«Biancaneve was a housemaid for the seven dwarfs”. And “Are we sure that if it had been a mussel the hunter would have saved it anyway?”. Again: «Why does the prince need a slipper to recognize Cinderella, he couldn’t look her in the face?» Invited to inaugurate the academic year of Luiss Guido Carli University, Paola Cortellesi, fresh from the success of the film There’s still tomorrowstaged a monologue on sexism in fairy tales. Alluding to the clichés that contribute to creating the collective imagination of women. And which, in his opinion, have built the patriarchal and chauvinist culture in our country.
That of fairy tales is a world in which the protagonists’ only gift is often beauty the saving power is entrusted to men. Especially if powerful, like Prince Charming.
Paola Cortellesi, sexist fairy tales and “neutral” toys
So what to do? No more traditional classic fairy tales, to dolls for girls and toy cars for boys? How many readings and games are the result of assimilated stereotypes and how much do they instead respond to healthy and in some cases different needs of “boys and girls”?
We talked about it with Daniele Novara, pedagogist and founder of Cpp (Psycho-pedagogical Center for education and conflict management), and with Manuela Trinci, child psychotherapist.
Ban on fairy tales to break down sexist stereotypes?
Giving up the traditional fairy tales mocked by Paola Cortellesi would be a mistake for both. «The stories of the past contain some fundamental archetypes» explains Novara. «If each generation reviews traditional values and builds its own, that doesn’t mean it has to abolish the classic: neither the Greek philosophers, nor the fairy tale of Snow White. The germ of misogyny is not in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty but in pornography on the web. The one that slightly older kids happily frequent.”
«Fairy tales help us live», confirms Manuela Trinci. “And it would be a great shame to exclude classic ones from children’s libraries in the name, for example, of female emancipation.”
In classic fairy tales, many values, emotions and processes useful for the emotional development of children are conveyed. Trinci lists some of them. «Getting lost in the woods and Tom Thumb’s fear. The envy of the stepsisters in Cinderella. The thought of how one is born in the belly of Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf.”
As explored by many scholars, including the Viennese psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, fairy tales know how to stimulate, with an indirect and symbolic approach, children’s intelligence on both a conscious and unconscious level. They lead them through the various stages of growth: through the desire and at the same time the fear of growing. The desire for independence from parents. The fear of the dark, of death, of being unwanted, of feeling bad. Anger towards parents. Envy.
Not just Snow White as a maid (as Paola Cortellesi tells it)
And then there is not only the Disney version of Snow White, the one in which she is a maid for the seven dwarfs, as Paola Cortellesi tells it. The original one by the Brothers Grimm is much bloodier: the evil queen is her mother, Snow White is not woken up by the prince’s kiss but by the fact that her coffin fell to the ground. Isn’t this a story suitable for children? Yet it deals with fundamental themes. Envy and jealousy. Growing up far from home. The discovery of the good behind unusual appearances (the dwarves).
But that moral standards change rapidly is demonstrated by the story of this fairy tale: already in a version shortly after the Grimm, the witch is locked up in a prison where she is looked after by Snow White. To say that good people cannot be bad.
The psychotherapist’s advice is therefore not to stop at either Grimm or Disney. To frequent good libraries and bookstores and to vary, not only the stories but also the editions. «Little Red Riding Hood, for example, has been reinterpreted in a modern key, with illustrations by Roberto Innocenti». And transformed into story of a solicitation in a supermarket, in a world made of wolves and woods different from those in the fairy tale, but just as dangerous.
Trinci also suggests The three Little Pigs Of Giusi Guarenghi (Topipittori) in which the entrance of a slut (female) on the scene brings a revolution in the plot. And instead the psychotherapist advises against “books that want to convey an overly popular message of female emancipation, you risk losing the beauty and poetry of reading”.
Games for boys and games for girls. Or not?
We come to play which, experts explain, has no sex differences in early childhood. Males and females play and fight in the same way, equally without a sense of shame and limits. The symbolic game, between pots and dolls, it is frequented by both sexes. And that’s fine. «Allowing boys to express their most sensitive, “feminine” part in caring games, and girls the most combative and physical part, with masculine games is very useful and advisable», explains Trinci.
Dolls and princesses “against” toy cars and superheroes
The transformation takes place with nursery school: the triumph of pink, princesses and sequins on one side, and blue, toy cars and superheroes on the other begins. «It cannot be denied that the physiology of males and females is different and that games can reflect a different attitude. There is a female identity that is linked to the maternal, in a broad sense, to acceptance and conciliation» explains Trinci.
But it would be wrong «try to orient spontaneous play in an ideological sense. The game is a reworking of the adult world: it is a ritual of internal psycho-evolutionary recomposition”, explains Novara. «And it is therapeutic, therefore fundamental. It helps children to metabolize what they experience and their emotions on a neurosymbolic level.”
The little girl who mother does he also exorcises the relationship with his mother. The child who play toy soldiers he is releasing his aggression. «The kid addicted to shooting video games should be worrying because he is other-directed. Not the child who, with his hands, makes little men, toy cars and superheroes collide”, concludes Novara.
The parental script on the destiny of a child
Of course, Trinci admits, the environment in which a girl grows influences her development and culture accentuates biological characteristics. «The child often responds to a parenting script which corresponds to what is expected of him. Pierino is aggressive like his grandfather and Lucia is shy like her aunt.” So easily Pierino and Lucia will confirm the predictions that their parents made about them.
When sexual identity is formed
«To this we add one precociousness of contents», continues Trinci. «Today contents and stories designed for 9 and 10 year old boys and girls reach very young children. With the result of anticipating a lot the child’s full recognition of his own sexual identity». So it happens that little girls take on girlish attitudes very, very early.
In reality, sexual identity is mostly structured over time. «Around 3, 4 years old our children enter in the period that we can define as philosophical. Maybe they ask for a little brother, but it’s above all to understand how children are born.” Then around the age of 4 or 5 they clearly understand that they belong, or do not belong, to their biological sex. «They should not be forced in any sense, nor by offering them only “pink” or “blue” games. But not even, in an ideological way, acting in anticipation of their hypothetical sexually fluid identity».
The game must be spontaneous and non-ideological
Children’s games should not be “normatized: the freer they are, the better”, explains Trinci. For this reason, she recalls the psychotherapist recalling Bruno Munari, we should provide many forms of play, many “unfinished” tools that the child can complete with her play.
«Children play with everything, even boredom», wrote Sandro Penna. The simpler toys are, the more they enable children to express fantasies and evoke real experiences. And without this having any educational or moral value.
Finally, it is worth recalling some statements by Walter Benjamin, a great scholar of the world of childhood in the twentieth century, who was very concerned about the invasion of the market of toys that “kill childhood”. That is to say overly structured toys that make it more difficult for the child to unleash his imagination. Because, as we know, “the game is not the toy”.
Advice to parents
One last piece of reading advice, this one for parents. «Read me loudlyby Rita Valentino Merletti and Bruno Tognolini: it is an invitation to read, read, read together with our children. Even when, as the author’s little daughter, whom he quotes, says, the “father has a voice like stone”. It’s always worth it.”
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