The Exhausted Presence of the Idealized Young Beauty in Fairytales

    This article examines the dominant factor of feminine beauty in childhood fairytales in attempt to uncover the gender, power, culture, and social significance of beauty in women's lives. Before diving into the analysis of this beauty trend in fairytales, the authors Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz discuss the impact an enforced standard can have on women. To women, beauty can either be an oppressive limitation that strongly favors the male patriarchy or a representation of feminine empowerment. To this day, women and girls commonly perceive beauty as a means of acquiring self-esteem and beneficial towards social status. Through the beauty ideal, "women who achieve a high degree of attractiveness are psychologically and socially rewarded" (712). Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz hint towards these ideas as being potential tools of normative social control embedded within society that are strongly emphasized in children's fairytales.

    Fairytales hold dual purposes of serving as entertainment for children, and providing cultural insight into the favored values of society. The stories written during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, "were intended to teach girls and young women how to become domesticated, respectable and attractive to a marriage partner" as well as "teach boys and girls appropriate gendered values and attitudes" (714). 

    Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz focus their examination of beauty and gender on the classical fairytales written by the Grimm brothers in the nineteenth century. Originally these stories were "used as primers for affluent European children and served to impart moral lessons to them" (714). They have been reproduced various times and still to this day contain symbolic language representative of current race, class, and gender systems. Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz reflected on the stories that have survived through the times and take special note on the ones that place significant emphasis on women's beauty. In their findings they discovered that in the original fairytales, "women's beauty...is emphasized in terms of the number of reference to beauty, the way it is portrayed, and the role feminine beauty plays in moving the story along" (719). The amount of times beauty is referenced in the Grimm brothers fairytales outnumbers those of younger men, older men, and older women.

  

    In the stories there is often, "a clear link between beauty and goodness, most often in reference to younger women, and between ugliness and evil" (718). Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz expand on this theme by noting how "beauty is often rewarded, [while] lack of beauty is punished" (719). Within the stories it becomes a source of importance while also a target for danger from other women's envy or jealousy. A strong example of this provided by Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz is the story of Snow White (pictured in the images) where "the murderous actions taken by the stepmother remind readers of the symbolic lengths some women go to maintain or acquire beauty" (719). Lastly, the authors findings behind the original fairytales and those that have been reproduced suggested that "references to feminine beauty and women's physical appearance are related to the number of times it is reproduced" (723).

    Feminine beauty emphasized in children's fairytales operate as a means of normative social control  for women and girls of the past and of today. Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz solidify their argument by pointing out how women's beauty is an obviously noticeable element in fairytales that creates a sense of such control by placing importance on the ideal. The impact of this represented beauty standard is from an indirect way of social control that can be observed as how "women's concern with physical appearance (beauty) absorbs resources (money, energy, time) that could otherwise be spent enhancing their social status" (723). The authors build to this idea through background of beauty ideals impacts on women, the role of fairytales, and evidence suggesting beauty's values to women of then and today. This beauty is not necessarily a direct means of control, but is a repetitive element in works of the past and present that continue to place society's beauty standards on women to this day. 

    

Bibliography 

Baker-Sperry, Lori and Grauerholz, Liz. "The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children's Fairy Tales." Gender and Society, vol. 17, no. 5, Sage Publications Inc., 2003, pp. 711-26.