“Parents with religious objections to storybooks with LGBTQ themes may withdraw their children from public schools when the books are discussed, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.” — New York Times
Once upon a time, I never got involved in politics. But when the developments of a kingdom far, far away threaten my role as the fairest groomer of them all, I feel no choice but to use my platform to ensure future generations are fed my one and true model for what everyone’s happily ever after shall be. Which is why I, Cinderella Charming, wife and spouse and known pretty girl, applaud the Royal Court in all of the land for waving their magic wands and bibbidi-bobbidi-booing the right for LGBTQ families to be fairly and freely represented in school books, for I believe parents have a right to opt out of stories not revolving around one female stranger, one male stranger, and their quickie, looks-based marriage.
Let me begin by saying that as someone who is only identified by the mean nickname given to me as a girl, I am quite familiar with childhood bullying. But as a multigenerational proxy for heterosexual dating, I even better understand the need for both the bully and the bullied alike to hear and see only the framework of functional man-woman unions. Bullies must never accept families as being two loving dads and a daughter with great clothes and even more impressive extracurriculars. Bullies must come to internalize families as being made up of one dead dad, one cranky gold-digging stepmom, a debatably feral cat who very much adopted the personality of its evil owner, two jealous stepsisters who seem angry for the sole reason that they are less conventionally attractive, and an assortment of mice and birds who are particularly adept at sewing. That is what made happiness such a fairy tale for so many for so long.
I am here to recruit the male gaze. Girls must learn from the start that if they change out of their raggedy clothes and look really pretty, then a man will love them. Similarly, young boys need to know about the looks-obsessed quests of male royalists with foot fetishes. It is the natural order for living happily ever after. Children understand the dynamic of a woman who attracts a fairy godmother through her tears. They cannot handle the benign existence of one class mom who attracted the other class mom during their first year at Oberlin. A dream may be a wish your heart makes, but certain hearts make mistakes!
I don’t make the rules when it comes to spells that extend only to midnight or normalcy that extends only to heterosexual ballroom dancing. Children are to travel to school by a magical pumpkin, not an immaculately detailed Rivian with a very well-curated playlist. Girls who can’t land men via their looks should be portrayed as doomed to a life of evil. Boys must be taught that there is no reason to learn the first damn thing about a woman, or to even hear her voice at all, before deciding she will be your bride. Again, I didn’t write the book—I’ve just been retelling it to impressionable young children for centuries.
That all said, I don’t want you to think I’m heartless. I am very well aware of the plight of the downtrodden. When I lost my glass slipper, I was unsure I would ever get to come out of that closet of a room in which my stepmom trapped me. I feared I might never get to let my real truth shine, as a blonde born to enter a tiara-based marriage. Lest you think I don’t get why LGBTQ families might care to freely share their truths, which have existed for all time and within all animal species, I do want you to know I get it. I’m an ally—if ally means loving that one gossipy little mouse who I know sewed the shit out of the trim on my bodice.
But if young children see representations of families that exist all around them, including inside their own classrooms, then what’s next? Are you gonna tell Snow White to skip both the apple and the kiss, opting instead for vegan potlucks and the WNBA? Are you gonna insist Sleeping Beauty not hit the hay and instead keep on dancing with that Chappell girl? We already got scared when that rebel rouser Belle started telling people it was what was inside that counted. We were just one slippery little consonant away from her yearnings turning more breast than beast!
Boys like girls. Girls like balls. Put them together, and what do you have? The right kind of indoctrination.