A Fat Fairy Tale
By Lynda Finn

I’ve had a lot of time to think recently, shut up here with only books for company and flicking through them the other day, I thought, why are the heroines and princesses in fairy stories never fat? You see, being a fat girl myself, I want to be validated. That’s the new buzz word, isn’t it? Validated. I want to see a reflection of myself in popular literature.

It proves we bigger girls have a place in the world.

But then, wait a minute, I said, who says they’re NOT fat?

And I began to look for evidence.

Goldilocks, for instance: she broke into a cottage and tried to eat porridge. Now, why would a perfectly ordinary girl stoop to breaking and entering unless she was desperately hungry? I’d like to bet her mother was one of those who served half a slice of unbuttered wholewheat for breakfast and expected her to gather firewood all day on that. So the aroma of freshly made porridge was just too much.

But she wasn’t greedy, she didn’t scoff all three, just one small bowl.

Once you begin to realise that Goldilocks is a poor little fat girl, proof jumps up all over the place. She broke a chair didn’t she? A chair made for a bear! Then, in spite of the fact that it’s only just after breakfast, she crawls into bed and falls asleep! Typical chronic dieter symptoms.

And Cinderella. It always puzzled me that they couldn’t find the foot to fit the footwear if she had small tootsies.

There must have been heaps of small-footed people in the kingdom but have you ever tried to find something really glamorous in a wide fitting?

Those ugly sisters? Well we’ve all seen ugly; bones sticking out, no apparent evidence of womanhood.

What Handsome Prince worth his salt wants to smooch with someone shaped like a pipe? And he did smooch, all night. What’s more, the first sight of Cinders in her finery knocked ‘em all dead. Can’t see that happening if she was emaciated, can you?

Now I happen to know the Princess who starred in the Princess and the Pea, lived in the adjoining kingdom and stared life as a normal, healthy plump and popular lass. Trouble started when her father married again, the step-mother was a diet freak and I mean freak!

Why do you think the princess ended up needing 20 mattresses? By the time they’d finished, that poor girl was positively skeletal – and could she find a husband? Not so far. No one wants to cuddle up to someone whose "excellent bone structure" can be seen from head to foot.

Trouble is, her step-mother and mine got together and started casting glances over me as well and that’s why I’m locked in here. I refused to live on lettuce and low-fat ready meals, I refused to join Weight Watchers (all those scary "after" photographs, no thanks). I maintained that good health was more important and dieting ruins your looks. If I wasn’t healthy would my hair be so glossy and bouncy, eh? Would it be so lovely and long and strong?

But no, they insisted I spend a month in here to "get into shape" and they bring me carefully calorie controlled cra… rubbish which they call a ‘healthy eating plan’ – I’ve never felt less healthy in my life.

But help is at hand, in fact I think I can hear his horse coming through the woods now, a man who loves me just as I am, voluptuous, well rounded, well-padded, cuddlesome, womanly. He’s bringing a rope ladder and we’re going to elope. Yes, that’s him, I can hear him calling:

‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’

copyright © Lynda Finn 2003