Did you know that in the original fairy tales some particularly nasty things happened?
In The Little Mermaid, the Prince married someone else and Ariel melted into sea foam.
Goldilocks is torn apart and eaten by The Three Bears.
Sleeping Beauty is perhaps the best of all…Aurora is in the midst of her slumber when the King sees her, decides he wants her, and rapes her as she sleeps. Nine months later she gives birth to twins and upon waking is now the mother of two children and a rape victim. It gets even better though. The King returns and she falls in love with him even though he raped her. But (because a rape isn’t all we get folks!) he is actually married to someone else while he is parading around the kingdom raping sleeping women and the Queen doesn’t want to let him go!!??!!
Of course, everyone refers to today’s stories as being “Disney-ified” and that may be true to a certain extent. They don’t carry all the blame though. No one wants to tell these stories to girls and I only say that because it’s mostly girls watching these stories.
People today like the stories of a damsel in distress, but not too much distress, maybe just some “distress-lite.” A Prince to the rescue, happily ever after, true love, blah, blah, blah.
No more cautionary tales where Happily Ever After doesn’t exist, because where’s the fun in that? The sweet, docile Princess needs to get everything she ever wanted, which is, near as I can tell, the “love” of a man of questionable character. There is one message that runs over and over through all of today’s stories…
Be Nice.
I know, it doesn’t sound like a problem. How about if I say “Don’t be a Bitch”? It sounds worse, but really it’s just what many feel is the alternative to being nice. If you aren’t “nice” you are considered a Bitch, and in today’s world that’s not acceptable.
Fairy tales ALWAYS portray the damsel as Nice. The Evil Queen or Wicked Step-Mother is always a Bitch, and she gets hers in the end. Because no one feels sorry for a Bitch. Even when the Prince is a jackass, the Princess is still Nice.
So the message gets sent. It may, perhaps, be the most damaging and insidious of all the messages, this idea that you must Be Nice. That if you are Not Nice, then that is very, very bad.
No one is born to be nice all the time. Responding with automatic niceness is a learned behavior, but it’s one we only really teach to girls.
Boys are told that Nice Guys Finish Last. An interesting dynamic is then created. You have half the population trained to Be Nice all the time, and the other half being told they should never be nice because Nice is for losers. So guess who the girls are left feeling like they need to Be Nice to? The boys, of course. I don’t think we could have done a better job setting up a society where domestic violence is rampant if we tried.
The way we have chosen to address domestic violence in America is a joke. Everything is turned into some sort of He said/She said debate, as if the bruises, injuries and violent histories of the He’s we are dealing with don’t count. As if when some man appears and states that a 110 pound woman attacked him, slapped him, called him names, wagged her finger in his face, whatever, and that’s why he beat the shit out of her, we should accept that. She started it and got what she deserved.
Domestic violence isn’t taken nearly as seriously in America as it should be because it primarily happens to women. For all our complaining about how other places and cultures demean and degrade women, we are far from perfect. Better? Yes. But there is no glory in being the best of the worst. We are not what we should be for a place that preaches equality and justice for ALL its people. Just today I read an article in the local paper about how colleges are now teaching girls How to Not Be Raped, because this is their responsibility? What about teaching boys How Not to Rape instead? Or do “Not Rapists” always finish last too?
Recently, a man she had broken up with 14 months ago attacked my sweet stepdaughter. When she was explaining why she went to see him in the first place she said “he said he had something of mine to return to me and even though I knew I probably didn’t want it after all this time, I HAD NO REASON NOT TO BE NICE.” It was a very violent attack. He got 9 months in jail. If he had attacked a man with his record of prior prison time for Attempted Manslaughter (of his ex-wife), and was charged with 3 counts of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon and one of Kidnapping, 9 months would never happen. Nine years would be more like it. Hell, if he had been selling pot he would have gotten years instead of months!
But all they see is the old “he said/she said” and no matter how many times women are beaten and hurt in domestic violence situations, they always seem to think that the “she said” is probably just a lie. Even after He admits it’s not.
So, here is what I have on my hands now. Another daughter, 14 years old, who prefers Jurassic Park, River Monsters and Planet Earth to princesses and has a mouth on her like nobody’s business. Yet, I am hesitant to overly correct her. Because I don’t want her to think she HAS to be nice. To anyone. Ever. I don’t want to train her to be a victim in a society that loves to blame the victim.
Being nice is a choice, same as being rude is a choice, but they aren’t the ONLY choices. It isn’t an either/or situation. There are lots of stopping spots in between. You can always be polite without being “nice”, just like you can be firm without being rude. You can be calm, quiet, distant, friendly, pleasant, or happy, but NICE carries a different meaning to women in this world. NICE tells you to paste a smile on your face, shut up and put up with whatever is coming at you. So I don’t want to tell her to Be Nice, especially to someone who may not deserve it.
In her very real not-a-fairy-tale life, Melissa Coble is The Wicked Step-Mother. If she had a dollar for every time she was told she was a bitch, she would be a really wealthy Wicked Step-Mother. Therefore, if she is nice to you, know that it is because she wants to be. She made a conscious decision to be nice to you. And if not, don’t take it personally because it isn’t about you. It isn’t something you are OWED, she doesn’t need a reason, and it isn’t something women are required to provide. Find her blog here and on Facebook.