Prince Cinders, the spotty hero who made me hang up my tiara

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/25/a-book-that-changed-me-prince-cinders

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Prince Cinders by Babette Cole is a masterpiece in a much-maligned genre: the politically correct children’s book. Because not only is it perfectly pitched, it’s also very funny. “Prince Cinders was not much of a prince,” Cole’s book opens. “He was small, scruffy and skinny.” Indeed, Cinders is teased by his “big hairy brothers” for his lack of male prowess.

All Prince Cinders wants to be is big and hairy like his brothers, and this leads to him being accidentally transformed into a gorilla by a rather inept, grubby fairy (who is, unlike her Disney counterparts, not at all feminine). Thankfully he is unaware of this, believing himself to be a rather suave character on the way to a royal “rave-up”. Then the clock inevitably strikes midnight and he reverts to his spotty, lanky self, leaving behind a pair of skinny jeans as he flees in embarrassment. But not before Princess Lovelypenny – glorious in a leopard-print outfit – falls for him and embarks on a quest to find the owner of the trousers. Naturally, they fit only one man, Cinders; and she – not he – “proposes immediately”.

Prince Cinders is firm in its conviction that attempting to be anyone other than yourself is a fool's errand

The message of Cole’s book is pretty clear throughout. In one of the illustrations we see Cinders looking sadly at his puny muscles while comparing himself with a big, buff bodybuilder in a magazine. Patriarchy hurts men, too. Yet the book is never preachy. The reason Prince Cinders had such an impact on me is that it teaches that you can make a point without being overly serious. Prince Cinders is also firm in its conviction that attempting to be anyone other than yourself is ultimately a fool’s errand – an important lesson for children, albeit one that still took me many years past this book’s target age to fully grasp.

Many women have their “feminist epiphany” at university, or after reading The Female Eunuch or The Second Sex. It didn’t happen that way for me. In fact, when it did happen, in my mid-twenties, my mother was rather surprised. “I don’t remember ever really talking to you about feminism,” she said. She wasn’t one to rant and rave, or give me a reading list. I can barely remember us ever talking about why girls were treated differently from boys, except once, when she stood in front of MTV while Christina Aguilera gyrated in a pair of crotchless chaps and said: “I didn’t fight for this.” “God, Mum,” I said at the time. “Can’t you see it’s empowering? We don’t need feminism any more.”

Related: Where are the children's books with girls in trousers?

Like many political awakenings, mine didn’t come at all from formal education. It didn’t come from the literary canon or a university syllabus. It came from osmosis. From seeing my single mother undergoing the thankless task of being a carer for a vulnerable person while living on benefits; from being attacked by a man on the street; and from the upbringing gifted to me from both my parents, which taught me that being a girl would never hold me back (a noble ideal that holds only until you’re catapulted into the wider world, where a nasty surprise often awaits).

I never believed that any man was better than me by nature of his gender, and I know that this line of thinking began with the children’s books I read. By the time I got to the Enid Blyton stage, I was savvy enough to question why it was that Anne stays behind to tidy the cave when the others go off to catch the smugglers. Why Richmal Crompton’s William is so disdainful of Violet Elizabeth Bott, his mother and his sister Edith, yet so enamoured of the characterless Joan. And when reading the Narnia books, I wondered what happened to Susan, whose unforgiveable crime of becoming a woman (“interested in nothing … but nylons, lipstick and invitations”) prevents her from going to heaven.

There are many books that shaped me throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, but it is the books from early childhood that remain on my shelves.

The experiences we have when very young so often shape us, and I do think that without books such as Prince Cinders I would have fallen prey to the tyranny of the Disney princess complex. Pink, saccharine princess books are even more rife now, meaning authors such as Cole are as needed as ever. I’ll always be thankful to her for making me hang up my tiara and look for some greater meaning in this unequal world of ours – no prince necessary.