Tales for our Times

Little Red Riding Hood and Her Grandma's Memories of Women's Lib

I am sure we all know the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, how she set out to go to her grandmother’s with a basket of goodies and how she got waylaid by a wolf. We all know about fairy-tale wolves and how wily they are and we know how this one pretended to be Grandma and gobbled her up.

We know the beginning and the end but what we don’t know is the middle. What happened when Little Red Riding Hood continued on her way to Grandma’s after meeting the wolf? Where did the wolf go, what did he do? He didn’t have long to hatch his plan. And my goodness what a devious plan it was! Daring and bold! Outrageous in fact!

Image by Hansuan Fabregas, Pixabay

The wolf would pretend to be female, and not any old female but an adult human female. This would involve a heavy disguise – since he was actually an adult wolf male - and he wasn’t sure he could carry it off so easily. He needed to cover his tracks in advance.

So while Little Red Riding Hood was trundling along on her way to Grandma’s the Wolf was working on his disguise. He had to be sure he could gobble up Grandma, eat all the provisions Little Red Riding Hood brought and then gobble up the little girl too.

Or perhaps he would simply kidnap her. He would stay in Grandma’s cottage, lock Little Red Riding Hood in and then he could do what he liked with her. After all, he was a wolf and she was a pubescent girl, the most delicious sort. The wolf’s enormous tongue licked his thin lips.  

The first thing he did on parting with Little Red Riding Hood was to go to the Registry of Birth and Deaths. If he was going to pretend to be Grandma perhaps he should get himself registered as that.

‘You can’t do that,’ said the lady in the Registry Office who was the Registrar. ‘You can’t just be somebody else.’

‘Why not?’ said the Wolf.

‘Because that would be theft,’ said the Registrar.

‘But she’s only an old lady,’ said the Wolf. ‘She scarcely matters.’

‘That may be so,’ said the Registrar, ‘but she still has an identity, she still has rights.’

‘But I am more important than her,’ said the Wolf.

‘Well, yes of course,’ said the Registrar. ‘That much is obvious.’

‘Then surely I shouldn’t have to fill out forms and make legal requests,’ said the Wolf. ‘Surely if I say I am the old lady, I can be the old lady.’

‘Well,’ said the Registrar, ‘I suppose that sounds perfectly reasonable. What else can I help you with?’

‘It’s my appearance,’ said the Wolf. ‘I need help with my appearance.’

‘But you look delightful,’ said the Registrar. ‘Those big ears, that huge nose, that enormous mouth, you’re gorgeous!’

‘Well I know that,’ said the Wolf, ‘but maybe a twelve year old girl wouldn’t feel the same.’

‘Who said anything about twelve year old girls?’ said the Registrar.

‘There’s a pubescent girl on her way to visit Grandma,’ said the Wolf. ‘I thought I might like to kidnap her. And then perhaps I’ll rape and murder her.’

‘Well I don’t know about that,’ said the Registrar. ‘I think that might be illegal.’

‘Then can’t you just change the law?’ said the Wolf. ‘Just make it legal instead of illegal, there’s not that much of a difference between the two, just a couple of letters.’

‘But I think it is illegal for wolves to kidnap pubescent girls,’ said the Registrar, ‘because we all know how dangerous wolves are, and how devious. And we know that girls need protection from wolves.’

‘My god!’ said the Wolf, ‘that is so regressive! What are you, a dinosaur?’

The Registrar giggled a little and patted her purple hair. She didn’t like to be thought old-fashioned.

‘Of course I’m not a dinosaur,’ she said. ‘I am Woke! I’m as woke as the next registrar.’

‘But people who are woke don’t mind if wolves share changing rooms and toilets with pubescent girls,’ said the Wolf. ‘That just shows how modern they are, how cool, how liberated!’

‘Well I am all those things,’ said the Registrar. ‘Count me in to your new world where everyone is free to steal anyone’s identity and to do whatever they want to anyone else!’

‘Great!’ said the Wolf and gave the Registrar a big lick with his enormous tongue.

The Registrar giggled, tickled the Wolf under the chin and told him to be on his way.

‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘It’s now the law of the jungle out there. You wolves have won us all round with your charm and your arrogant superiority and your neediness and your endless demands and your limitless self-pity and your threats and insults.’

The wolf’s chest swelled with pride and he continued on his way to Grandma’s cottage.

All was going smoothly; he was surprised how easy it all was. But there was still one problem: his appearance. He called in at the plastic surgeon’s thriving business and said,

‘I need a full face makeover.’  

‘Of course,’ said the plastic surgeon turning away for a moment from his client and throwing a couple of large ears into an overflowing waste bin. ‘Just wait there a tick and I’ll be right with you.’

The wolf watched while the surgeon shaved the edges off a large nose and plumped up the client’s lips with silicone.

‘There you are, Madam,’ he said. ‘I declare you now to be female. Don’t forget to buy your lipstick on the way out. On special offer this week.’

Then the surgeon said to the wolf, ‘Come this way, settle into this chair. And what can I do for you?’

‘I want to be female too,’ said the wolf.

‘You mean you want hormones?’ said the surgeon.

