Confessions of a chance spectator-Part 1

Becoming a fairy/princess was never an ambition of mine. A few years back as I started reading Disney fairy tales to my younger sisters, I realized why. What kind of role model are these women? What in the world did Sleeping beauty achieve in life? Or even Cinderella, she was pretty and fair and blonde and worked hard and was a doormat till she was given cute clothes so she could look pretty and marry a prince and don’t even get me started on snow white . I shudder to think the kind of women we are helping create. My parents made a huge effort to find role models for us. I grew up with stories from different countries- India, Russia, China and many more. My parents introduced me to characters that were not just good or bad but complex. I learned to love and fear Baba Yaga when I was 5- a house made of chicken legs, who forgets that. I think parents are either too scared of doing something that has not been advertized or prescribed to them or too lazy to turn off the TV. I think parents are scared of children discovering that another way of life is possible; that people from other countries, other religions are not all that different. They are scared of answering questions, questions that are too uncomfortable to answer, questions they don’t know the answer to cause they have never thought about them.

I don’t think having children is a right, it is a privilege and it is hard work. People need to get that. It's not a passive process.