Learning from Bad Poetry

Hello, my name is Hannah Chutzpah and today I want to talk about bad writing. That’s right: really, stinky, terrible writing.

Why examine it? Well – partly for the sheer joy of terrible. The Bulwer-Lytton Prize for the worst opening sentence in fiction will give you a taste of how hilarious bad writing can be. But also: by examining bad writing we can work out why it sucks, and then at least avoid a few of the pitfalls. Prose is another kettle of fish – I might do a follow-up post in bad fiction later. But in the meantime, I’m going to focus on bad poetry.

I know a fair bit about bad poetry. I run the annual Vogon Poetry Slam for Towel Day, in which people write nerdy/terrible poetry as a Douglas Adams tribute. And watching people strive to be the worst they can be is truly a wonderful sight. See some youtube videos of it here.

These days, I’m a pretty good poet – but one of the ways I got good was by getting all the terrible stuff out of my system for many, many years. I heard an anecdote that on someone’s first day at art school the professor said ‘I reckon each one of you has about 10,000 bad drawings in you. Get them out. Now. Go!’

Whether deliberately or not, I’ve been getting the horrors out of my system for a long time. Originally they were just brainspill: a badly-rhymed diary entry which I shouldn’t have shown to anyone (oh, how much I cringe that I shared them with anyone) but slowly, over the years, writing became my primary interest. I went to writing groups, swotted, practiced, got feedback, and eventually I got better.

But in the interests of truly smelling one’s own farts, as Stephen Fry once put it, I’m going to examine something I wrote – in all earnestness – when I was a teenager.

This is an untitled piece I found in a box of papers recently. It’s dated 30/12/02 – which means I was aged 16, in the lull between Christmas and new years, and probably bored. I can’t remember who (if anyone) started the deluge but here the piece stands in all it’s horror:

Someone has tattooed ‘loser’ onto my heart
My pain is exquisite, so shall be my art
I am but a translator, a martyr to perfection
I shall be hurt & make beauty of my rejection

I do an important job, a spokesman for the human race
We are but violent scum, art is our saving grace
I am a narcisist, but you must allow my pride
For what I produce is a comfort in which all will someday hide.

Wow. Just wow. I mean, that epic-level sucked, right? But why and how did it suck? I reckon I can half-redeem this piece by using it as a tool to make sure I never do that again.

1) Melodrama

At sixteen, melodrama isn’t that much of a surprise, but oy vei, that opening couplet is something else. ‘Someone has tattooed ‘loser’ onto my heart/My pain is exquisite, so shall be my art’. Exquisite pain, indelible marks, hearts. It’s all, unanchored high drama. Who is the person pining over, what are they hurting about? From this piece alone (and I’m the one that bloody wrote it): no clue. But the writer is miserable and they’ve decided their agony is terrible – yet beautiful – and this makes them a better artist.

Most people (thankfully) grow out of this mindset, but it’s a recurring theme in some poetry where the writer thinks some seriously deep-ass emotion is so powerful that it doesn’t actually need to be rendered well to be a valid and wonderful piece of art in itself. This is (needless to say) wrong. If you want to vent to a friend over coffee: go for it. If you want anyone to read your stuff: the depth of your feeling is not enough. Writing is a craft and you need to get enough better at the craft that someone might actually want to read it. Feeling the deepest feelings while drinking absinthe and titting about in a beret is a cliché for a reason. Good artists? More often than not they’re working on being good at what they do rather than posing about their heartbreak in coffee shops.

This is a line someone might possibly be able to get away with in the third act of a play if you’ve had the whole rest of the time to get to know them and their situation and could be willing to cut them some slack or feel that pain-mixed-with-ambition along with them. But here, as an opening couplet? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is self-indulgent and embarrassing. I read this out at the most recent Vogon Poetry Slam and couldn’t get to the end of the first line before I was laughing too hard and needed to pause for a second.

2) Shifts in register

In the opening couplet (yep, still there) there are some jarring shifts in tone. From the modern slang ‘loser’ we then have the high-falutin’ construction of ‘my pain is exquisite, so shall be my art’.

‘So shall be’? Seriously? What is that, fake Shakespeare?

What was I thinking? In all honesty: not a lot. I don’t think I actually stopped to think what I was writing this for, or what my point was. Thankfully this isn’t one of the poems I tried to send off to competitions (I did that too – writing about how it was so cruel of fate to have me fall in love with a gay guy – and I rhymed ‘gay’ with ‘anyway’) – but back to my point: these shifts in register are jarring as hell, and I just didn’t notice them. When you’re writing – or at least when you’re editing what you’ve written – you need to think about how you’re saying what you’re saying, and why you’re saying what you’re saying. All ‘rules’ about writing can be broken providing you have a reason for doing them. You can shift from first person to second person, high flowery register to the clinical – providing you know why you’re doing it and it makes sense for the writing. In Antony and Cleopatra the Romans speak very formally, while the Egyptians are flowery – verbally demonstrating the dichotomy Shakespeare makes between the emotionless, efficient Roman Empire and the pleasure-garden that is Cleopatra’s kingdom.

But this poem of mine: it ain’t Shakespeare. There is no reason for this switch. I think I just had two different things to say and I smooshed them together with an end rhyme. Bish bash bosh. Job done. Now where’s my trophy for being a deep-ass poet?
Which brings us on to number 3:

3) Self-importance

As much as re-reading this stuff makes me cringe now, I can’t completely regret it. When I was 16 I genuinely thought my writing was amazing – that I’d be showered in literary awards at an unusually young age – and that self-confidence spurred me on to do more, write more, and through that practice and study I eventually did get a lot better. I am now probably good enough to that in a few years I may start deserving the praise I thought I was owed back then. But I’m also now a grownup who’s had enough knock-backs that I can’t actually get back to that mindset. I would like to be told my writing is mind-blowingly wonderful, but I’m mainly preoccupied with things like being nice to my friends and being able to pay my rent. And that’s probably a good thing.

However: self-importance. It just rises off this piece in a fine mist, which eventually becomes so dense you can barely read the damn poem through it. Holy crap – ‘I do an important job, a spokesman for the human race/We are but violent scum, art is our saving grace’ ‘I’m so important focusing on the one and only thing humanity has going for it…’ What did I think I was? A doctor saving lives? An environmental activist chaining themselves to trees to save the planet? Jesus? I was a smug teenager scribbling in my room. Get over yourself, Past-Hannah.

The performance poetry I like the most these days is stuff with ‘universality’ – stuff about experiences everyone’s had, such as:

that lingering look from someone which you hope could be more,

feeling excluded as a kid,

the first time you stood up to someone,

having a job you don’t much like, or

that one night out where everything is just right.

A lot of good performance poetry is usually about things painted with enough specifics that you can picture them, and broad enough strokes that other people can easily relate.

In the poem above: there is no universality unless you also think you are an artistic savior to humanity. There is no universality in that poem. There is only I, Me, My. 99% of people reading this piece will think the author is obnoxious, full of themselves, and not even doing the thing they’re bragging about (writing) at all artfully.

