The 1812 version of Snow White is even worse when you consider that the girl was only seven years old in the tale (plus her unconscious body ended up being carted around by the prince until one of his servants accidentally woke her up). Also, in The Little Mermaid, the mermaid’s unable to speak because she had her tongue cut out >__<
But I’d love to see faithful adaptations of the original tales. Especially Bluebeard. We need a Bluebeard adaptation.
Actually, the original-original pre-Grimm Brothers’ stories that were passed around Europe via oral tradition are nowhere near as violent as the Grimm’s made them. Cinderella’s stepsisters were never ugly and kept their eyes, Snow White’s mother was not even a villain (instead a group of bandits were), and instead of spending the whole story napping Sleeping Beauty outwitted a dangerous bandit leader, wouldn’t let him sleep with her, and saved herself.
The original oral stories were radically changed by the Brothers Grimm to fit their personal and political beliefs. Most notably, they often added in female characters solely for the purpose of making them evil villains and took away most of the heroines’ agency and intelligence. Both brothers belonged to a small fanatical sect of Catholicism that vilified women because of the idea of Original Sin and Wilhelm in particular had a particularly deep hatred of women. The Grimms were actually pretty horrible people. Those cannibalistic queens and ugly stepsisters and the mass amount of violence against women didn’t exist until the Grimms wanted them to. Their ideas stuck so soundly though that we now assume they were in the original tales and that these terrible characters and ideas come out of some perceived barbaric Old World culture. But in truth they’re really the Grimms’ weird obsession with hating women showing through. The original oral folklore focused on the heroes’ and heroines’ good deeds and used them as ways to teach cultural norms and a society’s rules and encouraged girls to be quick-witted and street-savvy instead of passive princesses, and the Grimms promptly stripped that all away.
“Grimms Bad Girls and Bold Boys” by Ruth Bottingheimer is an excellent book on this
Something to add to my reading list.
So this guy Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth collected all these fairytales and in the 2000′s they were discovered in an attic and published. Unlike the Grimm brothers, he did not edit anything. The Grimms deliberately edited the stories to fit middle class tastes – they also were trying to create a national identity with these tales as a touchstone. Meanwhile Von Schonwerth’s goal was documenting the Bavarian oral traditions – which is why he didn’t edit the stories in his notes.
And the stories are weird and intense. Some have the classic “beginning middle end + moral” – some are just “here’s stuff that happened….”
And some of the endings…you know that story about a weary soldier who performs three tasks and gets to marry the princess? In this book, the soldier is continually rejected by both the king and the princess, so he brings an army to burn down the entire castle with everyone inside. The end, lol.
The other interesting thing is that while the Grimms tales had mostly female protagonists, Von Schonwerth’s have as many boys trying to escape nasty situations as girls. There are boys who cuddle up with frogs to discover that the frogs are princesses, there are boys called “King Goldenhair,” there are brothers fighting, and fathers sending sons out to stop being a burden on the family. In the introduction, Maria Tatar posits that the Grimms, having suffered from being orphans, may have avoided these types of stories.
Anyway, if you like fairytales, The Turnip Princess book is worth the read.
Alright, so you know how you can fake-throw a ball and a dog will try to find it?
You can do that with cats. I just fake-threw my dinner and my cat stared off into the distance looking for where it landed.
I still think it’s hilarious that the reason nobody ever figures out Superman’s secret identity or where he lives or what he does when he’s not saving the planet, is because he already told them all the Kryptonian stuff that can’t be tied to any of his human friends or family. I guarantee you the in-universe wikipedia article on Superman lists his name as Kal-El and the “personal life” section says that he lives full-time at his private fortress of solitude at the north pole. Nobody in the world looks at Clark Kent and thinks “oh my god, maybe he’s superman!” for the same reason nobody ever starts to suspect that their coworker who looks KINDA like Barack Obama is actually secretly Barack Obama – They know who Barack Obama is and know what he does and they know their coworker Greg is Greg and not Barack Obama. They have no reason to assume Barack Obama secretly moonlights as Greg The IT Guy at their workplace even though they’ve never seen Greg and Obama in the same place. At best, “Greg is secretly Obama” would be a running joke at the office, and the same is true at the Daily Planet. “Kal-El of Krypton, who lives in a CRYSTAL PALACE at the NORTH POLE and whose dayjob is SUPERMAN, sometimes puts on a suit and pretends to be a clumsy reporter and lives in a one-bedroom walkup in Metropolis” is a ridiculous concept to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s true
“Hey, that— that guy, in the corner, is that— is that Superman?”
