Growing up with stories and fairytales is a memory no child could forget, until they learn that the fairytales they’ve grown up with are actually way more horrifying than they are. We’re either left shocked by the truth, or surprised at how we could have thought the tales were so different from when we first heard them as mere children. Remember how Cinderella’s stepsisters literally cut a couple of their toes so that their feet would fit the magical glass slipper? There were variations for each tale, and even though half of them were passed on to us in different forms, we couldn’t help but feel a bit more nostalgic than usual as we remembered them again for this month’s hit list!
Name: Yasmine El Charif (Content Manager)
Favorite fairytale: Thumbelina!
Why? This goes back to a childhood obsession with Polly Pockets and all things small and cute. I just loved the idea of teeny tiny fairies and humans coexisting, and Thumbelina came as the perfect culmination of my favorite things. I honestly would rewatch that video tape (well, now YouTube Link) just for the music, Jacquemo the swallow, and seeing how Thumbelina goes on her many adventures avoiding marriage proposals from toads, moles, and beetles only to find a happy ending with her fairy prince. Happy ending aside, it’s really all about the adventure, sans the normative woman-gets-rescued-by-prince part! Again, I would totally advise to watch it for the music, I can still recall it in my mind ever so vividly.
Name: Yasmin Gamal (Mixed Media Content)
Favorite fairytale: Rumpelstiltskin
Why? It is an absolutely bonkers story. I thought the maiden was brave for finding a way to trick Rumpelstiltskin and keeping her firstborn. And then I grew up. She is a liar, Rumpelstiltskin is a liar and the whole economy is based on people tricking each other. As a child, I thought that fairy tales taught us important morals, as an adult I realized how twisted and dark most of them are.
Name: Umika Pidaparthy (Online Producer)
Favorite fairytale: The Brave Little Tailor
Why? It’s a very simple 19th-century German story by the Brothers Grimm about a tailor who goes from swatting flies to crushing giants with his claim “Seven at One Blow”. But what I love about this clever story is that it is not the tailor who makes up tall stories about his heroics, but the people and magical beings who make the assumptions. The tailor uses a lot of misdirection to get his way, and the results are pretty funny, albeit a bit dark. This fairytale also was adapted into a classic 1938 Disney animated short with a much tamer story.
Name: Hallah Danbouh (Mixed Media Content)
Favorite fairytale: One Thousand and One Nights (Alf Laylah wa-Laylah)
Why? The daily night stories which are told by the young Shahrazad to escape her very own sentence of death from the merciless and vicious King Shahrayar was a favorite. Shahrazad’s quick wit is what I admired in her the most, plus, the way she told her stories to escape the fate that’s she’s been forced into was so inspiring and ultimately, an educational tale I never forgot. It taught me that even in a ridiculous patriarchal realm, women are never too weak to conquer their obstacles, and outwit any powerful man out there.
Name: Farah Barakat (Mixed Media Content)
Favorite fairytale: Jack and the Beanstalk
Why? “Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!” Pretty sure I loved this fairytale because I loved repeating that phrase. Apart from that, this fairytale taught me much more than happy endings. It taught me that with perseverance and wit, good things happen to good people. It also taught me to follow my intuition, regardless of what people around me may think, and what may seem like the “right thing to do” for them, may not always be the right thing to do. Most importantly, power is not in how scary you look or the things you possess, but instead in the way you use your greatest tool, your mind.
Follow @bazaargram on Instagram for our monthly hitlist questions. Image taken by bazaar studios.