4) Lack of Self-Awareness

This is a difficult one to correct through writing alone – but basically none of the self-importance stuff would have been an issue if I’d had enough self-awareness to see that my artistic posturing made me look completely unlikable. To be a good writer you need to be aware – of yourself, of your writing – but also aware of others, and the world around you.

When I studied creative writing at university I heard horror stories (and saw a couple) of people submitting work in which the writer’s own prejudice completely blinded them to things which were… more than a little problematic for their readers. Things like misogyny or racism were put in first-person pieces where the rest of the class assumed this was deliberate and part of the character’s voice. Only in the discussions about the piece did we realise it was also the view of the person, sat in front of us, who’d written it – and didn’t get why we were making such a big deal about the repeated light-hearted references to pogroms and ‘shower time at Auschwitz’.

Seriously. This happened.

Other times I’ve heard poets do a piece about domestic violence where the main thrust of their poem was ‘why are you with that jerk when you could be with meeeee? Honestly, you’re so stupid to be staying with that guy that hits you’ – completely missing the point that
1) domestic violence is complicated and fraught and the woman was probably staying with the asshole because she still had some feelings for him, or because she worn-down and scared. Not because she liked getting hit, and
2) the poet’s main interest in her welfare seemed very tied to his interest in getting into her pants.

I think the writer’s point was ‘domestic violence is terrible’ but I spent the whole time thinking ‘Nice Guy Syndrome’ and getting annoyed that he half-attributed domestic violence to the woman not being bright enough to realise that ‘not getting hit is better than getting hit’. *headdesk*

This blindness to our own mindsets is something writers need to be wary of. Self-awareness is generally a good idea for everyone, but it’s an ongoing process. As a writer the short-cut is to get feedback from multiple people who will give you an honest opinion on the work. Other people will find your blindspots for you and help you polish up/edit out the problem areas.

And when I said ‘an honest opinion’ – I meant it. You need feedback from people who are more interested in your art than your ego. Your mother, your best friend or your other half will probably say nice things because they like you. You need to find other writers, and bounce stuff off them. Needless to say, to avoid being a pain in the butt – you need this process to be reciprocal. Join a writing group. If you can’t find one near you: start a writing group. Get other people who are interested in writing to give constructive criticism, and do the same for them. As you help them with their work you’ll almost certainly start seeing other common mistakes and learn to edit them out, or avoid them altogether, yourself.

5) Not Sure What I’m On About

My teenage piece above strikes me (I hope) as a brain-spill rather than something I may have at some point thought was a good piece of literature, but another big problem with it is it has no point. It starts self-pitying and then ends up bragging about my artistic output: ‘For what I produce is a comfort in which all will someday hide.’

I had no point, really. Some self-pity, then some sour-grapes ego-massage. The final line doesn’t even make much sense – did I really think everyone on Earth would some day love my poetry?!

I think I let the end-rhyme format dictate what I wanted to say, and then I fudged any meaning or message in favour of these stunning rhymes:

heart/art

perfection/rejection

race/grace

pride/hide

Um… yeah. It’s like I couldn’t pick if I wanted it to rhyme or to say something, and I compromised between the two: saying nothing much and rhyming poorly. Ten Vogon points!

You don’t need to have every angle of a thing worked out before you write – fer Chrissakes get stuff down on paper, then edit and re-edit until you’ve got something good – but in that editing process it’s worth spending a minute to think about what your piece is about. What do you want to say, or leave the readers/audience thinking and feeling?

Far too often I’ve seen writing which is laced with fifteen references, but the author’s clearly never stopped to think what they’re actually talking about. The piece can be artfully done, but if you, the author, don’t know what you’re on about: don’t expect it to mean anything to your readers or audience. You need it to be more than random words in a random order.

6) Cadence/Rhythm

This piece has no rhythm. At its most basic I’m talking about the number of syllables per line. Here it is with the number of syllables written next to it:

Someone has tattooed ‘loser’ onto my heart 11
My pain is exquisite, so shall be my art 11
I am but a translator, a martyr to perfection 14
I shall be hurt & make beauty of my rejection 13

I do an important job, a spokesman for the human race 15
We are but violent scum, art is our saving grace 12
I am a narcisist, but you must allow my pride 13
For what I produce is a comfort in which all will someday hide. 16

The first stanza actually does better than I thought – 11, 11, 14, 13 – ideally both couplets (in this end-rhyme form) should have the same number of syllables per line, but if you look at the couplets as individual units I’m only out by one beat, really. The next stanza is undoubtedly all over the place though: 15, 12, 13, 16.

You don’t need your poem to be mathematical perfection, but for the work to trip off the tongue generally you need a consistent-ish rhythm. By all means mess with the rules for emphasis or meaning, but don’t just ignore the rules because you couldn’t be arsed with them. That’s not good.

Unless you’re writing something very strict and formal like a sonnet, this is something to do in the edit rather than fret over it when you’re just trying to get ideas down. But a completed poem should not jump all over the place like that.

7) Spelling Mistakes

Narcissist, not narcisist. Spell-check that shit, man.

8) No Specifics

This piece of work has no imagery apart from the cringe-worthy ‘loser’ tattoo. Two images if you count the everyone hiding some day in the comfort of my poetry. (Double-cringe with extra martyr complex cheese.)

Now I generally prefer my poetry from the heart rather than precise and scientific, but… you need some specifics to anchor the work on to – describing a place, a scene, an emotion, a time, an object. You need to describe something to describe anything, otherwise you’re just telling the audience.

Have you heard the old adage ‘show, don’t tell’? Almost certainly. And it’s there for a reason. ‘She said, angrily’ isn’t half as good as ‘She said, as her top lip curled away from her teeth’.

Or, for poetry, ‘It hurts to see you with him’ could be amped up to something like ‘I felt like I’d been punched in the gut that night when I saw his hand on your knee.’ Punched in the anything is still pretty cliché, but you see where this is going.

Coleridge described prose as ‘words in their best order’ and poetry as ‘the best words in their best order.’ To be using the best words, you’re probably going to need to think for a bit and describe something specific.

For example, this poem is one of the pieces I’m the most proud of. If I boiled it down to a sentence it would be ‘I think I love you and I think you love me but neither of us is saying it.’ But that would be quick, informative and to the point. Stating the facts wouldn’t help put the reader in my shoes.

Poetry isn’t about quick and informative – it’s about taking people on a journey – and you do that by describing things. To get your readers to see what you want them to see you need to paint them that picture, and do your best to not let your melodrama, spelling mistakes, shifts in rhythm and register, self-importance, lack of self-awareness, or anything else get in the way.

Right. Now that’s out of the way: please write. Write more, write frequently, and look at what you’ve written with a critical eye if you want to improve it. Don’t beat yourself up if you do make any of these mistakes, just be aware of them – and work them out in the edit.

Hope that’s been some help. If there’s anything else you think people should have on their ‘Do Not Do This’ list please let me know in the comments.

