The Snow White Effect

"Want to know a secret?  Promise not to tell?"

Since this summer, I have seen Snow White about forty-seven times.  Because it’s a Disney movie, and somewhat harmless (save that one scene where The Queen gets totes weird and drinks that nasty herbal tea), I’ve permitted Reagan to watch it over and over…and over again.  Probably because it’s been a novelty until recently, she has fallen in love with it and never seems to get tired of watching the same events unfold.

So we watch it repeatedly, and often.  Most of the time, she is happily playing with other toys or coloring while it softly tells the story of the fair maiden, the film’s namesake, in the background.  She’ll occasionally stop to watch a particular scene, or dance along.  Despite her busyness, Reagan is at the age where she is absorbing everything around her, whether or not you could tell.  She pays close attention and she asks lots and lots of questions.  She wants to know ‘why’ to everything, and in her world, all questions have answers.  “Why does Dopey not talk?”  “Why does Grumpy not like to wash his hands?”  “Why does that old woman have that big bump on her nose?”  “Why does Snow White’s voice sound like that, all squeaky?”

“Why if The Queen doesn’t like the Mirror, doesn’t she just throw it away?”

It wasn’t until she asked this question – this particular inquiry about the Mirror – that I even paused.  And thought.  And wondered myself.

You’re probably already very familiar with this classic tale that is not an original Disney princess story.  Snow White is a young, beautiful, compassionate, patient, friendly, gentle, forgiving, understanding, but naïve maiden who is the step-daughter to The Queen.  The Queen, bothered by Snow White and in a show of power, demotes her to a lowly scullery maid.  As is the case in most fairy tales of this nature, the precious princess accepts her fate, but holds fast to her dreams of falling in love and escaping the life she is forced to live.  Even in the mundane, she sings and hopes and befriends. 

All the while, The Queen ruthlessly rules, wicked and willful to be the most powerful, and most beautiful, in all the land.  In her quest, she looks to an object – a ‘thing’ – to give her insight and information which she believes to be true.  It’s the Mirror who tells The Queen at her behest, whether or not she continues to maintain the status of ‘fairest’.  And The Queen asks daily.  Every day, she approaches the Mirror, hanging in a veiled room, “Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

And it’s all good ‘til the Mirror tells her something other than what she wants and expects to hear and I’m telling you, The Queen is shooketh.

She’s set off into a tailspin of corrupt thinking and sinister plotting.  Instead of falling into tears and feeling ‘less than’ (aint no time for a pity party), she formulates a plan to simply do away with Snow White.  Because, I mean, logic.  The Queen commands a huntsman to take Snow White into a glade where she can pick wildflowers and ultimately BRING BACK HER HEART.  That is the proof required to show The Queen that Snow White no longer exists or threatens the things most important to The Queen.  Like outward beauty and stuff like that.

The huntsman takes Snow White to the woods where he is too overwhelmed by her compassion for another being – literally – to harm her.  She helps a frightened songbird, and it’s not until this point that he’s all like, “Nah, man, this is just wrong,” and tells her what The Queen has plotted.  Because of this, she’s apparently not safe at the castle, so Snow White flees and finds a cottage in the woods – with the woodland creatures’ help, naturally – and earns a new home with seven dwarfs who range in all manner of issues but are happy to have her nonetheless.  Eventually, The Queen realizes what has happened and takes matters into her own hands, mixing a potion to transform herself into EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT SHE YEARNS TO BE and sets off to do what the huntsman could not.  In the end, Snow White dies, but is revived by True Love’s First Kiss, and the dwarfs have a clean home.  Everyone wins.

But, back to the Mirror.

