Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling, Page 3

  “So I should say, ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, how should I kill Snow White and the seven men with dwarfism?’”

  “Exactly! In terms of language, at least, you’re getting it. At the end of the day, they’re just seven adult men who live in a house together. And let’s be honest, that’s the weird part.”

  “You know what all this reminds me of? That time I was at the Convention for Evil Leaders and I was the only Evil Queen at the table. The Evil Kings wouldn’t listen to me! I had this great idea about how to steal a cyclops and one of the kings pretended it was his idea. So annoying.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed the Magic Mirror. “Microaggressions are often committed against women, good and evil.”

  “I ended up having the cyclops behead all of the Evil Kings.”

  “Of course you did, Your Highness. In the future, let’s try to be a little less defensive when someone tells you that you’ve offended them, be constantly vigilant against your own unconscious biases, and remember that murderous henchmen have feelings, too.”

  “This has given me a lot to think about. However, don’t forget that since Snow White is still the hottest person in the kingdom, we still have to kill them, as well as the seven men with dwarfism, and my henchpeople Mark and Bob, whom I will not define by their disability or racial background.”

  The Queen smiled proudly. The Magic Mirror beamed back at her.

  “We’ve done great work here today,” said the Magic Mirror. “Tomorrow, we’ll tackle murder.”

  THE END

  CINDERELLA & THE GLASS CEILING

  NCE UPON A TIME…

  There lived a strong and resilient young woman named Cinderella, who lived with a mean, demanding, and frankly abusive stepmother and two bratty, dimwitted stepsisters. They spent their time painting bad selfies of themselves that they called “selfie portraits” and they thought almond milk came from cows who ate almonds. Cinderella’s mother had tragically died, and her father quickly remarried after just a few dates before you really know who a person is. But soon after, Cinderella’s father died, too.

  The stepmother resented Cinderella for her empathy in the face of adversity and for being the only one in the family without a widow’s peak. She kept the father’s money to herself and paid Cinderella minimum wage to become a servant of the house. Cinderella would’ve loved to be a household manager or one of those well-paid butler types, but those roles always went to the men in the kingdom.

  Rent was high in the big city, so the only place Cinderella could afford to live was her stepmother’s fireplace, which had a rodent problem and was misleadingly advertised as a cozy studio. On the bright side, the commute was short.

  One day, an invitation to a ball hosted by the Royal Prince arrived at the house. The Prince was looking for a bride, and he thought the best way to find one that he hadn’t already dated would be to throw a massive party, invite all of the maidens in the kingdom, and then pick one, in what he called a rose ceremony.

  Cinderella was ecstatic! “Could marrying the Prince be my way out of poverty? Could I really be royalty? Maybe! Why not?” she mused to her only friends, a bunch of mice.

  “Ew, gross, you can’t come to the ball with us,” said one of her stepsisters, when she found Cinderella in her room sewing a ball gown out of curtains. “People will think you, like, live with us.”

  “I do live with you,” replied Cinderella.

  Besides, the invitation clearly read all maidens. She’d go to the ball, capture the Prince’s heart in her fabulous curtain dress, and finally find out the difference between crudités and raw vegetables.

  But before she was supposed to leave for the ball, her stepmother sabotaged her plan. Acknowledging that it was a stepmother’s job in fairy tales to be evil and jealous of her stepdaughter, she ripped Cinderella’s dress in two and screamed, “I don’t have a good reason not to like you, but I just don’t! You can’t come!” before riding away in a carriage with her two daughters. Cinderella ran outside in tears. Now she didn’t have a dress or curtains.

  Suddenly, a small, elderly, kind-faced woman appeared in a cloud of silver smoke.

  “Mibbidi-mobbidi-moo!” she sang. “It’s me, your Fairy Godmother! Dry your tears, Cinderella. You can go to the ball.”

  And with a swoop of her wand, she turned a pumpkin into a carriage, Cinderella’s mice friends into coachmen, and her rags into a beautiful bedazzled ball gown. She also gave her a few more party essentials: breath mints (formerly a piece of lint), décolletage bronzer (formerly birdseed), and red lipstick (formerly pink lipstick).