Poem: Tetris as a Relationship Analogy

This is a poem written for Towel Day/Geek Pride Day.

3… 2… 1…
In the early days it was easy
We slotted together so perfectly
For my every quirk
You had the reverse
Like an enzyme – a key to fit every lock
And together we broke everything down
We erased every block on the screen
And we were free
Just you and me.

Those falling blocks seemed gifted from the heavens
We were on a never-ending winning streak
Riding the wave of good fortune
Perfect fit after perfect fit
And we laughed – wide-eyed – that we were getting away with murder
Couldn’t believe how many last-minute changes
We could make work

We had lazy days – on autopilot – where everything just went to plan
We didn’t even have a plan
But our Zs and Ns stacked to the left and right in neat little piles
Os in the middle tessellated into neat lego-brick walls and melted away
And even though we were only half awake, everything fit perfectly, without a thought
We were entranced together, while that tune hummed around and around
Those blocks swimming before my eyes even when you weren’t there.

And I’ve heard you can actually win at this game
That with a high enough score a rocket appears
And you just fly off into happily ever after
And I don’t know if that’s true or not
I’ve only ever heard rumours and fairytales
But if I ever was going to make it –
I just know it’d be this game. With you.

But then we hit pause. Just for a minute. Some real life stuff got in the way.
(Dinner time.)
But when we came back nothing was the same
Our winning streak was gone
It started with one little gap –
I’d said L
You could’ve matched my L
You act soppier than me and you’re leaving a 2-block gap here
Would it really kill you to say you L me too?

And it wasn’t great, but we’d fix it later
But that later never came.

We stacked our tetrominoes around it, higher and higher
But the gaps grew with every layer
Seriously, what were you thinking putting that T there like that?
Or leaving your Top Gear magazines and dirty socks all over my floor?
You were all Zs and Ns misaligned
And I was waiting for the I
I’d lost where I fit in
Seriously where’s that fucking I? It could solve everything

But our screen is filling up too fast
And the last-minute changes no longer work
We don’t get away with murder anymore
We don’t get away with anything
And now the world is piling in on us
And there isn’t the room turn around
Because we’re moving too fast to fix
There isn’t even time to roll your Is
Because it’s moving in split seconds
Faster and faster and then

In bullet-time slow motion detail I see
The final tetrominoes entomb our screen

For you and me, it’s:

Game over.

We had a good run.

Poem: Permission

An International Women’s Day Poem. Cross-posted from my web-publishing site The Whippersnapper Press.

Permission

This is for the women who don’t ask permission
To be themselves.
This is for the women who are done with working on their contentment
And started working on their lot.

This is for the women whose posture says
“Fuck you, punk. I got this covered.”
This is for the women who’ve come too damn far
To waste time worrying whether you approve.
This is for the women who wear what they want, swear how they want,
Drink and fuck and love and fight and wring every ounce like it’s only their business.
Because it is.
And they’ve realised.

This is for the girl in class who’s done with playing dumb-
Yes, she knows the answer-
Yes no one else has put their hand up for the last ten minutes-
Yes the teacher is looking past her raised hand asking-
“Does anyone know the answer? Anyone… else?”
But she’ll be damned if she’s gonna hide her own light.

This is for the gaybar barmaids who know their regulars inside and out
And wear those memories proud, like diamonds.
This is for the sweet little old lady
With the dirtiest laugh in the nursing home.
This is for my Godmother Sara: terminal, regal, naughty,
And educating her doctors about the munchies.

This is for the liberated women who worked past violence and ridicule
To ensure their daughters never needed to be liberated-
Their daughters were never enslaved.

This is for the tough old birds and the earnest youngsters
Who know that life is too personal, too precious, too Goddamn important
To let the magazines take a slice.

This is for the women who’ve stopped counting calories
And started counting stars.

This is for Dorothy Parker’s forked tongue
Patti Smith’s horses
Boudicca’s chariots
And Rosa Parks’ tired feet.
This is for the women we could be, can be, will be
Just as soon as we stop asking permission
To be.

© Hannah Chutzpah 2013

Book Review: Picture of Dorian Gray

Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Luscious and Badly Paced

Beautiful descriptions, beautiful quips, next to no editing going on here. Two whole pages dedicated to lists of the pretty things Dorian buys himself is definitely self-indulgent – but then what else could we expect of the great Oscar Wilde?

I loved this novel for its concept and for its myriad witticisms, though I didn’t find it had much going for it in suspense or horror. I haven’t read enough else from around this era to know if it’s just of its time, or if it’s just not Wilde’s strong point. Either way, it is a shame. Also, I think Wilde missed a trick in neither making Gray that scary a character (amoral, of course, but never really that menacing to the audience), nor showing more of the world from Gray’s point of view – which could have been fun.

The character of the theatre owner is where Wilde really lets himself down as a narrator. All Wilde can do to convey how unpleasant this man is, is talk about how revolting and Jewish he is. Reading this as a Jewish person (with what I hope will evolve to be a Wildean wit) – I found this more than a bit crap. Sure, anti-Semitism was of its time – suppose I can’t hold that one against His Oscar of Wildeness, but dude, seriously, find another adjective: The theatre owner was horrible because of his horrible Jew-like eyes, and his horrible Jew-like fingers, and his horrible Jewish smirk and…. I started thinking of Randy Newman’s Short People “They got little hands, little eyes/They walk around tellin’ great big lies.” Not your finest hour, Oscar. As a writer or otherwise.

Generally, this novel is a badly-paced combination of luscious, adjective-laden prose like you won’t get anywhere outside of romance fiction these days (believe it or not I mean that in a good way) and some brilliant one-liners. A fair few of them you’ve probably seen printed in collections of terribly clever quotes, and therefore they will have lost their sheen a bit, but there’s also plenty that you probably haven’t heard, and they’re damn good too.

I’m not quite sure what Wilde was aiming for in his overarching theme which appears to be beauty = evil, but at the same time, he hardly makes a case for unattractive = good (I refer you to our Jewish theatre owner). The more I’ve learnt of Wilde’s life the more all the characters fall into place as real people, which is an interesting twist. Wooton is definitely Wilde himself – firecracker-quick with the quips, and all about the decadence and enjoying ‘corrupting’ others (in ways which will have to be inferred), while the ambiguous, unknowable Dorian was (I’d venture to guess) Lord Alfred Douglas (or “Bosie”) – the beautiful aristocratic kiddo who’s father started all the trials which landed Wilde in ignominy and prison. Bosie never once wrote to Wilde when he was in prison – despite receiving many letters from him, the young shit. Not to mention Wilde’s keeping company with so many rent-boys which he described as like “dining with panthers” – dangerous, but thrilling. I’d say it’s safe to venture that this novel is Wilde himself wrestling with the contradictions of what one who appears so angelic is yet capable of – but it doesn’t make for the tightest plot. The portrait in the attic is a strong and enduring image, but don’t dig too deep on the whys and hows. The plot’s not got much more depth than the canvas.

Good canvas, though.

