Snow White wasn’t loved by FAMILY TIES modern mother, Elise Keaton. No, Keaton stated Snow White was passive, just hanging around, waiting for a prince. And YES, this modern woman was making a valid point.
But it’s also a fact, that most of us do some waiting, as we learn to make friends of both sexes, then date, eventually figuring out WHO WE ARE, and how we will choose to live our adult lives.
In my childhood, I admired Snow White. It wasn’t just Disney, it was an old fairy tale, changed, rearranged, but part of growing up… If your parents or grandma bought you books, you knew about Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty etc. Even my granddaughter chose a princess for one of her first Halloween costumes. (That apple (poison or not) doesn’t fall far from the tree.) But over time, with the rise of “women power”, the old fairy tales can start to wear thin, except…there is Disneyland.
WILL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE?
On a visit with my brother to Disneyland, we wandered into a store where NOW, WOW, you can try on, then purchase a Snow White costume, fulfill your childhood dreams. My brother encouraged me…and so I tried one on.
But as I stood looking at myself in the mirror, I wasn’t Snow White. The really powerful part had to be my memories. Surely that curious child buried inside me would have leapt for joy, if such a costume had been offered to her. But she did okay without it.
Not only on Halloween, but whenever I chose to: I wore a white cotton dishtowel tied around my neck. It fell not so gracefully over my corduroys, tee-shirt, saddle shoes. And in my mind, I was dealing with the Wicked Queen, hanging out with the Seven Dwarfs. The image in the mirror, different then. The image being filtered through my amazing childhood imagination.
OTHER THOUGHTS
My granddaughter, other modern children don’t have to leap very far to fall into other worlds, live out their story-dreams. Her Cinderella costume an exact replica of the Disney image. Television and video games also provide exact visual images, do a lot of the creative work for young minds. That’s a worry, though at the same time, their games are challenging, combining fine motor skills with brain skills at a speed I could never attain.
Thankfully, books still provide only the printed word as a pathway to fantasy and mind-dreams. And on Halloween, it always happens—some parents and their creative kids let their imaginations run wild, producing a child at my door dressed as a sausage, a stack of books, or an amazing vampire that sprang from a crazy, wild vision.
I realize now that my dishtowel wasn’t very imaginative. But it didn’t need to be. In childhood, reality provided constant discovery. Our imaginations created Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, who were wildly exciting and so very real. All you had to do was live inside your head. And when you put on a pirate cape (towel)—you were a pirate. When you rode off on your bike around the block to escape your parents, you rode a beautiful horse far off into the desert. It was fantasy, it was incredible.
Children will always need their own imagination turf—those places of solitude that we found in our youth: a tree fort (a fancy parent-built one or a plank in a tree); a tent (the real thing or a sheet draped over chairs); a clubhouse (the corner of the garage, a closet, or the old shed out back, works just as well.)
It’s all in the mind’s eye, as that corner becomes a place where children’s games shed any reminders of parents and home. There another life exists. It’s the cardboard box and string thing. Or it can be where the video game gets solved without using all the gold coins. Because it’s always been true, imaginations need exercise as much as arms and legs do.
So on a recent visit, my two older grandchildren and I built a tent using chairs and stools. We made so much noise and had so much fun we woke up the baby. They loved it.
NO COSTUME… I PURCHASED THE STATUE INSTEAD
And when my granddaughter put on her Cinderella costume, I was entranced. No dish towels for her. And I didn’t buy the Snow White adult costume. Instead, I bought the plastic statue of Snow White, (the first photo above) later discovering it’s really a bank, a nice metaphor for holding my memories, reminding me that the human imagination is still alive and kicking.
8 Responses
I love how the Snow White statue turned out to be a bank. There’s something satisfying about that. Girls, save your money, Snow White is saying. Don’t just be pretty. Sage advice.
Thanks, Laurie. It is a fun story, and even today, Disney inspires children of color, different backgrounds. We all need to live in our heads.
As adults we too often don’t make time for our imagination. My granddaughter was infatuated with Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Not a Disney character, but for months she only wore the blue and white checked dress, the red shoes, and carried a basket with a stuffed animal dog. Drover her mother crazy!
Hi Meryl, I absolutely love this! LIVING THE DREAM. Children have to dream…that is how they become writers, thinkers.
I would have joyed playing with your granddaughter…imagination is a GIFT and now we use it in our writing.
The Snow White bank is giving advice my aunt did when I was getting married back in the 1970’s. Always have your own money, a bank account only in your name, and your own job. Start saving early, girls! Even if you pretend you are a princess, it doesn’t matter as long as you imagine and write your own mental books and movie scripts. My daydreams were more oriented to exploring the moon as an astronaut, played out with various toys and dolls, but imagination must be encouraged and exercised.
Thanks Alana. Your aunt gave you good advice, as we were at a point in the culture, in changes in women’s lives that we
needed to consider EVERYTHING. No Prince Charming was ever going to save us!! Thanks for reading.
I love how much food for thought this created this morning… thank you
Carol, that is a lovely and important compliment from you. THANKS.