The clock strikes 12, and the beautiful princess, wearing a blue ball gown, leaves the castle, running, so hastily, one of her glass slippers falls off. Finger pricked by needle, another princess lies in deep sleep and while it seems impossible for her to be woken, off comes a handsome prince waking her with true loves kiss.

Isn’t it amazing that each one of these sweet stories have left such enduring images in our minds? Fairytales are a core part of a childhood. Each and every child has been brought up with stories of princesses, castles, and magical places. But often, children and parents both fail to notice the terrible messages and stereotypes these supposedly innocent fairytales reinforce. Today, I’d like to take you with me as we dig a little deeper into these bedtime stories.

Let’s look at the stereotypes found in these cute little fairytales. Now, I’m sure all of us here are familiar with stereotypes in our own society. You know the lot; blondes are dumb, asians are smart and so on. Our world is trying to deal with such stereotypes, and by reading sweet fairytales to our children, we think we’re protecting their innocence. But in fact, we’re brainwashing them too! Take a look at Snow White and Cinderella. We see the reoccurring stereotype of horrible stepmothers. Cinderella’s step mother treats Cinderella as a house maid while Snow White’s step mother is so evil, she’s set out to kill her. The message being stepmothers are terrible people. And not only do they hate you, they only hate you because you’re so attractive. The mirror mirror on the wall, has not made your stepmother very happy and since you’re pretty and your stepmother’s not, she is mad! Mad enough to kill you. So what effect does this mature stereotype have on children? If by chance they do have a stepmother, the children begin to hate her or be scared of her! All in all, stepmothers better steer clear of these 2 fairytales, when choosing a bedtime story to tell their stepchildren.

Now, not only are stepmothers obsessed with beauty, so are our realistic main characters. If you look at all these different princesses, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel; all of them are so, so beautiful. They have perfect hair, perfect skin, and basically, perfect everything. Has there ever been a princess that is ugly? A princess with a pimple? I mean, Sleeping Beauty is not titled Sleeping Ugly, or Sleeping Average now is it? And if by chance, in a story there happens to be an ugly main character, like in The Frog Prince, well that horrible error is corrected afterward! Although a frog princess love story would have been far more interesting, the frog had to turn into a handsome prince for a happy ending. Another example is Beauty and the Beast. The Beast was a beast throughout almost the entire story. But could he remain ugly? Oh no, of course not! Because a happy ending, is a beautiful ending. The beast eventually turning into a handsome prince portrays the message to be “oh, date the guy with the bad acne and ugly face, cause there’s an off chance, he’ll turn into someone beautiful”!

Fairytales are so obsessed with appearance, that in a study conducted by a Purdue University Sociologist, it was found that after examining 168 fairytales, 94% highlighted the importance of physical appearance. And this physical appearance was mentioned an average of 13.6 times per story. In one particular story, the appearance of the princess was referred to 114 times! Now if that’s not an obsession, what is?! Another thing to note is that any evil character, is ugly. Rumplestilskin was an ugly man, since he was a bad man. Cinderella’s evil stepmother and stepsisters were all ugly. Evil is ugly, and good is beautiful. Well,well,well, isn’t that convenient! Yes, for absolutely perfect barbies, but for all not so incredibly perfect looking people, this is a problem. This fixation with beauty, causes children to link outer beauty to inner beauty. Fairytales emphasize that if you’re beautiful, you’re perfect! Doesn’t this mean that only pretty people can have happy endings? So what about not so pretty people? They have to suffer just cause their nose isn’t shaped right? Yeah, that’s a great message for our young generation. Beauty is perfection. And perfection is beauty.

Next, whether it’s Cinderella’s magic god fairy turning pumpkins into elegant chariots or Jack with his magical beans that reach the sky, magic has always held an importance in fairytales. But, what message is the use of this magic to solve all problems sending to children? Children start to believe that magic can solve their problems too. Okay okay sure, we use the excuse that by believing in magic we’re just giving children to hold on to a belief that is although unreal, a positive one that lets them expand their imagination. But that’s not all this is doing. Children need to know that it’s not magic, but hard work and perseverance that gets you what you want. Cinderella should have had to go and carve those pumpkins into a chariot. And Jack should have never been able to reach the sky had he not built a really, and I mean really, long ladder to do so. Maybe, by putting magic content into our stories, we’re not giving children a bit of fun to hold on to, but rather just unrealistic expectations. Wouldn’t it be better if fairytales were tales of the success of hard work rather than the fact that a magical spell was said well?

Fairytales also send us just plain absurd messages. Who knows how many teenage girls are going around, hunting nearby ponds and lakes for ugly frogs to kiss? And imagine the number of young girls growing out their hair, leaning outside their bedroom windows hoping someone will grab on, and come on up.

Now, everyone wants an happy ending. Even though, we as teenagers and adults alike understand that in life there aren’t always happy endings, each Mission Impossible, does become possible thanks to Tom Cruise doesn’t it? Happy endings give us hope and we need hope. Thrive on it and die without it. So the fact that our stories and movies have happy endings is a good thing! But, can’t we have these happy endings without stereotypes and unrealistic expectations?

Many fairytales are being rewritten, and although some believe this is harming the original purity, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea. As of now, our fairytales are filled with such horrible stereotypes while raising such unrealistic expectations, reading them to our children, is a terrible idea! In fact, we need to rewrite these fairytales to prove that yes, it’s possible to have a happy ending with a stepmother, with an ugly face, without magic, and without incredibly long hair strong enough to hold a prince.