Book Review: An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein

An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein by Shel Silverstein

A Forgotten Classic

I am forever grateful to my university’s drama society for putting on An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, and opening my eyes to the wonder of Uncle Shelby’s adult stuff.

Quick word of warning: this is a lot closer to Freakin’ at the Freakers’ Ball than The Giving Tree.

It’s a series of dramatic shorts, each one riffing around two or three characters interacting in a dark, twisted, well observed, and often hilarious situation. Yes, it’s a script, and I don’t normally read scripts in my spare time, but this is what writing should be, and you’d be a fool to pass it up.

As is often the way with a collection – the quality does vary a little from skit to skit – but when Shel Silverstein is not at his best it’s only ‘not superlative’, and when he’s good: it’s so good you’ll be stopping friends, family and passers-by to read it out to them – because you want to see that look on someone else’s face as these beauties hit them for the first time.

This book has no production values whatsoever, no Amazon reviews and very little in the way of Google-hits, but I beg you – for your sake and for the greater good of humanity: give this book a go and spread the word.

Beginner’s Guide to the Edinburgh Fringe

This article originally appeared in Bad Reputation – a feminist pop-culture adventure on 07 August 2012.

The Edinburgh Fringe has begun! I’m not there yet – I’ll get there next Saturday – but the Twitter updates from friends there are already making me jealous and nostalgic in almost equal measure. This year will be my fourth Fringe – so here’s a beginner’s guide from – if not an old hand – someone who’s been ’round the Edinburgh block a few times.

Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! Wave goodbye to your money, sobriety and any semblance of a normal sleep pattern. Say hello to the weird, the wonderful, and hysterical, dry-heaving laughter of a kind that won’t quite translate to the outside world.

Get ready to start spotting your idols just walking down the street, get ready to say ‘no thanks’ to flyers roughly every 30 seconds, and wind up taking them anyway because the person handing you them was funny/charming/in a funny costume/worryingly eager. Primarily: prepared to be completely overwhelmed for choice.

No poster stays up for long before someone posts another over it

The very first time I went to the Fringe, I just dipped in for a day when I happened to be in Scotland. My travelling companion and I almost had panic attacks when we started leafing through the Fringe Brochure (about 1/3 the size of a Yellow Pages directory and stuffed full of tempting offers). In the end, we managed three shows in one day, literally ran from one venue to another to make it in time and managed a pretty full Fringe experience: Debbie Does Dallas: the Musical, the wonderful Aussie musical comedy guys Tripod, and a belly-flop of a gig when we paid £10 to see Phil Jupitas Reads Dickens. It was literally just Phill Jupitas reading some of Dickens’ lesser-known short stories and – on that day – he was in a foul mood. Also: the day cost us £45 each in tickets alone. This was before I knew about the Free Fringe (more on that in a moment).

The great thing about the last couple of years when I’ve been up with a show (mostly just doing the flyering for them) is that way you have a big group of mates up there, and you can learn from each other’s viewing mistakes and benefit from each other’s recommendations. There are more shows at Edinburgh than you’ll ever be able to get through, even if you’re there for the full three weeks with both a millionaire’s budget and a jetpack to get from venue to venue – so choosing how to spend your time is important.

Royal Mile

This is where is all happens. The Royal Mile is a cobbled, pedestrianised stretch of road which – for the time of the Fringe – will become a gauntlet of street performers, impromptu performances, and a small forest’s worth of flyers. Shows with cool costumes will be flyering in character, improvisers will be improvising, musicians will be singing, and three small Fringe stages will be showing 10-20 minute showcases from a wide variety of shows.

PBH Free Fringe

The PBH Free Fringe is a wonderful institution. It’s been running since 1996, put together by a guy called Peter Buckley Hill (known to many as PBH.) As the Fringe became more and more expensive, the financial risks increased for performers. While headline names from the telly have guaranteed audiences, the vast majority of performers will be lucky if they break even after a run. As the main groups of venues increased their prices over the years, the financial risks of taking a show up to the Fringe also increased. A debt of a few grand isn’t unheard of, and is easily enough to wipe out a small arts troupe. To counteract this, PBH set up the Free Fringe, where performers don’t pay for the venues and audiences don’t pay to enter.

There’s lots of bucket-shaking at the end, but you can see a show and then decide what it’s worth. A good guide: give as many pounds as you would give it stars (out of five). If it sucked – you can just walk out. No obligation. No misgynistic asshole will call. If it rocked your world, give them a fiver (or more!) and buy a book or a CD from the performers. It’s good manners to buy a drink at the venues to make sure they stay with the Free Fringe next year, and to make sure you have enough change at the end. (If you’re broke, you can always just shake the performer’s hand and say thank you.)

Fringe Adventurer’s Cheat Sheet

• Get hold of a PBH Free Fringe guide as soon as you ca.n It lists all the free shows and is arranged by time (not the mind-boggling alphabetic listing of the main programme) so if it’s, say, 3:00 and you want to to see something before your next show at 5:00, it’s easy to flip through and see what’s on.
• Avoid TV names unless you really, really love them. Because their shows are guaranteed to be pricier, and – though it’s not the same – you see them at home on the telly anyway. It’s worth remembering at the Fringe that small audiences don’t necessarily mean bad performances and big audiences don’t mean quality. Go take a punt on something weird and wonderful for cheaps. You might not be able to see it anywhere else.
• Try to get enough sleep. Yes, this runs antithetical to the spirit of the Fringe where there is a constant pressure to do and see everything, and some of the best shows are on late at night, but try to get enough sleep to stay sane, healthy, and up to the task. A couple of times in the past, I’d realise I was finding something intellectually funny but was just too shattered to fully appreciate it. Other times there were slumps and tears. Just… look after yourselves, eh guys?
• Comfortable Shoes. You will be walking up and down a lot of hills, often cobbled, and often in the rain. Get some comfortable footwear, and maybe carry a change of socks to prevent trenchfoot. You don’t want to end up like I did last year, losing a whole afternoon to a trip to A&E to have a swollen, numb, tingly foot looked at. (Nothing broken, luckily, but annoying nonetheless.)

And, finally, recommended shows

These are on my Edinburgh to-do list on account of how I’ve seen the performers (and sometimes whole preview shows) already and I can vouch for their awesomeness. These are arranged alphabetically to avoid having to pick or choose an order:

The Beta Males – The Space Race
I’ve been a mad fangirl for these guys ever since I saw some little show of theirs in a room above a pub. Huge, howling belly laughs roughly every 10 seconds. These guys are taut, high-energy, dark and twisted, but never go for cheap shots. Blokey without ever straying anywhere near asshat UNILAD territory. Their shows are a series of sketches with an overall plot arc, and their first show I saw – The Bunker – is still quoted in my group of friends with the fanaticism of Monty Python fans. Trailer here. Random awesome YouTube video of theirs here.

Dirty Great Love Story
A two-person love story told through poetry. That explanation doesn’t begin to do it justice. It’s heartfelt, down to earth, sometimes awkward, sometimes hilarious, and with polished flows which will make you pause and go “ooooh” until another line brings you back up cackling. Written and performed by spoken word allstars Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna. Trailer here.

