Source: Existential Comics #667
Transcription:
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
Mirror: Snow White.
Evil Queen: Hmmm ...
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror on the wall, does that mean there is an objective standard of beauty?
Mirror: Uhh ... yeah sure ...
Evil Queen: So how did you determine your answer? What is the objective standard that you used to determine this?
Mirror: Oh you know, she is just the woman most people would think is most beautiful.
Evil Queen: What? But that's not objective!
Evil Queen: If that were true I don't even have to kill Snow White, I just have to kill enough people who have the hots for her to tip the scales for me.
Mirror: Okay fine, then it is her pale skin.
Evil Queen: That's it, pale skin?
Mirror: Yeah paler the skin, the more beautiful the girl.
Evil Queen: You know ... that almost sounds a little racist, mirror on the wall.
Mirror: And another thing, there are too many immigrants ...
It's going to sound so wrong, but back when Snow White was first written, it was during the time when child marriage was acceptable and there is no middle stage known as teenagerhood (it's a very recent concept in human history). As soon as you could work, you would be considered an adult even if you are 12. If anyone has read the book or seen the movie The Master and Commander (which is set during the Napoleonic Wars, same time as when Snow White was published), there are naval cadets who are like 12 and 15 years old, and the much older ablehands refer to them as "sir". That is a historically accurate depiction.
I'm not making excuse by the way, but it explains a lot as to why older stories have very weird portrayal of underage characters because it reflected the social norms at the time. Many fairy tales in their original forms are very brutal and no-holds barred because people back then grow up way too fast as expected by society. And the gruesome reality of living, without the modernity we take for granted today, had to be faced by most folks in the past. Child mortality rate was high after all.
Beauty and the Beast was written to introduce young brides to the idea that marrying a gross, hairy, large creature might not be all that bad, and that you might even find things to like about your monster husband and fall in love with him.
Source on that?
Because it is much simpler to explain that story as a tale about not judging others for how they look.
Beauty and the Beast, Old And New by Terri Windling
Doesn't keep modern adults from touching Julias bronze tits in Verona.
These types of explanations always ring hollow to me.
Yeah sorry, I don't think I could care less what was "acceptable" at the time. She's a child. She looks like a child.
It's the same shit with slavery. I've been told that Jesus never condemns slavery because "it was the culture at the time" (as if Jesus' entire thing wasn't being counterculture, but ok). I really do not fucking care. Slavery was the accepted culture in the US in the 1800s, I'd still find it objectively abhorrent and disgusting.
That's why the phrase "the past is a different country" rings very much.
Cheers !