  “Off you go now!” said the Fairy Godmother as she handed Cinderella two glass slippers and disappeared into a flurry of blue bubbles.

  “This is my only hope to never clean my stepmother’s bidet again,” Cinderella told herself as she slipped on the glass shoes. “Let’s get this prince to fall in love with me!”

  The ball was sensational—with a fountain of champagne, a full orchestra, and a bathroom that had a basket with extra hair ties.

  “Would you care to dance?” said a deep voice behind her.

  Cinderella turned around. It was the Prince! And while he wasn’t as tall as he claimed in his palace bio, she was pleased to see that he was generically handsome. This was the moment she had been waiting for!

  “Oh, Cinderella! You’re everything I’ve been looking for!” said the Prince as they spun around the dance floor.

  “Tonight is perfect,” said Cinderella.

  The Prince was moving quickly. Cinderella couldn’t believe her luck. She was one step closer to financial security and being famous enough for people to pay you to post sponsored content.

  But then she took another step and heard a loud—CRUNCH. She felt a shooting pain in her left foot.

  “Oh. My. God,” said Cinderella.

  She could feel a giant glass shard stabbing her in the arch of her foot. Her glass slipper had shattered.

  “What was that?” asked the Prince.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Cinderella, not wanting to ruin the mood.

  CRUNCH. Cinderella took another step. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

  “Okay, I definitely heard that,” said the Prince.

  “I think my, um, glass slipper might have broken. It’s not a big deal. I’m fine! Let’s keep dancing,” said Cinderella, trying to smile, while she felt the blood pooling in her shoe.

  “Hold up. You’re wearing slippers… made of glass?” asked the Prince.

  “Technically they’re glass heels,” said Cinderella as she looked around the room at the other women’s footwear: satin, sequins, and a few flip-flops on blistered feet.

  “Wait a second. Is glass not something the royal gals typically wear?” she asked.

  The Prince took a second to assess the situation and quickly realized what the deal was.

  “Oh! You must be one of the poor ones we invited,” he said.

  Cinderella watched the Prince lose interest as he began to scan the room, looking for other maidens to dance with.

  “Wait! It’s not that bad. I can still dance—look!” Cinderella said as she did a little twirl for the Prince, limping terribly. “I’ve heard that heels are painful. This is probably what people mean.”

  CRUNCH.

  “Owww—ahhh—Iiiiiiii love dancing so much!” Cinderella yelled, trying to cover the crackle of glass. Judging from the look on the Prince’s face, it wasn’t working.

  “Let’s take a break,” said the Prince, slowly walking backward.

  “No, please!” said Cinderella, pulling him toward her. “I’m having a great time. I thought the mini-quiche was incredible. I ate it in one bite.”

  “That’s disgusting,” scoffed the Prince. “Everyone knows about the four-bite rule. A mini quiche should take you a good ninety minutes to finish.”

  So that’s why no one at this ball has food in their mouth when they talk, thought Cinderella. Who were these snobby gatekeepers coming up with etiquette that made it impossible
for her to effortlessly fit in?

  Cinderella tried to go back to dancing, but without moving her feet. She looked like one of those inflatable dancing tube men outside of carriage dealerships.

  “I don’t want a little broken glass to ruin this date,” said Cinderella. “It’s really important. If you don’t fall in love with me, I’m gonna be dusting floorboards for the rest of my life.”

  “I mean, that’s not really on me,” said the Prince.

  Wow. The Prince was being a real dungeon-bag. But he was also an easy way out of Cinderella’s dreadful living situation. Her mind raced: should she try to make it work with this guy or should she tell him off and spit in his champagne? Convincing herself that maybe he was just hangry since it takes rich people so long to eat their food, she decided on the former.

  “I actually didn’t buy these glass slippers myself,” explained Cinderella. “They were a gift and it seemed rude not to wear them.”

  “When I think a gift is ugly I just throw it away,” said the Prince.

  “They were my only option,” said Cinderella. “I don’t own a pair of shoes.”

  “Not even boat shoes?” asked the Prince. “Or those ones with the red bottoms that ladies love?”