Fat Kitten Improv
I first saw these guys in 2009 and I’ve been hooked ever since. Full disclosure: they are my mates. Fuller disclosure: they’re my mates ’cause I loved them on stage so much I set about getting to know them. Once reviewed as “well-spoken but batshit insane”. Also they’re a mixed-gender team of predominantly huggable lefty feminists and won’t take cheap shots. Except the odd cock joke. (Hee hee. Cocks.) Improvised comedy will be different every time, so if you like them you can keep coming back and always see something fresh. Shout out your own suggestions and see them acted out for your viewing pleasure. Dance, monkeys, dance! Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Sample here.

Lashings of Ginger Beer Time
Like many things at the Fringe, these guys are hard to pin down – so I’ll go with their own description: “Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is a Queer Feminist Burlesque Collective. Combining songs, dancing, stand-up and sketches, luxe Victoriana drag with thigh-high fetish-boots, upbeat musical theatre optimism with 21st-century political rage, this is music hall for the internet age.” Saw them the other week with fellow BadReppers Jenni, Rhian and Miranda and the show really made me laugh. And cry. Like, lots. *shakes fist* *fails to hold grudge* *hugs Lashings people* Taster vids here.

Loretta Maine
Musical Comedy creation of the wonderful Pippa Evans, Loretta Maine is a fucked up Courtney Love-esque singer songwriter. Vulnerability, self-destructive everything, kickass and more than a hint of menace. Her show two years ago, I’m Not Drunk, I Just Need to Talk to You, was a highlight of the Fringe and I’ve had the poster on my wall ever since. Song here. Another one here. Clip of previous show here.

Max and Ivan Are… Con Artists
Two man high energy sketch duo. They share a lot of awesomes with the Beta Males in their format – minimal, inventive staging, a cast of bizarre characters and a high-energy sketch show with an overall narrative. This year’s one is about a band of assassins, and Max Olesker doing his Joanna-Lumley-posh-voiced character makes me feel funny things in my tummy. Trailer here.

The Mechanisms
Musical steampunks in space. “A band of immortal space pirates roaming the universe in the starship Aurora. If you’re very lucky, they might sing you a story before they shoot you.” With a sound defined as ‘Space Folk’ and mad theatrics and kick-ass (feminist!) reworkings of traditional songs and fairy tales. But IN SPACE! Full disclosure: my housemate is in this one. Complete full disclosure: I had to contain my fangirling when I heard their album, because otherwise it could have been awkward. Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Musical preview here.

Other Voices Spoken Word
Oh hai, this is my show. I mentioned it the other week. Put together by the wonderful Fay Roberts and featuring (I’m not just saying this) some of my favourite female performance poets on the scene, I’m chuffed to bits to be part of it. We’ve had some very nice reviews already. Apparently I “delighted the room with poems laced with puns and elegant, elaborate language. By turns comic and poignant, political and surreal, Hannah’s poetry made the audience laugh and made them think, a dangerous combination.” Just sayin’. Part of the PBH Free Fringe.

The 2012 Fringe runs from 3-27 August.

I’m a Poet and I Know It

This post originally appeared in Bad Reputation – a feminist pop-culture adventure on July 25th 2012.

“Hello my name is Hannah… and I am a poet.”

“Hi Hannah.”

“It started with just scribbling the odd rhyme by myself in my teens. Then I went away to university and learnt you can have poetry slams, but even then I didn’t really take to it. Then, in 2009, I moved back to London. Not many of my friends had moved back yet and I didn’t know many people and then one night I just fell into the wrong crowd… you know how it goes.”

Ok, not quite, but from the way many people respond when the subject comes up…. you’d think it was something at least a bit distasteful. And when it’s not great it’s not great, but when it’s good: holy shit, you have no idea.

See Exhibit A

When it’s done right performance poetry (or ‘spoken word’ as it’s often coyly referred to) is a thrilling, visceral, hilarious and beautiful experience. Going everywhere to music-backed comedy to rap to beat and sonnets. Most nights have an open mic section, too, so the opportunity to try your hand and get involved is always there.

This is one of the first pieces I saw performed live and I was hooked:

Three gigs and a couple of glasses of wine later and I was on stage trying my hand in the Hammer & Tongue slam and I came second. No going back. Though I’ve been a writer for years, there’s something incomparable to seeing your work hit an audience – getting gasps and laughs right where you hoped they’d be. And – when it doesn’t quite hit the mark – you’ve just had a room full of feedback. OK, back to the drawing-board, cut the third stanza, up the ending, sort the rhythm in the third line and try again next week.

And now – wonder of wonders – I’m part of a poetry show that’s going up to the Edinburgh Fringe and is organised by the ‘Welsh whisperer’ Fay Roberts. The shows are (according to an audience member on Sunday:

“A heady blend of rhythms – poems that catch you in the throat, stories so compelling that you realise you haven’t taken a breath in minutes, and if you start to take yourself too seriously, then surely someone will tell life in words so true you wonder if they are reading your diary.”

So, yeah. I’m pretty stoked. The vibe is big, vampy and bold. Red drapes, candles, and did I meantion the bowls of heart-shaped sweeties? The booked acts are an array of outspoken women weaving words about whatever we damn like. We have a London premier this Thursday at the wonderful Hackney Attic (Facebook event here) featuring Fay Roberts, Sophia Blackwell, Fran Isherwood, Isadora Vibes, and yours truly – Hannah Chutzpah.

If you read BadRep there’s a strong chance this is relevant to your interests.

Here’s my own contribution (dressed like a goth glitterball because showbiz)

Kickass Princesses, Part 2

This article originally appeared in Bad Reputation – a feminist pop-culture adventure on 18 JuneMarch 2012.

When I think about everything about womanhood that hamstrung me with fear when I was thirteen it all came down, really, to princesses. I didn’t think I had to work hard to be a woman (which is scary but obviously eventually achievable). I thought I had to somehow magically – through superhuman psychic effort – transform into a princess instead. That’s how I’d get fallen in love with. That’s how I’d get along. That’s how the world would welcome me.

– Caitlin Moran, How to be a Woman

Welcome to part two of Kickass Princesses – a look at some subversive female protagonists in children’s literature. You can read Part 1 here.

The more children’s books I read and the more princesses I come to know, the more I realise that ‘kickass’ probably wasn’t the best term to use. Some of these characters do kick ass, but the main feature is turning out to be simply that they make unconventional princesses.

As the archetype of a fairytale princess is so ingrained, it takes looking at a wide variety of ‘unprincessy’ examples to unpick exactly what some of our starting assumptions are. A closer look at the ‘unconventional’ princesses here, and in my previous post, reveals that these women and girls have agency, interests, and are more than just a beautiful, delicate, unsullied physical appearance. Sometimes they aren’t even beautiful at all. What they are – what, we realise, makes them ‘unprincessy’ – is often simply the fact that they are two-dimensional characters.

