Snow White and Sleeping Beauty Address Their Creator (Spoken Word Piece)

2011 Worcester Youth Poetry Slam Team performing at the annual Brave New Voices International Poetry Festival. Anna Meehan and Taylor Liljegren wrote and performed the piece, "Snow White and Sleeping Beauty Address Their Creator." This was a BNV Semi-Finals Bout, which took place at the Oakland Museum of CA, July 23rd, 2011. Filmed by Slam Coach Alex Charalambides.

*Rough transcript by Alexis Manyrath 

Snow White
Sleeping Beauty
Both

Mr. Disney!
Before your pen found me I was just an uncracked wish bone, 
a body in the woods dragged up by a man who didn't mean to wake me.
Before your edit, I was just an abandoned cadaver of a princess,
with a becoming silence that screamed consent. 
See, in your haste to create a message for young girls to be
patient and pretty, you left out the whole story. 
It's a grim tale about how my skin under the glass of my casket had thawed to a grey spring;
how it took more than true love's kiss to wake this sleeping beauty;
how a man can love a corpse of a girl –
and this isn't about the apple lodged in my lungs,
the splinter pulsing in my fingertip.
We just wanted to ask,
do we really look most beautiful with our mouths shut? 
Dressed up like dolls, on display for any man to see – and do! – as he pleases.
In the forest, in castles, in death beds; but deathbeds have flowers,
and flowers are beautiful,
and we all want beautiful things.
He just wanted a beautiful thing 
with skin as white as snow
and a briar rose face.
It's amazing what your artists have done for my complexion. 
I look as stunning as I did before the spinning wheel.
The apple incident.
Funny how the little things come back to bite you and isn't it strange,
how our titles give away exactly what we look like but you struggle to remember our names? 
I highly doubt my prince gave some formal introduction.
I highly doubt he checked for a pulse –
but I mean he fought a dragon!
And she was just lying there, asking for it. 
And that's as good as a yes, As good as a marriage, 
As good as waking up with his children crawling in your bed
We are the ones who slept through our sexual awakenings.
Every morning, is a wound scraped open.
He scraped me open, Walt.
No one hates the sunrise like I do. 
Every morning is a flip-book sketch of how I laid in his arms, 
dumb as a coffin as he carried me over the threshold.
(???) – as the lucky woodsman found himself a girl who just can't say no 
and I'd like to ask him, 
was there ever a moment of hesitation? 
Was the white of my skin just a hint of the bones that lay beneath it? 
It's a strange thing, mister Disney, 
how the details get lost in translation, 
how easy it is to forget the little things,
how we can turn perverts into princes,
and princesses into pornography,
how in all your changes you still manage to make little girls want nothing else
than our happily ever after.

Redefine It (Spoken Word Piece)

by L. A. Rance

Girl number one:

Stands tall; confidence in each step she takes.

Her skin moulds against her ribs.

You can cut diamonds with her cheekbones;

Drink from the dip her collarbones make.

You can wrap a hand around her wrist
And watch it disappear inside your hold.

She turns sideways and frowns.

Looks into the mirror, 
Notes how big the rest of the room seems to be 
When her body takes up so little space.

“You’re so thin.” A voice whispers.

“No, she is beautiful.” Another one replies.

Girl number two:

Holds her head up high.

Her cheeks are round and stretch wider with her smiles.

Her skin is soft and forms gentle slopes;

She fills in all the right places, fills in all the wrong places;

She fills them all so well – they just become places.

She looks into the mirror and frowns.

She knows just because you can’t see
The outline of her bones doesn’t mean they’re not there.

She only needs to press a little harder.

“You’re so fat.” A voice whispers.

“No, she is beautiful.” Another one replies.

Girl number three:

Carries herself with the comfort of one who is at ease.

She is a mixture of gorgeous genes and perfect symmetry.

She’s all long limbs and smooth skin.

Her teeth white, her hair soft, her eyes bright.

It doesn’t matter what she wears, it will frame her figure flawlessly.

She looks into the mirror, and smiles.

“Oh she’s so beautiful.”

“Oh please, she’s just beautiful.”

Sometimes, you are the first girl.

Sometimes, you are the second; sometimes, you are the third –

Sometimes, you are all three.

But all the time you are never good enough.

“Am I pretty?”

“Oh you are kind.”

“Am I pretty?”

“Oh you are smart!”

“Am I pretty?”

“Sure you are; but, beauty fades and you’re kinda lacking here.”

Why can’t we be both?

Why must beauty be in the form of shackles,
Wrapped around our wrists;

Its chain thick and heavy, circling our necks,
And pressing against our chests –

Entering flesh and sliding between bones
Until it pierces through our hearts and comes back out
To stab another person where it hurts the most.

Every day we let society add another weight
To the suffocating chain they call beauty and drag us down. 
They plant filthy insecurities inside the minds of little girls –

Teach them, that if you’re holding a purse, 
You must not pick up a book
Except to place it atop your head.

That if you wish to wield a sword against life you are manly
And you cannot possibly want to braid flowers in your hair
And be treated like a lady.

That if you hold another person’s hand first
Before you even think of yourself –

You are weak. You are soft. You are feminine.

As if being a woman makes you any less capable of everything else.

Those little girls will disappoint you.

They will be smart, kind, strong and beautiful.

They will refuse to fit inside your boxes.

They will not fill the moulds you cram them into.

We want the choice.

We want the freedom to be whosoever we choose to be.

We want to be seen as human beings.

Human beings who can be diverse.

Human beings who have the right to feel.

Human beings who deserve to be respected.

Do not let beauty determine who you are.

Beauty is a word.

Words are not supposed to dictate people.

Instead, challenge beauty.

Redefine it.

Tell beauty it cannot hold you back.

Tell beauty it cannot tell you who you are.