Goodbye Damsel in Distress, Hello Princess Adventuress

The day after New Year’s day I did a boot sale with my sister. It was freeeezing. It was also a magical mystery tour into the mind of the boot sale attendee – how comes £1 for an angora beret is a steal in a charity shop, but something to be tutted at and bartered with at a boot sale? Oh, and it was a lesson in what not to buy my parents for Christmas.

Cinderella was a real bombshell...

Throughout the de-cluttering boot sale stock accumulation process we came across a few former treasures: diamonique encrusted watches which had stopped in their tracks; books we’d meant to read; and a Cinderella figurine, with her now mutilated Prince Charming, I’d bought as a souvenir from Euro Disney when I was 16.

Sis thought it made an intriguing image and snapped the pair on the window sill. Dad thought the prince’s headless, one legged and de-slipper-proffering-armed-ness was somehow symbolic.  It struck even me that I’d donned a not dissimilar Cinderella-blue gown at my wedding.

Cinderella nailed her fella…

Of course, instead of happily ever after it all turned out more like that scene from Labyrinth where Sarah, the whiny teen damsel in distress, declares David Goblin King Bowie has no power over her; and the whole magical mirrored spellbinding façade  cracks from side to side.

Unlike Jennifer Connelly I decided on the simple boob baring demo during the first dance instead.  This impromptu act – my husband’s wrist was apparently caught in my dress strap – proved beyond a doubt I was not the princess bride, but a stick-on chicken fillet sporting damsel.  I think I cried for 3 nights after that.  So what?  I hear you cry.

Damsel in a puffy dress

So, I’d been reading Caroline Myss‘ book Sacred Contracts; a book where “…Myss explains how you can identify your own spiritual energies, or archetypes, and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet.” And one of the first archetypes I’d identified as playing a prominent part in the pantomime which is my life, was the damsel, aka the princess; or the shadow side to the princess proper.

It’s not so easy, identifying your archetypes, I found it a bit like Three Men in a Boat when the narrator diagnoses himself with every disease described in a medical dictionary – except Housemaid’s Knee. In a way this isn’t surprising: Myss asserts we have 12 prominent archetypes; these all have a light and shadow side.  We’ll see influences of others too – rather like an archetypal kaleidoscope I like to think. However the damsel in distress princess archetype screamed out at me; it was obvious: I am … I was… I have been the damsel in distress all my life.

Pink peril

It’s funny what a simple revelation can do.  Suddenly I could see lengthy tressed damsels stressing their way through my (hi)story. First, there was the Perils of Penelope Pitstop where the hapless heroine was dangled over alligator infested pools by the Hooded Claw; and Nosferatu climbing the stairway to terrorise that foolish girl who doesn’t hide under the duvet. Then, when I was 8 my first male teacher, Mr Lymer, said I reminded him of Princess Diana because of my aloofness.

Let Sleeping Beauties lie...

My parents bought me Sleeping Beauty, for my 16th Birthday – somewhat ironic considering my somnambulist-esque existence. Then there were all those Pre-Raphaelite fainting fairy maids I fancied myself as at art college – someone once asked me to pose as Ophelia. Geez.  Then there were all the guys who wanted to save little ol’ me, from the big bad world in my head.  I even asked Mr Glittery to tie me to a tree and play highway man – he wrote me a story instead. Typical.

"What, what," said the Lady of Shallot

At uni John William Waterhouse’s, wilting waif, the Lady of Shallot was one of my style inspirations.  And obviously the long blonde hair said ‘princess’ to more than a few peeps, but even when I tamed and tied it into knots I’d just become a silver screen Hitchcock Heroine (aka modern-day cinematic damsel). Eeek.

He was expecting a frosty reception...

I went to see Matthew Bourne‘s Blitz-based  ballet, Cinderella, just before Christmas. There’s a copy of The Constant Princess on my desk at work. And when my work mate, Funny Girl, told me she was going to buy me a book, she said, “I thought you’d like The Princess Bride or that one about the ugly sister.”  So I’m still surrounded by distressed princesses.  But I guess like the ugly sister who’s getting the chance to put the record straight, it’s about time to step out of the forest of shadows and into the light, bright side of this archetype stuff and tell a new tale.

Maybe?

The question is: what to wear?

New Year, New View? Love the Skin You’re In

The magical makeover is a myth

‘New Year, New You’ is January’s mantra.  This can mean many things, but often it’s meant in a physical sense; and so gyms are jammed with people torturing themselves on the treadmill in an invariably vain attempt to vanquish their not-up-to-scratch selves, and reveal the real, new, improved them to the world.    But this is glossing over the issue.  You and I both know that a 10 minute make-over does not a goddess, or a god, make.  In fact, if the car crash lives of celebs, as dished up on the cover of gossipy, glossy magazines, is anything to go by, then magical transformations are still a fairytale – with no happy ever after.  

Speaking of fairytales, just before Christmas I went to see the Tiger Lillies and Justin Bond do Cinderella… or Sinderella. This gal wasn’t the sugar and spice and all things nice Disney-esque Cinderella; she was a foul mouthed, psychopathic, singing, Jerry Springer-esque, drag queen, crackwhore conducting a public slanging match with her dysfunctional family. During one deliciously venomous exchange with her step-siblings, Sinderella crowed,  “You’re so ugly! You know, I saw in the paper the other day, that you can get a face transplant.  Remember that woman who had her face torn off by her dog in France?  You should do that.” 

I had read that story too and it had got me thinking because the article had ended with something like, “… you have to have a face to face the world.”  Which, I guess, is why there’s a Changing Faces poster campaign on the underground right now, where we, the observer, are challenged to look a less than picture-perfect person in the eye.  Disfigurement has a bad press – think Richard III – which is why another story I read, some years ago, in the waiting room of my mother’s beauty salon, about a woman who found a greater sense of  self-confidence after having been facially scarred, left an impression on me.  And my mother’s account of a client who was constantly engaged, despite an eye-catching birth mark and because of her natural vivaciousness, intrigued me.

The truth of it may be that many of us are more Dorian Gray than we care to admit.  Digging below the surface is not only hard work, but who knows what may lurk there?  What if it’s not gold we’re unearthing, but the grotesque painting we’ve been hiding in the attic? Notably, in a film version of Cinderella – which, annoyingly, I can’t get hold of – starring Kathleen Turner as the glamorous, gold

The beautiful but ugly Olsen sisters?

digging, stepmother and Jane Birkin as a weird, ethereal, cave-dwelling, fairy godmother, the Ugly Sisters were not physically ugly, but were in fact, beautiful, vile, self-absorbed fashionistas.  The Cinderella moral was not ‘beautiful girls go to the ball and get the guy’, but ‘beautiful hearts are blessed’. Remember, in the old versions Cinders fed the fairy godmother who came asking for food disguised as a beggar.

That’s not to say looks don’t matter – they do – but if we stop and consider the results of research claiming that women who have undergone breast augmentation are three times as likely to commit suicide as those who have not, it suggests self esteem is often not to be found in the procurement of an E-cup.  In our obsession with perfection, we are often missing the point that  being happy in our own skin is something harder to believe in than the happy ever after promised in a plastic surgery ad.  And anyway, shouldn’t we be a little wary of the term ‘boob job’, which could, if you think about it another way, mean a ‘botched execution’.  Hmmm…

So here’s to 2009 and a new frame of mind through which to view ourselves and the world. 

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