Why You Need Fairy-Tale Fashion
In Margaret Atwood’s essay “Of Souls as Birds”, she writes about the period of time in which fairy tales were sanitized and made acceptable “for well-brought-up little girls of the fifties…[for whom] the main point of these stories was the outfits. Ruffles were all.” Atwood explains that she was not one of those little girls, and she had been exposed to the darker versions of tales as a child. I take that to mean that she escaped the clutches of the fancy, frilly, gown-filled, jewel-encrusted loveliness that permeated Disney tales and the world of children’s literature surrounding them, and instead, she was influenced by the darkness and adult-centric themes of fairy tales leading up to the time of Disney’s omnipresence.
It is true that Atwood often uses fairy-tale themes, imagery, and symbols in her own literary works. Entire books of literary criticism have been devoted to her connections with fairy tales, such as Sharon Rose Wilson’s Myths and Fairy Tales in Contemporary Women’s Fiction: From Atwood to Morrison and Margaret Atwood’s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics. Certainly there is a wealth of information to analyze in regards to the darker side of fairy tales, and I’ve spent a lot of my career thinking, writing, and teaching about these ideas. But given the times that we live in, given the way it seems as if few are happy or even slightly content, I do think we are seeing an outcry for MORE fairy tales, MORE fantasy. People want a place to escape, if even for a short time. People need desperately to see magic in their world, to MAKE magic happen.
I’m here to say that fairy tales can be a door that you open to bring that magic into your life.
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I want you to think for a moment about what might have drawn you to fairy tales when you were younger. Much younger. I want you to think about whether it really was the fact that we see people meet then marry 2 seconds later. You know what? I doubt it. I don’t think that young children who read or hear fairy tales are drawn to relationships. I think they are drawn to bright shiny things. As a small child, I was entranced by one thing and one thing only: fairy-tale fashion. I was in love with the dresses and the jewelry, not the princes. I was focused on what the princesses were wearing, not the way they courted with the prince at the ball. And of course, we can argue that teaching young people to be focused only on external appearances over internal traits is a bad thing. I don’t disagree with that. But what I’m saying now is, let’s cut ourselves some slack. Life is super hard right now and has been for some time. How can we tap in to an element of fairy-tale culture in our adult lives and re-awaken something that might have made us excited, content, and happy as kids?
Fairy-tale fashion is one answer.
Even though I was exposed to both Disney AND the Brothers’ Grimm (and Perrault, and Andersen, et al.) as a kid, and I wasn’t a child of the 50s but of the 70s, “Ruffles were all,” as far as I was concerned. My first Halloween costume was Cinderella. I think the second and third were as well. I went from those packaged super-flammable costumes with the molded face mask to fancier handmade ones. I pranced around the house in a pale pink satin dress my mom sewed me herself when I “played” Cinderella. I wore a necklace with a little lady on it that I said was my “Cinderella necklace.” You know how we all have a handful of SUPER ICONIC GLUED INTO OUR BRAINS memories that we can recall so completely? One of mine is of my mom and I standing in a shoe store that was going out of business, and this man with a Magnum P.I. mustache walking triumphantly out from behind a tan curtain behind the counter, holding up a gold metallic slipper in his hand in my size, the mate to the shoe I found in the giant box of shoes on sale. These became my “Cinderella shoes”, probably just bedroom slippers, that I wore around the house incessantly. I swear seeing that man walk out from behind the curtain was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Have you got any memories like that? Did you ever play dress-up? Did you ever act out a fairy tale? Did you ever sit and read them next to a window on a rainy day?
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Flash forward to years of surviving on a lot less money as an unexpected horrid turn in my life made me into a divorced woman in my 40s, and the day I saw that Sex and the City episode where Carrie Bradshaw’s Manolo Blahnik’s are stolen at a friend’s apartment. I remember the anguish in her eyes when her friend won’t replace the shoes, the determination in her stride when she marches in and registers for said pair of shoes on the grounds that she is celebrating being married to herself, the elation through her entire being when her friends relents and buys her the shoes, and she opens the shoes and puts the “glass slippers” on her own feet. I, too, bought myself a pair of “fancy” shoes, to commemorate that I, too, could be Cinderella, even on my own.
(My much lower-priced pair that resemble the Manolo’s)
My point is this: I noticed that at a very tough time in my life, I needed comfort, and to find that comfort, I time-traveled back to my childhood memories of fairy tales. That’s when I realized that I needed to bring that magic back into my world as an adult. Buying a pretty pair of slippers to wear around my house to feel glamorous in is just one thing I’ve done for myself. There are lots of other things I’ve done. Lots of things that YOU can do.
Ask yourself, if you have ever in your life been drawn to “What Cinderella Wore”, which is actually the subtitle of a book I’m reading now (Rebecca-Anne C. DoRozario’s Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition: What Cinderella Wore), then what was it about the outer garments and accessories in fairy tales that made you feel something? What was it you wanted for yourself? And how can you try to manifest that feeling now in your life?
Most of us can’t afford to run out and spend a ton of money on outer trappings of finery, but we can find other ways to fill that empty void in our lives. First of all, we can re-acquaint ourselves with stories. We can read fairy tales in short form, in novels, in re-imagined or classic variants. We can take time each day to escape for 30 minutes or so into that magical world.
Secondly, we can start to look at our own wardrobes, if fashion is what draws us. Can we accessorize in a way that makes us feel magical? Can we pull out old jewelry (I did this recently) and find something that was an inexpensive broach that our mothers gave us 30 years ago and fix that to a scarf hiding in the back of the closet? For those of us who make things with our hands, can we knit or crochet a wrap that highlights our favorite colors from a fairy-tale dress, so that when we wear it, we KNOW that we are becoming Aurora in her dress of blue/pink/purple, and those who have always been entranced by that scene in the Disney film will “get it” too?
Thirdly, can we start to look outside of ourselves when we are out and about, and LOOK for evidence of magic in the way other people dress or carry themselves? And when we see evidence of magic, can we actually compliment such people by saying things like “I love your coat! You remind me of a fairy-tale queen!”
I’m sure there are ways I’ve not thought of that we can bring more fairy-tale fashion and magic into our lives, and I’d love to hear suggestions if you wouldn’t mind taking the time in the comments below. I am actually preparing to teach a whole course right now on this very subject which begins Friday Nov. 12th.
But at this very moment, if there is one wish I have for you who have read this essay, it is this: think about how you feel every day. Think about the days that are the hardest. Then think about the world of fairy tales, whether you are drawn to the dark of them or the light of them or somewhere in between. Then think of how fairy tales have always existed and how they always will exist. Certainly they have existed for entertainment’s sake alone, as stories told to friends and family to pass the time during difficult chores. Sometimes they exist for the stories they tell about quests and victories (and defeats), their characterizations of growth and rites of passage. But sometimes they also exist as a way to enable us to find magic, to cast a spell over our lives, to help us escape, but most of all, to find hope. I hope that in this moment, you find a way to adorn yourself with some fairy-tale magic, and I hope that it brings you great comfort.