I’ve watched her interest wane from most of her other toys and DVD’s over to her princess stories, Cinderella of course, being her favorite. Snow White holds a place close to the top, as does Sleeping Beauty… You know, all the ones where there’s some evil other woman trying to hurt her because she’s beautiful, and of course there’s the prince, or the knight in shining armor, upon a white horse, that is due to come to their glorious rescue. You know, all the stuff dreams are made of… It’s funny too, for Christmas, my sister, her mother, bought her the Cinderella Castle that goes along with the Barbie sized Cinderella and the prince dolls. I watch her play, half understanding every third word she says, speaking as if she were Cinderella to her prince, and Cinderella yells at him for not sitting on the horse just right or not doing what it is he’s supposed to be doing. I hear her say, “No, you do it this way prince...” whatever his name is. But of course, the most obvious thing is that it’s her making him do everything he’s doing. He is a doll.. remember? She has every move of his, every action of his, and even every one of her own arguments, grievances, and disappointments already completely pre-planned out for her play, even if only on some subconscious level…
She also walks around the house singing Cinderella songs that my sister tells me are the songs to the prince, and sure enough, there she is holding the Cinderella doll right there with the prince doll. I laugh thinking, “she’s not even three, what kind of idea could she possibly have about romance?’ But then, quickly, I realize it’s not the romance she’s fascinated with, it’s the glory. It’s the glimmer of the attention that this princess is on the receiving end of, attention that through the eyes of this story, is also, long overdue. It’s the victory over those who underappreciated her, even if all she had to offer was her undeniable beauty.. It’s the prince, the one who all the other women admire and wish was their own, that through her unjustified difficulties, she has obtained, as if that alone gave her the quality of presence enough to deserve this knight, with his unbending integrity. It’s this moment in the light, in the glorious gown, with all eyes upon her, the center of the world as its known through those within her field of vision. It’s that moment that she is led to believe is all she’ll ever need to be truly happy, the moment she expects will be the moment she’ll define her life by, and the rest, all those moments from that one on until her light goes out, is nothing more than a photograph of insignificance, off, into the sunset, as they say, ironically…
I could sit here and say it’s sad or wrong, as young boys and girls, for us to be built up this way, knowing that this isn’t the way life really works, nor is it what really matters, at least when it comes to trying to be truly happy, but that’s just the way things work, so I wont bother. It’s no one’s fault, there are no victims in this pretty picture. It comes down to every person in the world, in our culture at least, at some point, upon really stepping out into the world, on their own, when trying to figure out what it is they want for their life, for their happiness, to stop and take a good look inside themselves, at all they think they truly want out of this crazy little bleep in time called their life, and how much of what they still think they want was implanted long before the choice was really their own. I don’t think the day will ever come where I’ll be able to fly, and I also doubt that I’ll at any point in the near future be able to shoot webs from my wrists, but even if the day did come, and I was able to, I can admit that as cool as that may sound to me, I can easily say that wouldn’t be what I really care about in life, and it wouldn’t be something that would define me, much less bring me any real happiness. There will never be one single moment in my life that will define my being. My life, all the little moments pieced together, that I spend striving for all that is aligned with what’s in my heart will, if lucky enough, define my life, my happiness.
If anything sad is derived from these little fairy tales, I think it’s the fact that too many people go through most of their lives never realizing that that’s all they are, fairy tales. And I don’t want to imagine what this sort of outlook really does to a person. I know how much disappointment life breeds on its own accord, and seeing it from this perspective, I can’t fathom how painful it must be for the people who never question what it is they think they want out of life, to experience such utter disappointments after disappointments, only to realize, down the line, that it was never really what they wanted anyhow, and maybe worse, never realize what they actually did want. To somehow miss the point, and still have no idea what they really want, they just keep going, on, and on again to the next disappointment… I suppose its these type realizations that lead people to mid life crises..