Clark looks up from his computer at the new intern. “Oh, no,” he says. “You caught me.”
“Clark, you pull this shit every time, man,” his desk neighbor Steve says. “Shut the fuck up.”
“No, the kid’s right, I’m Superman,” Clark says. He gets out of his seat and cracks his back out. “I guess we’re gonna have a superhero fight.”
“Clark, sit back down.”
“Nope. Superhero fight.”
“Clark if you don’t sit the hell back down and finish your article by lunch I am going to tell Perry on you.”
Clark points at the intern. “You get off easy this time, buddy,” he says, and sits back down.
“So…” the intern says, very lost. “Uh…”
“That’s Clark,” a slightly older and more experienced intern says. “He’s Superman’s asshole twin.”
and any time someone gets a little too speculative about batman’s secret identity, bruce wayne spills champagne down a supermodel’s décolettage and the world collectively goes “naaaah”
i say this like once a month but modern artemis would absolutely be a country butch lesbian wearing aviator shades and a messy ponytail and a camo jacket and hunting boots, she’s in a bigass silver truck with a deer skull mounted on the front, she’s got her gold shotgun next to her and there’s like 10 girls in the back of the truck with beers and she’s doing donuts in the bass pro shops parking lot blasting like dixie chicks
Once I worked as an intern in the state capital. One of the representatives I worked for was this middle-aged guy. And he hated the tampon and napkin machines in the women’s bathrooms. Hated them. He insisted that they weren’t necessary.
I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.
He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.
“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”
His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”
I thought, You have got to be kidding.
Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.
And that’s how, at twenty, I had to give a talk on menstruation to a middle-aged married state representative who was one of my bosses. American politics, ladies and gentlemen.
please raise your children to wash their hands after they use the restroom I’ve watched too many men walk straight out of the bathroom from the stall without a second thought and it’s keeping me up at night
I mean if you taking a piss who cares if you don’t wash your hands, unless you just like go full power and spray yourself like a out of control fire hose
stay the fuck away from me
people who wash their hands after peeing are weak and must be culled
The only excuse for not washing your hands after you piss is mastering the art of pissing without touching your genitals.
You wash your hands every time you touch your dick? How grimy is your dick?
I’m literally never shaking a man’s hand ever again in my life y’all need jesus
remember how i told y’all?
(they don’t wash their hands after shitting either)
What I’m learning is that men are the reason for “employees must wash their hands” signs and why I never put 2 and 2 together is beyond me
Just out of curiosity, do yall wash your hands every time you touch your arm or the back of your hand or any other part if your body?
“According to epidemiologist Richard T. Ellison III, it doesn’t matter what you do in the bathroom when it comes to keeping your hands clean. ‘The rationale is that when toileting, it’s possible to have fecal material and fecal bacteria get onto your hands … So it’s wisest to always wash with soap and water even after urinating. Neither plain water nor alcohol hand sanitizers are effective at removing fecal material or killing bacteria in fecal material.’
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, handwashing can prevent various illnesses and infections. Ellison added that it can also keep us from coming in contact with E. Coli and hepatitis.This is especially important for men to bear in mind because of perianal sweat. This type of sweat forms around the perianal area, which is the patch of skin outside the rectum. It can then spread to one’s underwear and to other parts of the body like the penis. Biology professor Pat Fidopiastis explained, ‘The point is that simply touching the penis in an effort to direct your urine flow can be more than enough to transfer harmful microbes to your hands, and then on to the pretzels sitting in bowl on the bar.’“
WASH.
YOUR.
HANDS.
I reblog this every time I see it. Don’t be disgusting, wash your fucking HANDS.
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