Modern fairy tales

From the title of this blog connected with the photo, people may erroneously presume I am about to slam the Christian religion. Well, there is some truth to that, but it will not be a slam of belief in God. Deity belief is a personal decision and I can slam or praise it but ultimately it's a personal decision if made in reflection of personal experiences can not be swayed by the rantings of a stranger in a blog.

My real focus is on how fairy tales of the past were more direct and honest than the manipulations of Christian leaders today.

As mentioned in Rapunzel, originally those stories were designed to give a moral and sometimes religious message, usually Christian-based in theology. A great example is Cinderella. Read the original story that describes the "ugly" step-sisters as "beautiful and fair of face, but vile and black of heart". The sisters were considered ugly because of their hearts, not their physical appearance. Blame Disney and other re-tellers for the changes. The story begins with her mother insisting Cinderella keep her faith and remain pious. Cinderella's father is a rich man and does not die...he is needed later in the story to provide permission for Cinderella to marry. There is no explanation for why this man allows his new wife to mistreat his biological daughter. Cinderella does have little bird friends, but they only help/respond to her because she cries and prays three times daily at her mother's grave. Her tears at that grave help a tree to grow, which brings the birds. It is the birds who give her the dress for the ball, not a fairy Godmother. Over the years, God is removed from the story.

Originally, God provided her with these blessings to make her life better. The birds were just the method to provide the blessings...interesting. Stories about God sending birds as messengers is older than fairy tales. Even in the Bible, Noah receives an olive twig from a dove. Something totally removed from Cinderella stories today is how those same birds who blessed Cinderella punished the step-sisters by pecking out their eyes. Basically, the birds made them physically ugly to reflect their hearts.

I have always had a fascination with how stories change over time. When in high school, I went on a fad diet and dramatically lost weight. My friends knew I was dieting but one day another person came and asked if I was OK. Turns out my fad diet had turned into a hunger strike to protest some political agenda.

But, moving right along, fairy tales have not completely changed. While Disney mutates the stories to remove God, Christian leaders mutate the stories to remove reality. If you take that same story of Cinderella and view it from a certain Christian theology, Cinderella was humble, pious and most importantly, a virgin at marriage. Some Christians promote virginity over everything and somehow, remaining a virgin is taught to be the key to marital success. Being a virgin into marriage becomes a fixation for certain Christians. What they ignore is hammering virginity into these young people's hearts also results in a terror about intimacy. No one can be told to avoid sex at all costs and then magically it is fantastic and beautiful once you marry. These teachings aren't just comments, it is more on a level of brain-washing, spoken from my personal experiences with people raised with these messages. When I comment on this, I am amazed at how many people really want to believe remaining a virgin until marriage is a good way to secure a marriage...right! I would bet most people teaching that message did not follow those instructions AND of course they were taught. The hypocrisy of, "You should remain a virgin until marriage, I didn't because I didn't know any better" is such a load of bovine feces.

Original fairy tales rarely promote virginity as a key ingredient to love and marriage, probably because there was no way to know for sure is a woman was a virgin or not...unless you locked her in a tower at 12. Even then, the first man Rapunzel met, she slept with him. That sexual act did not remove her from living happily ever after. Some Christians today would have you believe sex is the first step towards total damnation...unless you are married. The problem is, who cares if you are a virgin if you drink like a fish, smoke like a train, have poor impulse control, hang out with people you call "sinners," all the while judging them. Virginity is not some magical white-wash.

I think old fairy tales had a better view of sex than some of today's theology. However, both ignore the true fact that relationships take work. Any relationship takes maintenance, whether it be husband/wife, parent/child, even friendships take work. I am amazed that some people believe falling in love is the hardest part of finding a life mate. That is being willfully naive, in my humble opinion. Some may say my opinion is the result of my failed marriage but I say divorced people probably know a bit more about how to keep a marriage together than people may believe. I love fairy tales but I also know they are just stories designed to have happy endings. Reality is always harder. The gap between life as imagined and life in reality can be huge.