  “I sleep in a fireplace,” she quipped. “How would I know anything about gender-normative footwear?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You sleep in a fireplace?”

  “Yeah, that’s why my name is Cinder… ella.”

  “I thought it was just a trendy name, like Brooklyn,” said the Prince.

  Cinderella began to tear up, but not because this reminded her how she could never find her name on one of those souvenir keychains. She realized she had been pretending to be someone she wasn’t to win over this loser because he was in a better socioeconomic position than her. She deserved love just the way she was—without a designer ball gown or a sweet carriage. Also, her foot really freaking hurt.

  “Can someone get this woman a mop so she can clean up all this foot blood?” the Prince shouted into the air.

  “Where is my Fairy Godmother when I need her?” Cinderella cried. “I gotta get out of here.”

  “You have a Fairy Godmother?” asked the Prince, disgusted. “Wow, you’re poorer than I thought. Everyone in this room has an inheritance.”

  Suddenly her Fairy Godmother appeared in a poof of purple glitter.

  “Fibbidi-fobbidi—oh, dear godmother!” she shrieked when she saw the blood spilling out from Cinderella’s shoe. “What happened to your foot?”

  “The glass slippers,” replied Cinderella, unamused.

  “You put those on your feet?” asked the Fairy Godmother. “I guess I should have been more clear. Those are paperweights.”

  “They’re what?” asked Cinderella, baffled.

  “You were supposed to give them to the King and Queen as a castlewarming gift,” explained the Fairy Godmother. “If they were shoes, I would have put them on your feet myself. I specifically remember handing them to you.”

  “I’m a servant!” cried Cinderella. “How am I supposed to know rich people like paperweights in the shape of shoes?”

  “My bad,” said the Fairy Godmother.

  The Prince picked up the unbroken right shoe and placed it on his head.

  “Maybe it’s a hat!” he said, laughing. “What do you think of my glass hat?”

  Everyone in the ballroom laughed at the Prince’s joke. It was the hardest they’d laughed since the time he made a joke about a priest, a rabbi, and a minotaur walking into a tavern.

  Cinderella wasn’t sure if it was watching the Prince make fun of her or if it was the lack of blood in her body, but she began to get light-headed.

  “You know what?” she screamed. “Maybe I was stupid to put the glass slippers on my feet, but don’t tell me any of the heels in this room are any more comfortable! Are they? Are they?”

  “They’re not!” shouted a nearby brunette waving one of her flip-flops in the air.

  The Prince and Fairy Godmother looked for an escape but noticed the rest of the room had gone silent, watching.

  “I’ll say it. I was trying to win the royal lottery by coming tonight, hoping I could easily move up social classes by becoming one of you,” Cinderella continued. “That’s a false idea that is perpetuated in society as a possibility but almost never happens because the system is broken. What I’d actually need to do to get out of poverty is nearly impossible, because you rich people have set up the world in your favor. And I’m not talking party favors. Although I’ve seen the gift bag and it’s exceptional.”

  People slowly started approaching the gift bag table while she continued to talk.

  “I’m in this situation because the world has set me up to fail. For me to get an education and achieve financial stability, I need to pray I get some sort of grant or scholarship or magic beans. And if I am lucky enough to receive help, I’ll still need to work two jobs on the side to barely get by. I’ll be buried in student loans, living paycheck to paycheck with no one to fall back on or help me. Any setback could mean failure: medical bills, losing a job, or getting cursed by an evil witch.”

  Everyone in the castle stared at the Prince, waiting for his response.

  “Look, Cindy,” muttered the Prince. “I’d hire you here at the castle, but the only job openings are for royal advisers. You know, important, high-level stuff. That a woman can’t do.”

  “This is what I’m talking about!” said Cinderella. “On top of everything I’ve just said, I’m also being held back because I’m a woman. But guess what? You see how I broke this glass slipper? Watch how I break the glass ceiling!”

  Everyone in the room ducked for cover and peered nervously at the glass dome above the ballroom.