It seems, as far as my four year old understands it, that if The Queen had simply gotten rid of the Mirror that was giving her bum news, that none of this would have happened.  Snow White would’ve probably still been a scullery maid because The Queen was wicked to her core, and that much was just a fact.  It’s true that tossing the Mirror would have prevented the rest of the story from unfolding because Snow White would have never fled, and met the dwarfs, or eaten a poisoned apple, or died, or been resurrected by The Prince.  The inevitable happy ending would not have happened because the Mirror would have been deemed irrelevant, disregarded and ignored.  But instead, The Queen decided for herself that the Mirror was telling the truth.  If she had simply said, “You trippin’, anyone can see that I’m the fairest.  I mean, I’m looking at myself in my own reflection right now,” Snow White’s movie would probably have just been a Disney Short.

So here’s the rub: The Mirror provided news, but The Queen decided what she was going to do with it.

You and I do it every. day.

Every day when I wake up, as much as I hate to admit it, I go to the Mirror, which I hold in my hand, and ask it how things are looking for me that day.  “Slave in the magic mirror…Am I a good mom?  Am I pretty?  Does my husband love me?  Am I funny or valuable or smart?  Does my body look bad?  How about my make-up?  Do the girls’ teacher gifts and lunches measure up?  What did the other moms do?  How did the other wives act?  Am I talented?  Do I have anything unique or valuable to add?  Did this thing that I posted get a lot of likes or do people just hate me?  Because that’s obviously the alternative.  They either like my posts – which means they like ME, or they don’t – which means I’m irrelevant, oversaturating, overstimulating, annoying, thirsty, and pathetic.”

I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about, and you positively do not do it yourself.  Because, I mean, that just sounds insane.  Unhealthy, at best.

Lately, I have spent more than my fair share of time on social media.  I blame boredom and a need for interaction for the hours I’ve logged.  In my defense, I’ve tried to limit it to when the girls aren’t around, and when Britt and I aren’t hanging out (at least when he’s not also checking scores or scouting updates).  But I’m not going to be dishonest about it.  I’ve looked at Facebook and Instagram a lot, whiling and scrolling away the time where there didn’t seem to be much else to do.  We have a wonderful life and there is plenty to provide fulfillment, but in these last days as we anticipate the return to school, other activities have been exhausted.  So we’ve watched Snow White and read Facebook more than usual.

What I’ve found is that social media is like the Mirror: a really entertaining and seemingly harmless ‘thing’ that I can hold in my hand and take with me wherever I go.  It’s fun and sometimes even insightful, but it is also dangerous.  This is not a revelation specific to me; we’ve all heard this parallel before and likely read tons of articles and blogs (probably via Facebook links) as to why social media can be tricky for the heart and mind.  But, the fact is, we still go back to it; as far as I know, few of us have just gotten rid of it.  And what we see there lingers, especially for women.  I mean, I can’t speak for all of us, but I have a decent amount of experience.

This is what it’s like for me…  What I see, I internalize in the filing cabinets of my mind.  I might file posts as someone being funny, someone celebrating, someone seeking attention, someone needing help, someone looking for answers, someone taking a risk, someone acting ridiculous…the list is endless.  As ridiculous as it seems, I tend to measure myself against it.  “Well, at least I’m (not) ____.  I must be good.”  Or, and even worse, “Oh…I’m not doing/acting/saying/looking (basically, *enough*).  I must be bad.”  The things that we see may be similar or they may be vastly different.  It depends on what and who we follow and where we’re willing to let those things take us.  And how I file the things that I see is probably different than how you file what you see.  But you probably do see it, and you probably do file it.  And let me tell you this:

The mirror is lying.

The mirror tells a tale of perfection and hilarity and ‘with-it’ness, with profound bouts of goodness and insightfulness.  It says all lunches are Pinterest Perfect and so are the people who make them.  It says other women are better and funnier and more compassionate and more beautiful and more creative and more cherished and more spiritually solvent and more capable of styling their hair and THEREFORE, more valuable. 

