Why The Villains In Jane Yolen's Fat Is Not A Fairytale

Everyone and their grandmother has watched Disney movies. Some of Disney’s most iconic movies are their modern day reinterpretations of common fairy tales and the princesses with in them such as Cinderella, Jasmine, Snow White, and Rapunzel. However, anyone with eyes can notice that all of their princesses no matter their background rhave one thing in common; They are all fashionably, sometimes impossibly, skinny. And by contrast, many of the villains particularly the female ones are seen as undesirable.Being undesirable, particularly in the case of Cinderella, is shown by making her stepsisters fat and ugly. That is the issue the author, Jane Yolen, focuses on in her poem Fat is not a Fairytale. Within her poem she brings to light

This was only further ingrained within society when the Grimms’ work was visualized and forever immortalized in disney’s memorable reimagining of Cinderella that hit the theaters in the year, 1950. In which cinderella dances in her blue corseted ball gown with the handsome Prince Charming. It is no wonder then that Yolen would rather have had the story be about a “Cinder Elephant” (2) who has a “beautiful pillowed breast’(13) and in consequence having a more realistic role model for most women in American society. However beauty practices woman then and now have

Instead of making parts of their body smaller to achieve that “wasp waisted” look they are making parts of themselves bigger by use of injections and other body enhancements.Plastic surgery is so prolific in fact that many women especially actresses feel that as they age have to get work done in order to keeps job. Yolen compares this behavior to them “flinging”themselves “down the stairs” (7) in order to impress and please others . In the real world, however, no sane woman flings herself down the stairs but many do something just as dangerous with no one batting an eye to achieve that elusive, desired beauty. For example, many women who get breasts enhancements are quite literally putting poison bags full of silicone and salt water within their bodies and going through days worth of pain and permanent scarring in order to look beautiful for other people, men and women alike. Kim Kardashian ,one of the most influential women in America. has been put under the knife so many times that she only has gleaning similarity to what she used to look like before the operations. This is the reason why yolen feels like the fairytales in her poem was for a world not yet