The Sleeping Beauty

from the series, Tales for our Times

A new baby had been born to the Queen, a baby girl. The fairies gathered to welcome and bless her. One after another they stepped up to the cot and gave her their wishes. To be graceful, to be beautiful, to be kind, all that sort of thing.

But then, disaster, the last fairy did not bless the baby, she cursed her instead.

‘You are to die,’ she said, ‘before you reach adulthood. You will never become a woman, you will never be an adult human female.’  

The Court was shocked. The Queen let out a scream. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. Doom and darkness had descended.

But then another fairy stepped forward, the thirteenth, and she spread a rainbow-coloured shawl over the baby.

‘You will not die, Baby,’ she said, ‘you will merely take time out, time to think.’

The Queen was not assuaged.

‘What is the point of that?’ she said.

‘It will act like a pause button,’ the Fairy explained.

‘A pause button?’ said the Queen.

‘Yes,’ said the Fairy. ‘It will pause the Princess’s development. We will then be able to make a considered and rational decision about what she is to be.’

‘What do you mean,’ said the Queen. ‘We already know what she is to be, she is to be the Queen.’

‘But supposing she would be better as a king?’ said the Fairy.

‘But she can’t be a king,’ said the Queen. ‘She’s a girl.’

No,’ said the Fairy. ‘Her identity is yet to be decided.’

‘But we know she is a girl,’ said the Queen.

‘No, we don’t, your Majesty,’ said the Fairy. ‘We don’t know what her gender is.’

‘What is a gender?’ asked the Queen.

‘A gender is her true identity,’ said the Fairy. ‘We don’t know yet whether it matches her sex. If we put her to sleep at puberty, we can start up again when the danger has passed.’

‘Danger!’ said the Queen. ‘What danger?’

‘Danger of her becoming a woman,’ said the Fairy. ‘Danger of her growing up. Without having had the choice, without having chosen her identity or had it assigned.’

‘But everybody has to grow up,’ said the Queen. That’s normal, that’s natural.’

‘Not any more,’ said the Fairy. ‘We have improved on nature. We can make our own decisions. We can choose who we are, we can choose whether we are male or female, we can choose our genders, choose our identities.’

‘But we already know who we are,’ said the Queen. ‘Look at all those cards welcoming new babies, they are all in either blue or pink and they all mention a baby girl or a baby boy.’

‘So limited! ‘sighed the Fairy. ‘So boring! Why should we stick to only two when we have a whole range of genders, a whole range of rainbow colours, it’s like nail varnish, these days you can paint each one of your nails a different colour and each nail can have a different pattern, it’s like in the supermarkets, you can spend all day making a choice about every item, there is so much variety, and the colour of your hair, even old ladies can have turquoise hair, or pink or purple, even boring things like zebra crossings can be painted in rainbow colours! And local councils pay for it! We’re living in Paradise! This is true democracy! People power, we can choose anything we like…’

‘Stop!’ called the Queen. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of such nonsense!’ She sent everyone away and got on with rearing her child.

Time went by and the Queen forgot about the curse. The Princess played happily in the castle running up and down the stone spiral stair cases, climbing to the ramparts to look over the land, descending to the cellars to explore.    

One day she came to a door in a wing of the castle that she had never seen before. She  pushed it open and came across an old woman spinning.

‘What are you making?’ the Princess asked.

‘Breast binders,’ said the Old Woman. ‘Here, this one is for you. Try it on. It will make you beautiful.’

‘Beautiful?’ said the Princess.

‘Yes,’ said the Old Woman. ‘Just like ladies in China have their feet bound and their deformed feet are considered beautiful and called lotuses, so girls in our country have their breasts bound.’

‘But the ladies in China can’t walk properly when they’ve had their feet bound,’ said the Princess.

‘That’s the whole point,’ cackled the Old Woman. ‘They are prisoners. And admired for it.’

‘But why would I have my breasts bound?’ asked the Princess.

‘Just as preparation,’ said  the Old Woman.

‘Preparation for what?’

‘For amputation,’ said the Old Woman.

‘But won’t that mean that I won’t be able to feed my babies?’ said the Princess.

‘Ladies don’t feed babies,’ said the Old Woman. ‘We have wet nurses for that, commoners. You will look so much better without breasts. You may even be able to compete with those magnificent men modelling swimsuits! Breasts are very old fashioned and completely unnecessary. They get in the way and they slow you down. Look at the way those female athletes keep losing against men who call themselves women! If they made themselves more male, they’d stand a better chance of winning! They just don’t try hard enough. They don’t keep their bodies trim and stream-lined and they don’t take enough testosterone.’

So the Princess tried on her breast-binder. It was a struggle to get it on but eventually she succeeded.

‘That hurts!’ she said.

‘Too bad,’ said the Old Woman. ‘Just be grateful that it’s only your breasts that will get cut off and not your genitals’.

‘My genitals!’ said the Princess. ‘Deform my feet, cut off my breasts, destroy my genitals! Why? What’s wrong with me the way I am?’

‘It’s just a question of fashion,’ said the Old Woman.

‘Well, I don’t want to be in that fashion,’ said the Princess. ‘I want to be Me!

‘Then we’ll have to do it another way,’ said the Old Woman. ‘We won’t cut off your clitoris or your labia like they do in many parts of the world, we won’t chop off your breasts like we do here in the West, we won’t bind your feet to imprison you and turn you into a slave but we do have to stop you becoming an adult human female.’

‘But why?’ said the Princess.

‘Because women are dangerous,’ said the Old Woman.

‘But why?’ asked the Princess.

‘Because they have minds of their own,’ said the Old Woman.

‘But why should that matter?’ said the Princess.

‘I think,’ said the Old Woman. ‘I think you talk too much. I think we need to shut you up.’

But the Old Woman didn’t finish what she was saying because the Princess was throwing a tantrum.

‘Leave me alone, I want to be normal, I want to be natural!’ the Princess was shouting.

The Old Woman took a needle and injected its contents into the Princess.

‘There,’ she said, ‘that will shut you up, at least for a while.’

The Princess fell asleep.

The courtiers fell asleep too.

They all slept for a long time and when they woke up they compared their experiences. They had all had the same nightmare! Men had become women and women had become men. Children had been taught lies and made to doubt the experiences of their own bodies. Delusion had taken the place of Reality and the world had been turned upside down.

The Princess sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.

There was a delicious smell of baking and the distant sounds of singing and dancing, of children playing, of chickens clucking and animals calling. There was peace and laughter and, above all, relief.

She walked through the castle passing huge piles of discarded wigs and fake breasts and phalluses.

‘What are these?’ the Princess asked the Queen who was busy making scones.

‘Just a passing hobby,’ said the Queen wiping her floury hands on her apron. ‘It didn’t last long, it was just a fad led by a cult but it’s all over now. People are getting back to normal. Everyone’s making jam and cooking.’

‘Surely there’s no need to cook and bake?’ said the Princess.

‘There’s no need’, said the Queen, ‘but we’ve played with the new gadgets and the technology and we’ve got bored with it. We’ve tried every kind of sexual fetish and got bored with that too.

‘There are so many more interesting things to do in life!’

So the Princess became an adult human female and lived happily ever after.