And the 7 Dwarfs? They’re her Symptoms…
I read a lot of fairy tales. Not through choice, but because I have two very romantic girly daughters. I also watch a lot of Disney. Not through choice, but because I have two very easily-influenced girly daughters. So, seeing as I have to partake in the mind-numbing shite that is all things Princess… please excuse me if I occasionally slip into a stupor where I find myself thinking a bit too deeply about what exactly is going on in this rose-tinted world of talking animals and love at first sight.
Take Snow White, for instance. We will excuse her shrill 1930’s singing voice that only animals can hear (who wouldn’t help someone do the dishes if it meant they would stop that racket?), and her worrying penchant for trespassing and having a manic OCD break-out in the vertically-challenged home of what can only be described as a working class frat house for a bunch of guys with personality disorders. We will excuse her that because clearly she is a very troubled girl. For a start, would you take fruit off creepy old ladies knocking at your door?
But then I gave it some serious thought – and it all made sense! Snow White isn’t a young girl whose step mother is jealous of her beauty and trying to kill her (teenagers have such vivid imaginations). No. Snow White is up the duff! She’s pregnant. She did a runner, moved in to a derelict cottage in the forest and her imaginary dwarf friends are actually her seven alter-egos – her seven Pregnancy Personalities.
Bear with me, I’m giving you an education here (although this may ruin Disney for you forever). Take a look at her funny little ‘friends’ and you’ll see what I mean…
Grumpy
All. The. Time. Grumpy is basically the standard emotion of a pregnant woman. It may be interspersed with a few other feelings and states of being, but the general mood is ‘pissed off’. Most put it down to hormones, what with your body changing and the huge physical and mental strain pregnancy has on you and the life you once had. Or maybe it’s because you can’t drink alcohol? I don’t see Snow White sharing a bottle of Rioja with her ‘mates’, do you? 9 months of that kind of abstinence makes anyone grumpy!
Sneezy
When you are pregnant your defenses are down. Your body is inhabited by a nutrient-sucking parasite (what? I love babies, but it’s true) and you are left with nothing for yourself. So you get ill. Plus Snow White should have asked some of those animals to sort out those old shutters and install some central heating, that place looks drafty as well as dusty. No wonder she’s wheezing.
Doc
If Snow White is anything like I was when I had a bun in the oven (well, more like a huge Bloomer) she has been looking up every veritable medical anomaly associated with pregnancy and birth since the first blue line appeared on her plastic stick. I doubt her cottage has wi-fi and her dress certainly has no pockets for an iPhone, but I’m sure she’s been fingering the old dusty medical volumes and self-diagnosing herself. Mind you, maybe she should concentrate less on ‘what sized vegetable does my baby resemble today?’ pages, and more on the chapter entitled ‘Poisons’.
Happy
Yeah, well, hormones will do that to a person too. So will knowing that you are growing another human being inside you, performing one of life’s miracles and carrying on your bloodline. Or more importantly being able to stuff your face with copious amounts of chocolate under the guise of ‘eating for two’. No wonder Snow White is always humming and twirling her skirt about, she’s totally high on Oxytocin…
Bashful
It’s cringey. Being pregnant is downright cringey. From having to talk to your doctor about the colour and consistency of your vaginal mucus, to going through the indignity of wondering if you have crapped yourself while pushing out an entire baby from your lady parts. It may look all sweetness and light in the Instagram photos of perfect bumps silhouetted against sunsets, and baby booties balanced on tums – but the reality includes a lot more bodily fluid and strange sounds than any non-mother can ever imagine. Snow White, clearly, is keeping regally demure and bashful about the whole thing.
Dopey
Two words – Baby Brain. Which you get before anyone can even see your bump. It may be to do with hormones, getting up every eight minutes in the night to pee and sleeping less… or because all you can think about every second of the day is ‘Oh my God! I have a baby inside me!’ when you need to do other things like walk, talk, work and remember how to dress in the morning. Plus Dopey doesn’t even come close once the baby appears and you are denied sleep, food, adult conversation or a decent piss up for months on end. Give her a break, it’s no wonder she’s so overly trusting and desperate to talk to any freak that passes her way…
Sleepy
Being pregnant makes you so so sooooo tired. It’s more than just ‘I’ve been at the gym’ tired, or ‘I’ve been up all night’ tired. It’s ‘I’m falling asleep halfway through a sentence’ tired. Plus Snow White, the crazy fool, spends her whole time cleaning, cooking and clearing up behind those awful dirty little men. And flouncing about the garden singing into a well. It’s no surprise that at the end she’s dead to the world – it’s the fantasy of most pregnant women, to zonk out for eternity and not wake up until some guy comes along to give her a helping hand.
And it doesn’t get any easier for her as the story continues. In the end she eats an apple she doesn’t bother to wash first and dies. For a little bit. Until her imaginary friends put her in a glass coffin (!!) and a random guy comes along, kisses her corpse, wakes her up and they live happily ever after. Because clearly every local necrophiliac is a standard hottie and worth running off with before you even bother to ask his name (that’s one gullible Baby Daddy).
I reckon by then she’s had the baby and having those sleep-deprived delusions where you are dreaming of mammoth lie-ins and being rescued. Snow White – if you really want a Happily Ever After please ditch all those weird men-with-issues, get yourself a nanny (not that creepy hag with the apple) and a cleaner (that isn’t an animal) and go out for a cocktail or two. Enchanted woods are full of other desperate Princesses who need a life, they’d be happy for the company.
You can get the first round in – mine’s an Apple Martini, Snowy!
