Rolly Crump
FROM: Beauty and the Bitch A Disney Dispatch Feature
A Cinderella Story
Everyone loves the happy ending, and if it's happy enough, it's easy to forget all the shortcuts that may have led up to it. Bob and Dennis roll back the Cinderella story to learn just how well that slipper really fits.
Can you be a beauty - and a bitch? Absolutely! (And often, quite likely.) The fairy tale princesses are no exception. In fact, they are the perfect examples, contend award-winning playwright Dennis Giacino and non-award-winning non-playwright Bob McLain, who each week will do a princess/counter-princess take on their royal majesties.
Bob has the beauty; Dennis, the bitch. From Bob, you'll read the traditional princess story; from Dennis, you'll read a modern interpretation, as the princess in question dishes on what pop culture has done to her fairy tale prospects.
This week, Bob discovers Cinderella to be a pleasingly pliant princess, who scrubs up real nice, while Dennis learns that his Cinderella has a voracious appetite and wishes not so much for a prince but for a platter.
Cinderella: Scrubbin' Her Life Away [by Bob]
Cinderella, I feel for you.
You're a good girl, you work hard, and you're easy to look at.
With a bit of polish, you'd make a wonderful princess.
But you've got these problems, namely, a stepmother and two stepsisters, quite simply the most odious trio in the kingdom, and they're jealous.
They've got you by the purse-strings. Even if you could afford the finery required for the royal ball, you can't get the time off. Instead, you have to help dress your heifer step-sisters, Anastasia and Druzella, upon whom silk transmogrifies to rayon, and then you have to stay behind and scrub, scrub, scrub, per orders of the icy yet icky Lady Tremaine, your step-mother.
You could run away. (With your looks, you wouldn't have 
trouble finding a man to take care of you.) You could pick up your cleaning bucket and bash in your step-sisters' sloped skulls. Oh, there's a lot you could do, but you won't, because you're a good girl, and good girls wait until others do for them.
Luckily, you have a fairy godmother. Without a bit of effort on your part, you're primped for the ball, with a carriage at your disposal, the most beautiful gown on your back, and lovely glass slippers on your feet.
At the castle, you're a hit! They love you. In the morning you were on your knees scrubbing, and here in the evening you're on your feet dancing - with the prince! And I think he liiiikes you....
Why shouldn't be like you? The Fairy Godmother created every prince's dream, and to hell with the King's hopes to shore up his diplomatic fences by finding his son a smart political match.
Nothing doing!
Except, well, the clock chimes twelve, and in your haste you've left behind one of your slippers.
Back to scrubbing for you, silly!
Because a good girl would never whisper her real name in the Prince's ear. Out of the question for one of such lowly station! A good girl would only have danced, as you did, and hope that somehow it all works out.
Of course it does, and all you had to do was extend your dainty foot while the prince slips on the glass slipper. Ah, true love! A perfect fit for a perfect ending.
"Now sit with me, Cinderella, and tell me the moral of your tale."
"Well, Sir Bob, I'm not really sure, though Mr. Disney certainly knows."
"Might the moral be this: a girl who scrubs floors is no fit match for a prince until she disguises herself to attract his notice, the reward for such deception being a life of pomp and pleasure?"
"Well, Sir Bob, I'm not really sure, but it would be my pleasure indeed for you to dance with me at tonight's ball, as I believe the prince has gone on one of his 'hunting trips' again."
"Cinderella, how bold you have become. To arms?"
Cinderella: Me & Bill Murray [by Dennis]
Ever see that movie Groundhog Day? Y'know, the one where Bill Murray is a weatherman who finds himself caught in a time loop in which he relives the same day over and over and over again. Well ... welcome to my hell!
Oh, sorry - how rude of me. I was so caught up - sitting by the moat in my $325 Diane von Furstenberg Anisa One-Shoulder swimsuit sipping on pina coladas doing absolutely nothing day-in-and-day-out for the 314th year in a row - that I forgot to introduce myself.
My name is Cinderella.
I'm the princess of some kingdom located somewhere, married to some prince whose name I never caught. But, as a fairytale princess-turned-Disney-movie-star, all that's asked of me is that I be all 'victimy' and go along for the ride. I mean, we all know that's how one ends up happ'ly ever after, right? Besides, the Mr. What's-his-name that I'm married to is really nice and amazingly cute and well, what else does a woman need?
I'll tell you what else I need. A life. A mind of my own. A comfortable swimsuit that doesn't require me to starve myself for days on end just so I can sorta fit into it. Really, after hundreds of years of dieting just to look fit and trim for my prince - all I wanna do is eat! A burger, a burrito, a Hot Pocket - anything! I don't even get rice rations like those folks on the 'Survivor' TV show!
Y'see - I have been postured since time immemorial as the ultimate victim. You don't believe me? Check out my story in classic lit and today's movies. I'm a young, innocent, stunning girl whose mother dies on the first page. Daddy marries a shrew (who's packing a couple of evil stepsisters!) who soon force me to don tattered clothing and wait on them hand-and-foot. I scrub floors, I do windows, I cook - heck, I even go all 'Project Runway' and make their ball gowns for them when the prince throws a big party to find a wife.
I'm such a damsel-in-distress that when it comes to getting to the dance myself - I have to wait for a fairy godmother to show up and turn the vegetable garden into my ride to the castle! What a weakling they paint me out to be. And yet...
Every girl wants to be me! Toe-pinching glass slippers and all! They even want to have breakfast in my castle in Orlando - where my Disney counterpart shows up to smile pretty, dole out hugs and sign autographs - but have you ever seen her eat? No, no, no! We're princesses. We never eat.
We also never think for ourselves or initiate our own destinies. Why would we do that when all we're taught to do (and then choose to do) is sit by the moat (in said 'spendy bathing suit), looking pretty and waiting for our prince to come?
These fairytales and movies. They're just like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day - trapped in a ridiculous time warp, reliving the same story over and over and over again. Round and round - like the carousel in Fantasyland. For me? I've had enough of this E-ticket ride. This is where I choose to get off.