Ouch. This stereotype needs subverting roughly forever ago. On with the show…

The Ordinary Princess

Written and illustrated by MM Kaye, published in 1980 by Doubleday

At 107 pages, this one’s aimed at a slightly older age group than the rest of the books in this post, which are all picture books.

The plot begins when the seventh princess is born in the land of Phantasmorania, and even the fairies are invited to the Christening, despite the King’s reservations. The bad-tempered and seaweedy fairy Crustacea, pissed off by the bad journey in to the palace, gives the baby the gift of ordinariness. Instantly the baby cries for the first time, and becomes considerably less attractive. As she grows up, our girl Amethyst (known as Amy) doesn’t look great in fine gowns like her blonde, willowy, ethereal and frankly boring and unknowable sisters. Instead, she loves climbing down the wisteria which grows up the castle walls and sneaking out to the forest.

Thanks to her extremely ordinary looks, Amy turns out to be impossible to marry off. Oh, the shame of it all! Not that our girl is bothered, but the rest of the kingdom is. When she learns of a harebrained scheme to get her rescued from a dragon so a prince will be obliged to marry her, she runs away to the forest, where she lives happily until her clothes start falling apart. So, in need of money to buy a new dress, she goes and gets a job in another palace, living in disguise as an ordinary girl. Where she meets a prince – but I’ll leave some plot to those who want to read it.

The style of writing makes for a truly luscious fairytale, and the black and white line-drawn illustrations by the author are very pretty too (just the right side of twee). Plot-wise, this book is strongest in its treatment of Amy’s interaction with Crustacea, her Godmother, who is practical, warm-yet-tough, and advises her to get on with it.

It’s weakest – in my humble socialist opinion – when our girl loves every minute of working insane hours on the lowest rungs of the servant-ladder. C’mon, girlie, you’ve worked out it’ll take you roughly a year to earn enough to buy a new dress. Aren’t you a bit annoyed at the sucky pay? Also: the insinuation throughout the book that freckles and an upturned nose make someone undateable got on my nerves quite a bit. Freckles can be well hot, and don’t get me started on pixie faces…

(Interestingly, each book I’ve looked at for these posts has often pushed an idea of what a typical beautiful princess looks like, but none of them quite match.)

I was a little disappointed in how conventionally the ends got tied up, but I suppose how the plot came to be is more important than what came to be. Our girl has agency, there’s no doubt about it. And there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending.

Princess Pigsty

By Cornelia Funke and Kerstin Meyer, Chickenhouse, 1997

In Princess Pigsty our girl is one of three sisters, who live the traditional fairytale princess life:

Their beautiful clothes filled thirty wardrobes. They had footmen to blow their noses for them and ladies-in-waiting to tidy up their rooms, hang up their clothes and polish their crowns until they shone.

Every morning, three teachers taught them royal behaviour – how to sit on a throne without fidgeting, how to curtsey without falling over, how to yawn with your mouth closed and how to smile for a whole hour without taking a break.

Isabella, the youngest, despite being perfectly capable of walking the princessy walk, is not happy, and makes her feelings known by waking up the whole castle shouting:

“I am tired of being a princess! It’s boring, boring, boring!”
Her older sisters looked up from their feather pillows in surprise.

“I want to get dirty!” cried Isabella, bouncing around on the bed. “I want to blow my own nose. I don’t want to smile all the time. I want to make my own sandwiches. I don’t want to have my hair curled ever again. I do not want to be a princess any more!”

And with that she took her crown and threw it out of the window. Splash! It landed in the goldfish pond.

In the pitched battle of wills with the King that follows, Isabella is sent to work in the kitchens until she changes her mind. When she enjoys her work in the kitchens, learning about how their food is made and essentially having too much fun to relent, she’s sent to the pigsty – where she gets along with the pigs and enjoys their company even more.

Eventually, seeing there is no way around it, her father relents and says she doesn’t have to be all princessy if she doesn’t want to – but by now our girl likes the pigs and stays in the pigsty just as often as in her feather bed.

Though no mention is made of any innate unprincessy looks (beyond curled hair), Isabella rejects her princessy role in life quite actively. While Amy of The Ordinary Princess is a failure at traditional princessy things (but isn’t that bothered about it, either) Isabella has lots of guts and lots of agency, not to mention an upbeat and cheerful nature. Eventually her father is won round. The patriarch isn’t a baddie, and – once it’s clear she’s happier that way – he accepts her as she is. Tangled, mucky and doing things that interest her. Hip-hip hooray for doing what you want! Hip-hip hooray for converting people! Hip-hip hooray for male allies!

Shrek!

William Steig, Macmillan, 1990

Didn’t know Shrek started out as a book? It did, and it was… not a huge amount like the movie franchise. (Have the first part read to you by Stanley Tucci here, though sadly without pictures.) Shrek, in both media, is a famously revolting and ugly character, who delights in his own disgustingness (“wherever Shrek went, every living creature fled. How it tickled him to be so repulsive”) – but that’s where most of the similarities end.

The book is a very short picture book with a quest narrative. A witch tells Shrek’s fortune: “Then you wed a princess who/Is even uglier than you.” Shrek decides this sounds great, and goes off in search of this princess.

He strode in and his fat lips fell open. There before him was the most stunningly ugly princess on the surface of the planet.

When they meet they declare their love for each other’s revoltingness, and live “horribly ever after.” But if you’ve seen any of the movies, you’ll know this wasn’t quite how it went down when Dreamworks got their hands on it.

In the movie Princess Fiona (who has a name, unlike in the book) is only ugly after dark, – during the day she appears as a beautiful woman, and during the night she is an ogre, and she’s self-conscious about it. The only way to cure this is with “true love’s kiss” – and it’s initially an unpleasant surprise for her to learn that when the spell is broken she’s actually stuck with ogre mode constantly.

While the movie does feature a green monster called Shrek and an (eventually) ‘ugly’ princess – their unconventionality is treated as something they’re both self-conscious about. Fiona, especially, with all the princessy expectations heaped upon her, needs reassurance that she’s loveable.

Alhough the movie doesn’t mention weight specifically, one of the main factors of Fiona’s transformation (apart from the green skin) is that she becomes considerably heavier. Fiona is more of an everywoman – learning that she doesn’t need to be a size 8 to find love – and literally kicking ass. Caitlin Moran tracks the rewrite as part of a post-feminist trend:

In the last decade the post-feminist reaction to princesses has been the creation of alternative princesses: the spunky chicks in Shrek and the newer Disney films who wear trousers, do kung fu and save the prince.

While some cool people (I’m looking at you, Babette Cole) have been subverting these roles for a long time, it takes a while before the effect trickles down to a Hollywood blockbuster and the much wider audience that a movie like Shrek can reach.

While the original very short picture book is more about two people with unconventional values and no qualms or neuroses about them – a la The Twits or The Addams Family – the movie Shrek presents Fiona as someone extremely kickass, but with a fairly conventional narrative of body issues (though admittedly hers are mythical ones) and a postmodern self-consciousness about breaking the known conventions of the ‘fairytale’ wedding.

