Devine Miss M strikes again
Miranda, Miranda, when are we going to leave this Hanging Rock and go home? Miranda? MIRANDA!!!Sometimes I just wanna scream "MIRANDA!!" too, and sometimes I wish she'd take a one-way picnic to HR. Today's effort from Frank Devine Jnr about Mary, Queen of Iceland, however, isn't making me screaming. It just demonstrates that such cynical, conservative journalist can also be so incredibly naive.
For some cynics, mainly men, Mary's crowd appeal is a mystery. To them, she's just a pretty Tassie chick who struck it lucky in the pub.
Heheh. Proudly cynical as charged.
(Fairy tales) are women's tales, yet feminists from Simone de Beauvoir to Andrea Dworkin have railed against what they see as the passive heroines of fairytales, the sleeping Snow White waiting for her prince, the Rapunzel stuck in her tower. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm perpetuate the patriarchy, goes the line. It is an evil plot to brainwash little girls into believing life will only be complete when their prince arrives to subjugate them.
But fairytales are our oral history and, despite attempts to sanitise and subvert them, the reason they have endured through generations has to be that they resonate with children.
Exactly. CHILDREN. NOT full-grown women. Therefore:
Mary's story perhaps will give licence to more young women to re-assess their priorities and admit the horrible, shameful truth: that nothing is more important than meeting their personal prince, for their future children and generations ahead.
is more likely true for, say, 3-year-olds who've just learned how to poop on the grown-ups toilet.
Mary dropped kilograms and went to deportment school after meeting Fred. She moved to Paris, learnt Danish and transformed her posture and image before he proposed. She has relinquished her Australian citizenship, converted to the Lutheran faith and given up her rights to any children in the event of a divorce. She has worked as hard on cultivating the relationship as she ever did on her career or university degree.
Unlike many of her diffident peers, she put herself on the line for love. To her, becoming a wife was a serious ambition.
Ohhh right, she did all this for love. Not for the millions of dollars, unlimited travel and clothes, the opportunity to never have to seriously work again or the small European country. Love. Rigggght.
Thanks 'Randa.
posted by Sam @ Thursday, March 10, 2005
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