Happily Ever After?

I ran across a photography project that I found fairly interesting and maybe mostly because I'm a girl but partly because I'm a girl with some seriously jaded tendencies. The project by Dina Goldstein is about princesses. No, not the real-life ones that owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to boutiques in Paris...but the fairy tale kind.

It seems, contrary to popular belief, that fairy tales don't end at '...and then they lived happily ever after.' Of course that's not real life! The problem is that kids think (because that's what the books we read them say) that as soon as the princess finds a prince charming-they ride off into the sunset and done. The End.

But...what really happens:

Snow White and her Prince Charming take some queues from the rabbits that helped her clean the dwarves house and fuck like it's going out of style. Their 'castle' is soon filled with a bunch of spoiled brats that have a sense of entitlement that would make Paris Hilton jealous. Jasmine and Aladdin find themselves unhappily amid the war over oil. GWB makes sure that the beautiful castles in the sand are blown to bits in his search for WMD. Jasmine trains in only the best terrorist training camps and learns the correct way to wire a suicide bomb...but damn...she still looks good doing it. Cinderella soon finds herself the 'trophy' wife of a very powerful prince...a prince, whose duties to his 'kingdom' keep him on the road for months at a time. Since her servants now do all the tedious jobs she used to, she finds herself only finding solace at the bottom of a bottle of Jack. She comtemplates a life of her past with a twist...sex slavery isn't so bad, is it? Over the years Belle has discovered fine lines and graying roots...in her quest to keep the title 'Beauty' and also the beasts attention she spends most of her time under the knife. The Beast wants a house filled with hairy little feet but Belle, already discontent with her appearance, is unwilling to go through the pregnancy for fear of stretch marks. The Beast then finds a mistress on the side...rumors are that Ariel stops by to service his emotional and sexual needs on her way to visit her father, King Triton. Aurora never ages a day as this Sleeping Beauty's prince soon finds out. Unable to keep her awake due to her addiction to prescription sleeping pills, he dutifully keeps his 'happily ever after' promise to her by not straying. Of course, 50 years later, he's moved into an old folks home because they were never able to have children (without the fear it would be considered rape because she wasn't ever conscious) and his nephew ended up taking over the throne. In her hour of need, Rapunzel's prince left her for a woman with a short pixie cut (that bitch Tinkerbell, of course). Diagnosed early in their marriage with lymphoma, she now drives herself to her own chemo treatments and spends days at a time hooked up to IV's. Her only reprieve is the hope that soon they will pass a law in her country allowing assisted suicide. Red Riding Hood was part of a class action lawsuit against McDonald's for 'making her fat'. She won over 250,000.00 and proceeded to spend it buying burgers under the pseudonym, Ms. Wolfe. Her saving grace is that she started a cause called PAP (People Against PETA) emphasizing that the organization's beliefs are extremist and is lobbying with officials to be able to use wolf meat in the nations fast food restaurants. My point is that the story never really ends...there's always a detour, maybe a glimmer of light but mostly just real life. And we all know that real life doesn't always end at happily ever after.

The End...for now.