The folk tale of Cinderella has lasted through the ages because instances of individuals suffering from oppression have been part of so many families – in all different eras and in families all around the world. We never tire of hearing about reversals of fortune. It’s always lovely to get to the part where something wondrously beautiful happens to lift the underdog up out of an ugly and demeaning life.
But what about the step sisters in that tale? What do you think becomes of them? This is a question that Toni Morrison posed in a commencement address she gave at Barnard in 1979. She wondered how the step sisters turned out, having been raised by a mother who was cruel to and enslaved another girl.
The step sisters themselves, according to the Grimm tale, were beautiful women of status and power. How crippling it must have been for them to grow up watching a mother enslaving another girl. They had to have been broken by that experience, their wholeness as dignified human beings curdled and soured by the dastardly example of oppression their mother provided, day in and day out.
Even before they left that household, they had adopted their mother’s way of treating another human being like a slave, of using the mother’s scathing tone to deal with Cinderella. This is what it meant to them to have status and power: to treat another human being cruelly, to use another human being as their personal slave.
In our own time, how do beautiful girls with status and power – be it wealth, fine minds, or athletic prowess – how do they wield that status and power when they grow into women? If the parents and teachers and coaches who raise them have taught them to feel superior to others of less wealth or intellect or physical ability, those privileged little girls will grow up to be oppressors. They will find someone or some group to behave toward as if they are of lower value than themselves. They will find people that they can treat as less worthy, less deserving than themselves.
The beautiful little girls of today need parental and other role models who can show them which behaviors and attitudes have the effect of empowering others, lifting them up, helping them reach their potential. Teach them that being beautiful, smart, talented and all, does not give them the right to engage in oppression or to put limits on someone’s experiences. Teach them how to use their status and power to enable the status and power of others.
And if you grew up as Daddy’s Little Princess, you might want to take a look at the ways that experience could be keeping you from living as an equal among equals.