  “Not the actual glass ceiling, you idiots! I’m talking about the metaphorical glass ceiling that represents the invisible barrier holding back women and people of color from advancing professionally… I can’t believe you’re all opening your gift bags while I’m giving this speech.”

  Cinderella hobbled out of the room, looking back one last time.

  “I’ll go to school, I’ll get a job, rise the ranks, and call myself Chief Glass Disrupter on my business card because I’ll work at one of those cool companies where you make up your own title. You’ll see. All of you!” said Cinderella. “Oh, and by the way, ‘crudités’ is just a fancy word for regular vegetables.”

  Cinderella left that night and did everything she said she would do. It wasn’t easy, of course, but Cinderella persisted. She shattered the glass ceiling into as many pieces as she had shattered that stupid glass paperweight.

  And she always wore flats.

  THE END

  LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD & THE BIG BAD WOLFCALLER

  NCE UPON A TIME…

  There lived a considerate and spirited young woman named Little Red Riding Hood. Actually her name was Rosa. But because she wore a cherry-colored cape and was 5'2" everyone in town called her Little Red Riding Hood. They were extremely uncreative with nicknames.

  One day, Rosa’s mother asked her to take her abuela a basket of pan dulce because she was sick.

  “Be sure you go straight to Abuela’s,” said her madre. “Don’t walk down dark streets, don’t talk to strangers, and don’t slouch, mija.”

  “I got it, Ma!” Rosa responded as she headed out the door and immediately slouched her shoulders again.

  After walking a few blocks toward Abuela’s, Rosa heard a loud, long whistle from behind a tree.

  “Arh-woooooooooooooo!”

  It was a wolf!

  “Hey there, Red. Nice cape,” said the wolf. “Bet you look even better without it.”

  Ugh, what a pain, Rosa thought to herself. She was not in the mood to deal with an unwanted wolfcaller. Not that any wolfcallers were wanted. Also, what an unoriginal wolfcall. I mean, come on! It was just bold outerwear!

  Rosa took out a chocolate cookie from the basket and began to nibble as a distraction.r />
  “That cookie looks muy sabrosa,” said the wolf, smiling creepily at Rosa. “May I have a bite?”

  Who asks strangers for a bite of their dessert? thought Rosa. Leave me alone.

  She considered throwing the half-eaten cookie at him, but it was too good to waste on a wolf. She quickened her pace instead.

  But the wolf continued to follow her as she raced over a footbridge.

  “Mmmmhmmmm,” crooned the wolf in a disturbing tone. “Tasty.”

  She hoped the wolf was referring to the food and not her. She scanned the area, looking to see if there was a safe space to go inside and hide, but the stores were closed and even the food carriages were empty.

  The wolf was still following her and Rosa was getting more and more uncomfortable. She didn’t want to have a confrontation with the wolf and anger him, but perhaps eye contact—or better yet, a demeaning eye roll—would make him stop. She looked directly in his yellow eyes and said, “Ich,” as she threw her head back in an exaggerated eye roll.

  “Damn, that ass,” said the wolf.

  Whelp, that didn’t work, thought Rosa. She lowered her head and pulled on the hood of her red cape, hoping he would get the hint and stop.

  “Smile, honey. Why won’t you give me a smile?” asked the wolf as he got closer. “What’s your problem, bitch?”

  Now his wolfcalls were getting aggressive. Ignoring him wasn’t working, acknowledging him wasn’t working, and Rosa was desperate to do something to make him stop. Her palms got sweaty, she felt the blood rise to her cheeks, and her left eye got twitchy. She would try one last tactic: the impassioned monologue.

  “Hey, wolf. You’re making me uncomfortable,” said Rosa. “I am trying to visit my sick abuela. I would like to be able to walk down a public street without getting harassed about my food, my cloak, or my ass, which by the way you can’t even see because it’s entirely covered by my cape! We are both creatures on this planet, just trying to go about their day. How would it feel if I reduced you to your excessively furry gray tail? I don’t like when you talk to me like that. It doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel bad. I didn’t pick this cloak for you. I picked it for me. And for my mom, because this is the only item of clothing she agrees is cute. In the future, please try to talk to women in a more respectful tone. Que tengas un buen día. Adios.”