I recently read the original version of the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for the first time in many years. I had forgotten some things like the fact the the Evil Queen was Snow's mother, not her step-mother, originally. Other things have carried over no matter the version, such as the fact that I have just never been a fan of Snow White because her weaknesses bother me.
What I realized for the very first time though with this reading was I am guilty of a sort of reverse stereotyping of these fairy tale heroines. Many fairy tale princesses (in many versions) have to rely on someone else (usually the prince) to step in and save the day and I have never been comfortable with the idea of waiting for some knight in shining armor to come riding into my life and tell me not to eat the poisoned apple.
Somewhere along the way, I began mentally equating these beautiful heroines with weakness and just wrote them off as useless and what I did not want to be. Unconciously, I was equating beauty with a negative trait and struggled with wanting to be beautiful, but not wanting other people to tell me I was beautiful because that would mean I was weak.
I realize now that while it is good I did not want to be weak, being beautiful has nothing to do with whether you are weak or not and I am sure now that I am aware of what I was doing, I can work on correcting it.
