I recently listened to all the stories on Palace of Stories. It was at times a gruelling experience. By the time I had finished, 40 of the 125 stories on the site had been ditched.
It’s always difficult to listen to material that I thought was good at the time, but now doesn’t pass muster. However, removing those stories is usually more of a relief than a sadness, as I only want to have the best stories up there.
But another challenge came up this time, which I hadn’t expected. I realised that there was a strong imbalance in the gender of the protagonists of the stories. Of the 85 stories that survived the review, 57 had male protagonists whereas only 28 had female leads, a 2:1 ratio! How did this happen?
Where to start?
When I started storytelling back in the late 1980s, awareness of gender representation was less mainstream than it is now. I was slow to notice just how fast things were changing, but having a daughter in 2007 (who is now a very self-aware teenager) has helped me to catch up fast.
Folk tales come from the world of the distant past, with its traditional gender roles. At the beginning of my storytelling career I immersed myself in that world by reading thousands of folk tales. Reading and retelling the old stories seemed to me the best way to get an authentic and grounded sense of what storytelling had meant to our ancestors, and what it could mean for us today.
But even when I’d branched off into telling intuitive stories, I largely stuck with that old-fashioned context. So I’d still tell more stories about blacksmiths and carpenters, knights and tailors, than I did about witches and princesses, as there were many more roles for men to play in that world. Being a man myself probably also helped skew the gender of my protagonists, as well as the fact that, for various reasons, my son heard more of my stories than my daughter. But enough excuses, I’m just embarrassed and sad to see how my heroes far outnumber my heroines.
Disney’s Mea Culpa
Over the last few decades I’ve watched the Disney corporation go through a fascinating process of re-evaluating how females are portrayed in their children’s movies. Their “golden age” movies are still much loved (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) but if anything they made the gender imbalances inherent in their source material even more pronounced.
One of my favourite movies from this period of re-evaluation is Enchanted. Made the year my daughter was born, it looks at times like a public apology for the gender stereotyping of their earlier classics. Since then, they’ve released a string of excellent movies featuring strong, courageous, powerful, intuitive, brilliant and big-hearted heroines.
My own Disney Moment
I’m belatedly having a similar moment of my own. As my review proceeded and more and more stories were being stripped out of the catalogue, I realised that to replace them I’d need to record about 15 new stories (Palace of Stories always has 100 stories or more).
I went back to unproduced recordings of the best bedtime stories I told to my kids when they were young, as well as newer material that was also awaiting re-recording. Wherever I could, I changed the protagonist’s gender to female.
I now realise how attached I’ve been to the world of those old folk tales, believing that the long-lost medieval past was somehow a more magical setting for a children’s story than the more complex world we live in today. But the time is long past when stories could largely be about boys and men doing courageous things, while the girls and women look on. The girls of today, and of generations to come, need better than that!
So here’s The Jeweller and the Simple Stone, which began life with a male jeweller, somewhere in medieval Europe. In its new telling, the Jeweller became female, and the setting could be anywhere! You can listen to the audio story below.
As for the stories I’m now telling, I’m seeking to create characters, female and male, that both girls and boys can be inspired by. If you live in Devon, you might want to come along to the performance that I’m giving with Sundara in December. As it happens we’ll be telling another two stories involving jewels, in our show Magical Gems and Mystical Jewels.
And I’m pleased to say that all of the protagonists are female!
The Jeweller and the Simple Stone can be found here.