Whether or not I believe what it tells me, is up to me.  It was up to The Queen and she failed.  She failed big time.  But can you blame her?  Because she did not accept herself for who she was (and own that person), she decided the Mirror was an oracle of truth and it consumed her.  She was a rancid person with a lack of character and a morally bankrupt soul.  She alone was responsible for her lack of decency and she paid the price for her transgressions.  The Mirror had nothing to do with that.  But the Mirror didn’t help that, either.  It made it so, so, so much worse.  The Queen was dependent on the Mirror telling her how and where she stood on the scale of social status.  “Am I the fairest?  Am I the most beautiful, inside and out?  I really don’t care how it happens; I just need to know where I stand.”  Girl was messed up. 

But I do the same.  Some times are worse than others, but I do it.  I look to social media to clarify things for me.  If I’m feeling down, Facebook does not help.  It confirms what I fear.  If I’m feeling up, I go there looking for affirmation.  While I keep the filing cabinets in my mind, I have to work very, very hard to not let them be relocated to my heart.  Because as much as I file, I filter as well.  You know how filters work because there are plenty to choose from.  They’re so handy when we want to soften reality.  So, it certainly does not help when the mirror is giving us news that is already filtered, and therefore, not even true.  I mean, think about it: a lot of what's on social media is already presented as a slanted reality.  We're all guilty of posting things like this because we're looking for the same kind of feedback.  I think, if we’re being honest, the truth is that we’re not always comfortable being raw and real so we use filters as a boundary to protect our true selves – what we put out, but also what we allow in.  Filters aren’t bad, but they’re also not real.  Being transparent enough to live an unfiltered life is hard work.  It calls on a level of vulnerability and maturity that I struggle with at times.  But I’m getting there.  I appreciate it when others do the same hard work and are willing to be themselves, unashamedly.  I respect them more and I feel more empowered to be myself when I see others owning who they are as well.  A dear and precious friend told me last year: 

“I don’t have time to be friends with perfect people because I just know I can’t live up to that expectation.  So I reserve my efforts and invest elsewhere, where I know I’m able to be myself but I’ll also be challenged to be better, on my own merits.”  

Those are such wise words.  Seeing filters for what they are allows us to get so much more out of life.  And if we’re sharing parts of our lives on social media, isn’t there greater value in being real through the celebrations and struggles?  These are the things I truly want to file in my heart.  I know where the key is held and I don’t ever want it being kept in someone else’s pocket.

Having been a woman, a wife, and a mom for a while now, I think I have a pretty good idea of what Snow White would have been like had she been a real-life person and not a fairy-tale princess.  She would have been hot, haggard, and hacked off.  She would have been aggravated that she was scrubbing those outdoor steps.  She would have rolled her eyes at The Queen’s insecurity, sighed, and wished The Queen would just get over it already so they could have a decent coexistence, maybe even a relationship.  She would have also seen The Queen for what – and who – she was and used that perspective to prioritize.  She probably would have been hurt that she’d been treated unfairly and unwelcomed, but she would have been thankful that there was another place that accepted her, once she found it.  No woman in the world is going to allow wild beasts into the house that she’s cleaning for any number little people, although I do believe Snow White would have found purpose in cooking and cleaning for the people in her life that she loved most, making a home they could share.  The real Snow White might help a stranger but she’d know better than to take candy from them.  And in the end, she’d likely wear sweats at home, not heels.  She would be real and flawed and honest and that’s what would make her beautiful and enough.  Had the mirror seen the real Snow White, what it reflected would have been a more human existence.

The ‘mirrors’ of our lives, whether they’re social media or other outlets, only serve as messengers of things that may or may not already be true.  They give us the choice as to what we’ll believe and reflect ourselves.  Will we be human?  Will we share our hearts?  Will we risk realness and be comfortable with what we see: whether we’re looking at ourselves or being shown the image of something else…?  Will we discern what we see and be responsible with what we allow into our head and hearts?  The mirrors can’t be faulted; they’re just relaying what they’re being told.  The real challenge and responsibility falls on us, as the ones who look to their reflections.  Choose your filters wisely.  How you filter your own life and the lives of others is a delicate balance.  Don't trust your heart and value to something that may seem absolute but is only a piece of fragile glass.  Because Snow White was filtered.

And sometimes, so am I.

And sometimes,

so are you.