Always Be Good and Kind and Beautiful and...

Before Cinderella's mother died, she called for her daughter to come to her bedside. "Promise me that after I'm gone, you will always be good and kind. If you promise that, God will protect you." Because her mother asked nicely and because this was her last wish, Cinderella did make the promise, and for the rest of her stint as a character in this Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, she was known as the hardworking, never-complaining, beautiful young girl with unparalleled kindness and a sweet temperament who, despite her ugly step-family's efforts, snagged the King. And she did it all by hersel... uh...she did it all with the help of a fairy. 

Princess Aurora, aka Sleeping Beauty, was an unintended victim of a fairy fight. One fairy got mad at another fairy and the first fairy, said, "No one messes with this fairy! I'll show you!" So the first fairy, aka "ugly, bad fairy," put a curse on the young princess; on her sixteenth birthday, she fell into deep slumber. She was doomed to spend the rest of her time in this fairy tale sleeping...unless. Yep! You guessed it. This sleeping beauty could not get out of this mess by herself. Enter three fairies and a prince. 

Snow White, aka Excellent Housekeeper for Dwarfs, couldn't get a break. She was just too beautiful for her stepmother to handle. "Off with her liver and lungs," the wicked ugly stepmother said while primping in front of a talking mirror. Three murder attempts failed so she was put to slumber and later placed in a glass gasket in an enchanted forest where a passerby prince just happened to be passing by, and he instantly fell in love with her. Well, she was pretty darn beautiful, ya know; he couldn't help himself. Beauty does that to people. Excellent Housekeeper for Dwarfs couldn't get herself out of this predicament. Bring in the fairies and the prince. Once again, problem solved by someone other than the hardworking, never-complaining, sweet, kind, good, beautiful protagonist of these stories.

Did you see it? I didn't see it for decades. It's so clear, yet the underlying message in most of the fairy tales that influenced my early thinking wasn't obvious at all: Always be good and kind and beautiful and hardworking and a non-complainer, and if you are all that and more, you still don't have what it takes to make it in the world--a world full of ugly antagonists--all by yourself. But don't despair, you sweet, pretty little thing. Prince Charming is on his way to rescue you. All you have to do is believe and it is true. 

I believed.