I think I've mentioned this before, Snow White, like all the princess stories, is a feminist nightmare. In the original, Snow White is pretty. Which pisses off her stepmother. So she runs away, cooks and cleans for a while. Gets duped in a moment of spectacular gullibility. Dies. Is brought back to life by a kiss. Yay, feminism!
Laney, of course, loves it and demands repeated retellings. So over the past few years I've honed the story from something that began as just a less offensive version into something that is, even for a tree-hugging, lefty-liberal, vegetarian, atheist peacenik like myself, hilariously liberal. I mean, my Snow White is as Marxist as Rush Limbaugh pretends Obama is. It is, in short, a veritable parody of itself and amuses me to no end. I love it. I figured I'd better record it, since in a few years, Laney will stop wanting me to tell it. So, here goes:
Part the First: in which Snow White Gains Awareness of her World.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful baby girl born who had hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow [that surprised you, didn't it? I stuck with the original script for the beginning]. But, oh wasn't it sad? Her Mommy died when she was born. Snow White's Daddy was the king of the land, but he wasn't a really good king. The only thing he loved to do was hunt. So, he spent all his time hunting, and all the kingdom's money on hunting equipment and left poor Snow White to raise herself.
So, Snow White took to wandering about the castle. On some days she'd hang out with the maids and they taught her to clean. For instance, you have to pick the picture frames up to dust and can't just dust around them. And as she helped the cleaning crew, they told her about their lives. They talked about their families and how they celebrated Christmas and how they were worried since there wasn't enough food in the land. The king forbade the commoners from hunting on his land. This made things difficult for the commoners.
And some days she hung out in the kitchen and the cooks taught her to cook. She learned how to make soup out of just vegetables since that's what the cooks used when they made soup at home. There was no meat for the commoners to eat. They told her more about their lives and how worried they were.
But her favorite person to hang out with was the Master of the Hunt, who was named Freddie and who was kind of dreamy. Freddie taught her to ride and how to love the animals on the earth.
One day the king noticed that Snow White was walking around, as neglected teenage girls often are, in a dress that was both too short and too tight. No one had taught Snow White that she needed to replace her dresses when they got too small. The king decided he'd better marry.
Coming tomorrow, Part the Second: In Which Snow White Meets Socialist Dwarves