In this way Fiona is far more relatable (and has infintely more agency) than the nameless princess in the book, but part of me is sad that she doesn’t start with the self-assurance of our happily ugly picturebook princess. After all – if this is a world where gingerbread men can talk and cats can fence – surely we can have a princess who can just get on with her thang without worrying about being pretty enough?

Coming up next time:

“Rapunzel’s Revenge – Fairytales for Feminists”

Tatterhood

The Tough Princess

And more…

Kickass Princesses, Part 1

This article originally appeared in Bad Reputation – a feminist pop-culture adventure on 28 March 2012.

Fairy tales! We all like fairy tales, right? They have both an air of comfort and adventure about them, and – as they’re something we first came into contact with as young children – there’s also an almost familial fondness for some of them. As they come from the oral tradition, folk/fairy tales have adapted slightly with each retelling to suit the world around them – but as Treasury Islands recently pointed out, the writing–down stage of most tales we know (i.e. when they became a little more set in stone) happened in deeply misogynistic times – and this carries through in even our most beloved fairy tales.

In the world of children’s books there’s a double-whammy of bad female role models and massive under-representation. There’s only one female character to every 1.6 male characters. One of the few regular traditional roles for girls in children’s literature is that of the princess, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that the traditional princess trope doesn’t give girls many positive or useful goals to aim for: look pretty, be born into or marry into hereditary privilege and… uh… that’s it. Happily ever after. Forever. Are you bored yet? I am.

Yet plenty of little girls are still obsessed with princesses and being a princess. It might not appeal much to the grown-ups, but the trope remains strong – as does the lure of pretty things. (Personally, I still have to suppress a twinge of jealousy when I see a kid going by in a really good princess dress – with the layers of skirt and the faux-stays bodice and WHERE WERE THEY WHEN I WAS SMALL, HUH? – but it’s fine. I’m not jealous. I’m writing this wearing a £3 Claire’s Accessories tiara so it’s all OK.)

So, as it doesn’t look like we’ll escape the princess trope any time soon, it’s time to play with it instead. There’s no need to throw out the castles, dragons and bling along with the bathwater – there are plenty of good children’s books out there featuring kickass princesses who do more than just wear dresses. In this post, the first of a three parter, I’m going to give you the lowdown on some good princess role models for your sprogs/selves (delete as age-appropriate).

Disclaimer before we begin:
These books are primarily working from the Western European fairy tale trope, so whilst they may kick ass, some elements remain disappointingly similar throughout – namely that the princesses are often ‘conventionally beautiful’, often blonde, always Caucasian, and in this selection the tales all revolve around the marriage trope. I hope to uncover a wider variety of ass-kicking later, but in the meantime here are some nonetheless very good children’s books.

The Paper Bag Princess

Written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Michael Martchenko, published in 1980 by Annick Press

The Paper Bag Princess is a short, snappy children’s book aimed at the 3-5 age group. (Click here to hear it read to you by a kindly librarian.)

The book begins with a typical princess called Elizabeth who “lived in a castle and wore expensive princess clothes”. She plans to marry Prince Ronald, but when a dragon steals away the prince and scorches all the kingdom (including all her pretty clothes) she doesn’t waste a moment: she dons the eponymous paper bag (the only unscorched thing she could wear) and goes off to rescue her man, defeating the dragon using her wits.

Munsch has explained that he wrote the book on his wife’s suggestion:

One day my wife, who also worked at the daycare centre, came to me and said “How come you always have the prince save the princess? Why can’t the princess save the prince?” I thought about that and changed around the ending of one of my dragon stories. That made the adults a lot happier, and the kids did not mind.

(Of course the kids didn’t mind – they don’t have such strong pre-conceived ideas of narrative yet!)

But as well as the princess doing the rescuing, there’s also a brilliant message about self-esteem and moving on. The Prince, once rescued, turns out to be an ungrateful asshat, telling Elizabeth off for looking a mess: “Come back when you look like a real princess.” Upon hearing this the princess doesn’t get upset or angry. She tells the prince, “Your clothes are really pretty and your hair is very neat. You look like a real prince but you are a bum.” (or a toad if you have the UK version). The final line – “they didn’t get married after all” – is illustrated with the Paper Bag Princess dancing off into the sunset.

This book is a brilliant, simple primer for just about everyone. It teaches people that being brave, smart and kind are more important than how you look – and that when someone is mean to you, you can be the bigger person walk away. That’s a double-helix of kickass for all genders, packed into a very short picture book.

Princess Smartypants

Written and illustrated by Babette Cole, pub. Hamish Hamilton 1986

Babette Cole has done a lot of awesome for children’s literature. Her drawings are warm, funny and just more than a bit gorgeous, and she’s also subverted Cinderella in Prince Cinders (and done plenty more amazing children’s books, but I’ll focus on this one.)

(Once again, you can have this book read to you on YouTube.)

Princess Smartypants (Best. Name. Ever.) is content with her own life: “She enjoyed being a Ms. Because she was pretty and rich, all the princes wanted her to be their Mrs.” Ten points to Cole for slipping in the Miss/Ms/Mrs thing in a fairly small, light way. Minus ten for having a princess who is both pretty and blonde.

However, wanting to put an end to the constant stream of suitors once and for all, Princess Smartypants says she will marry whoever can accomplish all the tasks she sets. This is where it gets badass – her tasks show her interests: gardening (an extreme sport when you see the slugs); feeding her monster pets; roller disco; motorbike riding – you get the idea. Princess Smartypants is accomplished, independent, and happy getting up to the stuff she enjoys.

Eventually Prince Swashbuckle does manage all the tasks, so this is where Princess Smartypants uses her plothammer card and turns him into a toad. Grumpy toad prince drives away in his red sports car, and no princes bother her again. (My plot spill is nothing without the illustrations – for the love of God, READ THIS BOOK.)

As with The Paper Bag Princess, the final frame page of this book combines the news that the protagonist doesn’t get married with an illustration of her looking very happy – in this instance, on a sun lounger, toasting the audience with a glass of something, and surrounded by her monster pets.

The message from both of these books is that you can create your own happily ever after.

The Practical Princess

From The Practical Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales by Jay Williams, Scholastic 1978

Princess Bedelia is given common sense as a baby by a visiting fairy (the other two fairies bestow the more expected gifts of beauty and grace), despite her father’s complaint of “What good is common sense to a princess? All she needs is charm.”

However, when a hungry dragon demands Bedelia to eat and a dragon slayer can’t be found soon enough, the King and his advisors decide they’ll have to give her over to be eaten. Our girl takes control of her own fate with a kind of weary resignation when she realises no one else is up to the task. She makes a dummy from straw and one of her finest gowns, and stuffs it with gunpowder. Bye bye dragon.

When a powerful but age-inappropriate and unwanted suitor turns up, Bedelia sets him near-impossible tasks using her extensive knowledge of the surrounding kingdoms – and uses her sense to catch him out when he cheats. When our girl winds up in a tower with a male Rapunzel/Sleeping Beauty-type prince, she uses her common sense to undo the spell he is under, and rescue them both.

