march2015

SEXY GLAM

MAGAZINE - MARCH 2015

According to Disney: A king and queen throw a huge party to celebrate the birth of their daughter, Aurora.

But though they invite three good fairies, who each give her blessings, they didn’t invite the evil fairy Ma-

leficent. Angry about being snubbed, she gatecrashes the party and gives the girl a curse: before she turns

16, she’ll prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. One of the good fairies manages to modify the

curse, so that Aurora won’t die – she’ll just sleep until she’s awoken by true love’s kiss. (Yup, that again.)

Sleeping

Beauty

The fairies try to hide the

girl, and she even meets

and sings to the prince

in the forest, but curses

can’t be hidden from,

so she eventually does

prick her finger and fall

asleep. Maleficent locks

the prince in her dungeon

so he can’t break the

curse, but the good fair-

ies rescue him. Malefi-

cient turns into a dragon,

because that’s awesome,

but the prince pushes her

off a cliff and wakes Au-

rora with a kiss. Cue the

happily ever after bit.

But originally: This is an

interesting one, because

the Grimm version of the

story is actually pretty

close to the Disney ver-

sion: there’s a magic frog

at the beginning, thirteen

fairies instead of three,

and lots of dead suitors

stuck in the forest sur-

rounding the castle, but

otherwise, the story is

pretty similar.

However, the story was

published by other au-

thors before the Grimms

got their hands on it, and

those versions are pretty

nasty. In Giambattista’s

version from 1634, once

the prince finds Sleep-

ing Beauty, he rapes her,

and she only wakes up

when one of the children

she bore while asleep

sucks the splinter out of

her finger by mistake.

And though Perrault’s

1697 version removes

the rapes, it chucks in

an epilogue with an evil

stepmother who tries to

eat the happy couple’s

children, and ends up

being thrown into a pit

of vipers. Says some-

thing when the Grimms’

version is nicer than the

others, doesn’t it?