One of the news headlines today, in the actual news, is that a famous actress won’t let her child watch Cinderella.
What I imagine is an editor somewhere sitting at a polished wooden table, wafting a pen through the air as though conducting an orchestra of hipsters and MacBooks.
“So we run with it. Half the room go left... she’s a terrible Mum and if it was good enough for us as kids then it’s good enough for hers, yada yada yada... and the other half go right: empowering her children, she’s rewriting the narrative of gender stereotypes and she should be applauded, eck cetera.”
“Wait. Why do we care? I mean isn’t it up to her how she runs her family. Why should the nation w...”
“Because, powder-brain, the nation loves it. They love a debate, an argument, a noise. Trust me. For some reason it’ll go nuts on Twitter, and we’ll get a gazillion hits, either way.”
Meanwhile, I notice, the rest of the news, the actual news, is pretty awful, whether it polarises the nation or not, as seems to be popular these days.
Anyway, I reckon it’s okay to show your kids Cinderella and Snow White and The Little Mermaid, but of course, obviously, absolutely reinforce the truths that girls don’t need rescuing by boys on horses, that it is never okay to kiss a sleeping stranger, and that your voice is as important as your heart.
But don’t just copy some Hollywood celebrity. And don’t get mad at her either. It’s nobody’s business but hers after all. That is kind of the point, whether the media and that room full of MacBooks want us arguing over it or not.
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