This story isn’t my favourite of the lot – I found the heroine very slightly prissy, and the details and language didn’t really warm my cockles. However, the moral of the story is pretty much ‘don’t panic, keep thinking, you’ll find a solution’, and ain’t no arguing with that. Hip-hip hooray for brains!

The Wrestling Princesss

From The Wrestling Princess and Other Stories, written by Judy Corbalis, illustrated by Helen Craig, 1986, pub. Andre Deutsch

The Wrestling Princess takes place in a world where some gender roles are set in stone, but some are very altered. Princess Ermyntrude is either wrestling the guards or covered in axle grease, working on her tractors and helicopters – but the King tells her she has to find a husband for the succession. The princess’s resistance and her father’s weary insistence make for a good introduction to the debate on succession. Also, Ermyntrude’s father naming the ‘feminine’ traits she needs sets them up to be deconstructed/dismissed:

“To get a husband you must be enchantingly beautiful, dainty and weak,” said the king.
“Well, I’m not,” said Ermyntrude cheerfully. “I’m nothing to look at, I’m six feet tall and I’m certainly not weak. Why, Father, did you hear, this morning I wrestled with sixteen guards at once and I defeated them all?”
“Ermyntrude!” said the king sternly, as he rethreaded his needle with No. 9 blue tapestry cotton. “Ermyntrude, we are not having any more wrestling and no more forklift trucks either. If you want a husband you will have to become delicate and frail.”
“I don’t want a husband,” said the princess and she stamped her foot hard.

The ensuing prince/groom casting-call both plays to some gender norms (it’s a rule that the prince must be taller than her) and some non-norms (the prince must be able to match her in a face-pulling contest).

This princess does eventually get married, but to a short prince who has a shared love of mechanics and loves her for who she is, and vice versa.

“You’re too short,” said the king.
“He’s not,” said the princess.
“No, I’m not, I’m exactly right and so is she,” said Prince Florizel. “Then when I saw her pulling faces and shouting insults and throwing princes to the ground I knew she was the one person I could fall in love with.”
“Really?” asked the princess.
“Truly,” said Prince Florizel. “Now, come and see my mechanical digger.”

In this book, unlike the previous two, marriage doesn’t turn out to be a thing to be avoided – provided it’s with the right person. This story is about deconstructing the existing framework of helpless princesses and dashing princes – and it also becomes about two quirky, likeable people meeting and falling in love. And falling in love is totally punk rock.

Honourable mention: The Practical Princess

Written by Rebecca Lisle, illustrated by Joëlle Dreidemy, pub. Andersen 2008

I actually picked this one up by accident when friends were singing the praises of the other Practical Princess book (see above) – but I thought it would be worth comparing and contrasting these different practical princesses.

This book is far more recent than most on this list (the others all being from the 1980s), and it is not particularly feminist, but it does play with the trope a little.

Having read it, I’m not quite sure why this one has the name: Molly, our protagonist, is only a bit practical and she’s not actually a princess. Molly is an ordinary (read: extraordinarily beautiful, but non-royal) girl who wants to be a princess, so she enters a casting-call to find Prince Percival a bride. Her farmer parents help her by making and buying pretty clothes and shoes at great expense, and her lovely boyfriend Stan makes her a crown.

That’s right, she has a boy back home who loves her already, and – though he doesn’t want her to go – he helps her because she has her heart set on becoming a princess. He even drives her to the competition. POOR LOVELY STAN.

I don’t want to go overboard in my criticisms/analysis of children’s books here (not like the Freudian interpretation of The Cat in the Hat – no, that would be silly) but ignoring her current relationship is massively problematic for me. As is the remarkably unsisterly attitude Molly displays towards the other (real) princesses in the competition. They’re all painted as vacuous fashion victims, but I find this attitude in the writing to be uncharitable and a little lazy – as if the other competitors’ one-dimensionality will add more depth to the protagonist by default.

That said, to give her her due, our girl does realize over the course of the book that there isn’t much to recommend becoming royalty and that Stan back home is kinder and cuter than Prince Percival. When the glass slippers moment happens, Molly sticks her toes out so the shoe doesn’t fit, and defenestrates herself to escape back to her old life and lovely, long-suffering Stan.

The plus points for this book are it has a trajectory which begins in the same place as a lot of the readers (‘I’m not a princess but I want to be one’), and the conclusion – that riches and status are hollow compared to people who really care about you – is pretty universal and good. I just wish there’d been less mention of tiny waists throughout the book (no girl ever needs more indoctrination on that shit) – and our protagonist doesn’t really ‘kick ass’ so much as ‘avoids falling into the same traps as the other women.’

Also: poor Stan! You’re not good enough for him, Molly. I’ll take him off your hands.

There will be more kickass and subversive princesses from children’s books in future articles. Hannah has a few on the list, but if there are any you think she should know about/make sure she doesn’t miss then let us know in the comments section!

Book Review: The Satanic Witch

Tired Pervy Unenlightened 1960s Cliches

The Satanic Witch by Anton LaVey

I read this shortly after finishing The Satanic Bible because I was a teenage prat and still wanted to shock the people sat opposite me on public transport. For these purposes this book doesn’t work as well as The Satanic Bible. Though it still has the inverted pentacle on the cover, the friendly pink colour lowers the impact.

As for contents: Ha! Holy shit it’s terrible. The ‘magic’ referred to is all about seduction – this whole book is basically an egotistical straight man’s ideas for what women should do to pick up guys. It’s The Game but written for women in the less-slick 1960′s.

Its advice goes from the neanderthal: ‘don’t wash – pheromones are your body’s natural magic’ to atrocious deception based on cod-psychology. Apparently all men and women have a ‘demon’ self which is the opposite of their outer self, and it’s the ‘demon’ self you have to pitch yourself to. So if he’s macho on the outside he’s whimpering on the inside, and so as to not scare off the whimpering ‘demon self’ you’ve decided he has, you should make yourself as soft and gentle as possible, even perhaps giving yourself a softer, gentler-sounding name. If he seems really straight-laced perhaps affect an exotic accent to appeal to the opposite him.

Genius. What could go wrong? (Except for that little awkward patch when he realises you’re not Sabrina from Paris but Gertrude from Scunthorpe and he thinks you’re a derranged ’cause you’ve been lying about everything…)

The whole book is basically advice for a woman on how to get a one night stand. If she wants anything more she’s a bit screwed once all the deception comes out, surely?

As well as recommending lying wherever possible to get laid, LaVey is also apparently a big fan of gender binaries. He advises women should be as curvy and distinctively feminised as possible – don’t go for any of this unsexy jeans rubbish – and men should be butch. In this way each gender plays up their own ‘natural magic’ as much as possible.

So: be smelly, lie a lot, put on pantomime shows of gendered behaviours…You know, even reading this as an inept and slightly confused virgin – I still knew this was a load of bull.