Idiotic Princes - the dubious messages in some fairytales

 I read fairy tales unquestioningly as a child. Now that I have children, those stories seem less benign.

I loved Cinderella. I had ugly younger brothers, not ugly stepsisters, but that just reinforced the myth for me,  because my parents were manifestly unfair about the boys and housework.

 But, and this is the thing, Cinderella was all about the dresses and winning over the siblings  (she got to go to three  balls in increasingly magnificent dresses in the Ladybird Best Loved Tales Series 606d). The romance was irrelevant except as part of Cinderella's revenge.

Even at six, I knew the Prince did not matter.

Looking back on it now, it is obvious. He is an idiot.

• He doesn't recognize the woman he has been dancing with all night. Where was he looking for heaven's sake? Not at her face, obviously.
• He thinks that shoe size matters. Great basis for choosing a long-term partner!

But he's not the worst. He's just stupid - other fairytale heroes are more morally suspect. Just think how many princes of legend prefer to make love to comatose women.

• Sleeping Beauty (rather says it all, doesn't it!). The Prince fights his way through a densely-woven hedge of spines to fall in love with a woman in a coma (obvious psychoanalytic interpretations). Some versions of the story have the Prince effectively raping Sleeping Beauty while she sleeps. What a hero!
• Snow White's prince also falls in love with a passive heroine - she's dead and lying in a crystal coffin. Necrophilia is not actually illegal in the United States as a whole, but the Prince had better not take his loved one's coffin to Nevada where he could get life-imprisonment.

How on earth did they all live "happily ever after"?

Presumably that could only happen if they had equally dense princesses, but that's another post.