There's a rising trend among "boss moms" to take a more practical and realistic approach to raising their children. These are the moms who object to their kids watching Disney's Little Mermaid because they don't want their daughters to grow up thinking they should throw their whole life away for a man. While there are certainly reasons to be wary of having your kids watch Disney movies, that really isn't one of them.
At least, not in my book.
But hey, they're not my kids, so to each their own.
Still, I'm only human, which means I'm going to have opinions about things that are wholly unrelated to me. And moms not wanting their girls to watch beautiful princesses fall in love with courageous princes because it's "unrealistic" is one of those things on which I have opinions.
I'll start with a very brief introduction to the origin of fairytales (believe me, there have been literal books upon books written about this topic) in order to establish a general baseline of what fairytales are as well as what they are not.
First, fairytales are predominantly social tales. To be even more specific, most fairytales originated as folktales in which no explicit magic was used and the stories were usually about "Young Jack" or "Little Gretel;" people who didn't actually exist but very well could have. A "this happened to my cousin's uncle's brother-in-law's barber" type of thing. The concept of magic was later introduced to folk tales as a way of explaining supernatural occurrences, to add an air of mystery, or most commonly to act as a sort of extended metaphor.
Second, fairytales were never meant to be taken literally. Almost every common fairytale trope is either a metaphor, an analogy, a simile, or an allegory. For example: beautiful vs. ugly. For the most part, a woman is referred to as "beautiful" in a fairytale not because she fits an outward aesthetic mold (though that was commonly the case due to extending the metaphor from the inside to the outside) but because she behaved beautifully.
Additionally, this "beautiful behavior" was entirely defined by the current societal norms in which the fairytale was first told, or according to the norms of a foreign society in which it was adopted. In those rare fairytales where a physically beautiful person is inwardly ugly, the fairytale narrator deliberately draws attention to this "flaw" in their overall character. A sort of "she was nice to look but no one liked her ugly personality" type of deal. These types of female characters are outside the norm, and storytellers made that very clear. So when a character is described as being "ugly," it's typically in reference to her ugly behavior.
As an aside, I would like to point out that most versions of Cinderella refer to her stepsisters as "wicked" rather than "ugly," though those descriptions ultimately amount to the same thing: they were awful people with awful personalities who behaved terribly.
The same "beauty = virtue" idea holds true for male characters in fairytales as well, though in their case, the comeliness of their outward appearance was more related to how well they conformed to masculine gender norms such as courage, protection, and ability to provide.
Third, fairytales as we currently know them were written for, by, and about the hyper-elite. Around the mid-19th century, French nobility began recreating the folktales they heard from commoners to present at salon gatherings for the sake of entertainment. These stories were deliberately constructed to reflect upper-class ideals and values, which is why a lot of the surviving fairytales we have involve predominantly upper-class people in the primary roles. For example, in the original Beauty and the Beast, it was "discovered" after Beauty freed the Beast that she was actually "noble all along," which erased any potential class contamination by having a prince marry a commoner.
A notable exception to this is the Grimms' Brothers collection, but their anthology wasn't originally considered a collection of fairytales but rather a collection of folktales. If you reread them, you'll notice that many stories we know to have magical elements are actually closer to "nature" magic than fairy magic. Trees grow unexpectedly fast, birds can speak to the pure of heart, etc. To reference Cinderella again, the "magic" in her story comes from taking care of a tree planted by her dead mother; no fairy godmother required. It was only after Disney Studios got involved that fairy magic became the norm rather than the exception.
Finally, fairytales were not written for children. While folktales were often told to children as a form of psychological conditioning, fairytales were written - as I said previously - by the hyper-elite for the hyper-elite. They weren't adapted and relegated to the nursery until they fell out of fashion as a form of adult entertainment first. Because of that, a lot of the original stories contain some seriously questionable elements, so I would suggest reading them yourself before deciding what is or isn't acceptable for your children.
All this is to say that fairytales were never designed to be roadmaps for what people should or shouldn't do. Rather, they were general examples sprinkled with a bit of magic to create a whimsical and whistful idea of what real men and real women should be like. They're moralizing tales, designed to infuse those who heard them with a sense of social morality, but that's the extent of it. More often than not, the fairytales we now know and love as classics were the 1800's equivalent of a Marvel movie: a lot of fun but without any real substance. There are exceptions, of course, but that was the norm.
Does that mean there's nothing to learn from fairytales? Of course not. Regardless of the original intent, fairytales have become so deeply ingrained in our culture that their tropes and cliches are crucial to certain aspects of modern communication. So when it comes to telling fairytales, the question shouldn't be "do we or don't we" but rather "how should we."
The most important thing is to make the fairytale framework work for you and what it is you need to convey rather than sticking to the original story as written. Yes, there's a lot to learn from fairytales as they are, but society and culture have changed irrevocably since Cinderella was first told then retold then retold again before it was finally written down again and again and again. But if you tell the story your own way, it becomes a brand new story with a brand new meaning that is entirely relatable to what your child is going through right now because you're telling it to - maybe even about - your child as they are right now.
For an example of what I mean, I told Abby an "updated" version of the Princess and the Frog a while back. The story is, unfortunately, lost because I didn't record it. But I did adapt it into a children's picture book. And who knows? Maybe I'll tell the story again to another of my nieces or nephews, and it will look completely different from what I wrote down. Because the purpose of fairytales in this day and age is to help children make sense of the world. And because they grow quickly, what makes sense today won't necessarily make sense tomorrow.
So be adaptable. Be patient. But overall, enjoy the process.
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