Women in Fairytales: Sleeping Beauty
usydwomenscollective: little-mumbles:
“Woman, if you look for her, has a strong chance of always being found in one position: in bed. In bed and asleep - “laid (out).” She is always to be found on or in a bed: Sleeping Beauty is lifted from her bed by a man because, as we all know, women don’t wake up by themselves: man has to intervene, you understand. She is lifted up by the man who will lay her in her next bed so that she may be confined to bed ever after, just as the fairytales say.”
Cixous, Helene (1981) “Castration or Decapitation”, Annette Kuhn (trans.), Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 7 (1), p. 43
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This brings me back to the analysis class I took on women in politics as pertaining to television and film media. Ironically enough, Disney’s Princesses are the first images of women with power that young girls will consume- they are aristocrats who hold in their very being the ability to determine a kingdom’s future. The downside seems to be, though, that they are less empowered by that than disempowered by the soul mate ideal; they are less worried about qualifications and more about male validation when deciding whom to choose as theirs and, therefore, their kingdom’s.
(Disney is the best for feminist query.)
