Cinderella, the Musical and Fat Shaming

This is a review of the musical as it was performed in Denver at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

I went to the matinee performance, so there were many little girls dressed up and getting their pictures taken by the wall poster of the stairway.  It was one of the highlights of the event for me.

The audience was, as might be expected, largely female.  I was sitting in a row that, except for a couple of men, was all women and girls.  In front of me, were six college age women, who seem to have come together.

The "book", as they call the play's script, has been changed some for this version of the Rogers and Hammerstein work.  There was a male protester, who was demanding better treatment of the poor people in the kingdom.  And the role of the advisor to the prince was to shield him from the fact that the plight of the poor was partly due to using the funds for the court.  The prince became a rather lost young man in search of a sense of self.  The fairy godmother was a vagrant, witchy woman - until she was transformed into an Oprah look-alike.

The plot also added the transformation of one of the sisters into a best friend of Cinderella's, when she decides to run off with the protester - reminiscent of both Wicked and Frozen.  It is the best girl friends model of musicals.

And the final meeting of Cinderella with the prince is the meeting of the protester, with his group of poor people, talking to the prince and the prince now finding his purpose in life - to make the plight of the poor easier and, incidentally, to also marry Cinderella.

All of these changes could have worked for me, had I not been expecting the original Rogers and Hammerstein work.  And they probably worked just fine for the audience that was substantially younger, for the most part, than I am.

But one thing has been bugging me and it is enough to jade my feelings about the musical in general. The other step-sister, the one who doesn't run off with the protester, is made up to be hideous.  She is fat and is dressed more gaudily than anyone else.  She is a perfect example of fat shaming.  Of all of the characters in the musical, she is the one who is made fun of, who is held up for laughs.  Two of the male characters are also hefty - but their weight doesn't mean they are held up for ridicule.

Just as a mind exercise, I have been imagining what would have changed, had the fat step-sister been the one who befriended Cinderella and who ran off with the protester.  It doesn't quite work.  It isn't funny enough.

And there we have it.  Making fun of fat people is funny.  We (and yes, I am one of them) are open game for laughs.

Mansplaining to a Sub

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mansplaining

The tendency of some men to mistakenly believe that they automatically know more about any given topic than does a woman and who, consequently, proceed to explain to her- correctly or not- things that she already knows.

Woman A: When he started mansplaining to me what it really meant to be a woman in the 21st century, I got up and left.

In a recent discussion on Facebook, there were a lot of comments about mansplaining - where men would explain something technical to a woman who was an expert in the area, even in spite of knowing that she was an expert.  I mentioned that this seems to me to be a more specific example of what I might call "downsplaining" - explaining to someone who may or may not be an expert in the area something that the explainer feels he or she should also be an expert in, just to demonstrate his or her expertise.  This post is a musing on that idea and is still a "thought in progress". 

Some examples:  when I am subbing, I often get called for jobs for either a half day or for days where the teacher is in the building, but is working on something else, usually joint planning with other staff members.  In this case, the teacher is often there to go over the day with me and to make sure I understand the plans.  In these cases, I am often subjected to "downsplaining", explaining in great detail even minor points about the lesson plans.  One time, a teacher took 5 minutes to tell me how to give a spelling test.  Another time, a teacher took 10 minutes to tell me how to teach an Everyday Math lesson.  I told her that I had been trained specifically in Everyday Math, but she continued to explain the entire lesson anyway.

The fact is, this happens over and over again and it puzzled me why they should feel the need to do this.  I am older, I am a certified teacher (as are all subs in this district), and I feel as though I do not present myself as lacking confidence or needing assurance.  So I looked for other explanations and it seems that mansplaining, if generalized, fills the bill.

Many teachers feel, rightly, that their classrooms are their area of expertise.  When a sub comes in to take over, there are several things that they are thinking of.  One of them is whether the sub can handle the class.  When the teacher thinks of handling the class, though, they are thinking of things that cause them the biggest challenges.  Sometimes these things are new curricula, sometimes planning lessons for areas that are not their strengths, sometimes they are dealing with challenging kids.  They feel that they need to explain over and over again the things that are their own challenges with the class(es).  Even when I assure them that I have a good background in science, they feel the need to explain the science lesson (that is mostly just reading), because THEY are a bit unsure about science. 

But dealing with lesson plans is seldom the biggest worry for me as a sub.  I have subbed and taught for many years.  Giving a spelling test, trust me, is not a difficult proposition, even if the teacher happens to use a different format than standard. 

Oftentimes they are correct about dealing with challenging kids, and I appreciate the hints they give me there.  But, interestingly the things they emphasize are often the things I least need help on.  What I would like to know is who can I call if I need help.  How do I get that person to come to the classroom if I need him/her? 

And, since the teacher him/herself does not worry about special classes (the kids just go when they are supposed to), s/he doesn't list all of the special classes, their times and their durations, and the students who go to them.  If "Joey" just walks out of the room at 10:25, it is no big deal to her, but it is a worry for the sub.

So, I think, actually, mansplaining is a subset of downsplaining, where the person doing the 'splaining assumes that he or she knows more about the subject at hand and needs to explain it in excruciating detail, both to show that he or she is an expert, but also to assert dominance.  The interesting thing to me is that they things they choose to 'splain are often precisely the things that they are a bit shaky on.  Things about which they are confident frequently don't get explained.

And, as an aside, I tried to start a discussion about this topic on the Substitute Teacher Network on LinkedIn, but the owner of the group said that it was "too political" and refused to post it.  I feel censored and may have to quit the group.  He has censored a post of mine before and I agreed to withdraw that one, but now I am feeling that maybe that group isn't right for me.  Too bad, it was giving me some good information. 

Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax

Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences by Leonard Sax

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is one of those books that, when I am finished reading, I wish I had read more carefully.  While I agree in part with the author's premise - that boys and girls brains and physiology are in fact different and it would behoove us to take note of the consequences of those differences, rather than deny or subvert them - there is a lingering uneasiness that perhaps the author is a bit too biased in his analysis.  Separate was not equal in terms of racial differences; I am worried that separate will not be equal in terms of gender differences (or religious differences, or socio-economic differences, or gender orientation differences, or ...) 

Another thing that worries me is the chapter on teen sex.  I am really alarmed that there isn't more support for girls to just say no to the degrading practice of "hooking up" and other aspects of teen sex that are exploitative of girls' natures.  What are girls getting out of "hooking up" and how do we empower them to fight back against this?

There are several things I would like to see explored in more detail:  what exactly are the differences in teaching boys and girls?  The brief examples he gives are simply not definitive enough for me.  In one of the ending chapters, he very briefly mentions that girls used to be concerned with their character, but nowadays their self-esteem (in coed schools) is largely based on how they look.  Coed schools are so prevalent in the US, and I am convinced that this will not change soon, given the current economic problems and the impending drastic cuts in education, how can we deal with education and socio-emotional issues?

I have ordered his next two books from the library.  Maybe I will find out more from them.




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