My Thesis:
Fairy tales are bad for children because they promote unrealistic beauty standards, reinforce harmful gender roles, and give children false expectations about life and success.
Article from List A:
One article that caught my attention from List A is “The Positive Impacts of Fairy Tales for Children” by Leilani VisikoKnox-Johnson. Even though this article argues in favor of fairy tales, I found it interesting because it helped me understand the opposite point of view. The author claims that fairy tales can help children develop imagination and learn life lessons. This made me think more deeply about how different people can interpret fairy tales in very different ways.
Article from List B:
From List B, I was most interested in “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales” by Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholtz. This article explains how fairy tales constantly send messages that being beautiful is the most important thing for girls. One idea that stood out to me was that beauty is often shown as a woman’s “most important asset.” That really made me think about how harmful this message can be, especially for young girls who are still developing their self-image