‘Good God no!’ said the wolf. ‘I’m fine just as I am. I like being big and strong and greedy and murderous.’

‘Then is it surgery you want?’ asked the surgeon.

‘I want to look like a woman,’ said the wolf. ‘All I want is to deceive. I don’t want to actually be a woman. God forbid! I wouldn’t be guaranteed to win all the women’s races then would I? And walk off with all their hard-won prizes.’

‘So why do you want to look like a woman?’ said the surgeon.

‘Just so I can get access to their spaces,’ said the wolf. ‘I want to follow them into the toilets and into the changing rooms. I want to sniff them out. As you know, we male animals like to leave our mark. I want to pee where the females have peed. I want to declare ownership. I want to build my harem.’

‘Then, if it’s not hormones, it had better be surgery,’ said the surgeon.

‘Yes,’ said the wolf, ‘that is exactly what I need.’

So the wolf had his nose trimmed and his ears shortened, he had his whiskers shaved off and he ate chalk to make his voice squeaky and on he went to Grandma’s cottage.

Then he gobbled up Grandma, put on her nightdress and her night cap and got into her bed.

When Little Red Riding Hood came by and did the whole rigmarole of knocking on the door and lifting the latch and all that, she was taken aback to find that she no longer needed to say things like, ‘What a big nose you have!’ and ‘What big ears you have!’ and so on.

Grandma looked just perfect as she was, exactly as she always had been with her round rosy cheeks and button nose. The tail seemed a bit odd but Little Red Riding Hood didn’t want to embarrass Grandma by mentioning it.

Instead she handed over the basket of goodies and the wolf devoured them in an instant. And then licking his lips, he said,

‘I’ve saved the best till last! It’s your turn now, Little Red Riding Hood!’ and he leaped out of bed and grabbed her.

But Little Red Riding Hood had been practising jujitsu. She fought back and got the wolf into a strangle-hold.

She held him like that while she phoned the woodcutter.

When the woodcutter came he said,

‘Thank goodness you are all right, Little Red Riding Hood! These wolves are becoming a menace. People seem to think they have to give them rights and let them run riot all over our peaceful woods. It’s getting worse and worse and no-one is taking control, no-one is saying ‘no’ to them.’

Then he cut the wolf open and Grandma popped out.

‘So what are we going to do about this dangerous anarchy in our peaceful woods?’ said Little Red Riding Hood.

‘We must start by getting people to see the truth,’ said the woodcutter. ‘We must remind them of Reality, we must reconnect with Nature.’

‘How are we going to do that?’ asked Little Red Riding Hood.

‘We need to start with speaking.’

‘What we need,’ said Grandma, scraping some wolf hairs out of her mouth, ‘is consciousness raising. Just like in the old days. Before it was banned. We need to understand what is going on.’

‘Then we’ll need women’s groups,’ said Little Red Riding Hood.

‘Yes,’ said Grandma. ‘Like in the old days. Before they were banned.’

‘We’ll call our gatherings, ‘Let Women Speak’,’ said Little Red Riding Hood.

‘And we’ll turn this cottage into a women’s refuge,’ said Grandma. ‘Just like in the old days. Before they were banned.’

‘What did you talk about back then that made everyone so scared they had to ban you?’ asked Little Red Riding Hood.

‘Nothing much,’ said Grandma. ‘Just women’s things.’

‘Why were women’s subjects so dangerous they had to be banned?’ asked Little Red Riding Hood.

‘They weren’t dangerous,’ said Grandma. ‘But there is an age-old ban on women speaking. Just look at religion throughout the world and at its history.’

‘And what about me?’ said the Woodcutter. ‘Will I be allowed in? Can I join you? Can I stand outside and protect you from the dangerous wolves?’

‘We didn’t use to allow men into our meetings,’ said Grandma. ‘We did at first but we found that the presence of men made the women shy. They stopped speaking and there was an awful lot of mansplaining instead. Then the women got bored with the men telling them what to do and explaining the capitalist/Marxist politics of oppression so they started to leave.

‘Then we saw that our women’s groups were turning into men’s groups, so we had to take action. Just one man in a women’s space is like a squirt of ink in a glass of water; it changes everything.

‘That’s when we made our meetings women-only. Who would have thought they were so dangerous that they would have to be banned?’

‘Incredible,’ said Little Red Riding Hood. ‘I suppose that is a topic for us to discuss.’

‘There’s no shortage of topics,’ said Grandma. ‘Just of spaces.’

‘We’ll make some,’ said Little Red Riding Hood. ‘We’ll make women’s spaces for women to speak!’

‘And I will stand outside with my axe and protect you!’ said the Woodcutter.

‘Sorry,’ said Grandma. ‘I’m afraid not. We have to make our own rules and our own protection.’

‘Then bugger you!’ said the Woodcutter. He looked like he might cry.

‘Oh poor kind Woodcutter!’ said Little Red Riding Hood. ‘He’s only trying to help.’

‘Learn from the past,’ said Grandma. ‘Before it’s all forgotten and wiped from history. As it has been time and again. And don’t give in to manipulation and blackmail! Don’t be deceived! Stay strong! Stay clear!’