Why Do Little Girls Love Fairies?:
I never understood why little girls loved fairies.
If you were anything like me, and the type of kid who discovered the powers Wikipedia before age ten, you might researched everything and everyone you could on Wikipedia, from Greek mythology to types of dresses to Egyptology to penis envy to, finally, fairies.
And fairies seemed like little hellions to me. What's ironic is that a common phrase I'd hear about fairies is that they were "too good for hell but too bad for heaven".
They stole human babies, they pulled pranks, they slept with human men only to drain away their life force, they pulled ranks, they glamoured(which is where the word 'glamour' comes from by the way-a sort of spell that enchants you to think what you want to think; to believe something was attractive in an almost supernatural way) a few people into thinking that they were well within faerie palaces only to have the fairy trick them and leave them sitting there chewing on a plank of wood, ect..
So, I'd read these legends, and just be left there wonder...why? Girls 3rd grade in my class loved Tinkerbell- and I would always wonder "why?" because I knew all these aforementioned "fairy facts" and facts about Tinkerbell herself-that she was jealous and possive and died by the end of the original novel anyway- and I couldn't get their overarching appeal. And then it hit me. Faeries were beings of unlimitied power who did what they want. Little girls don't get that a lot-we females don't have a lot of noteworthy superheroes(besides Diana of course) so faeries and princesses are pretty much all we got. And yeah, it makes sense-faeries, by analysis, aren't that much different from Greek heroes-they'd have children then abandon them, affect how the world works, work spells for their own benefit, all because they want to. They aren't perfect, and it's a little scary to think about, but hey, I can see why little girls would think this was cool. Maybe even me too, even with my extensive Wikipedia research. Now I think I understand why little girls can love fairies. I'd just do my best not to eat too much of their food.
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I enjoy this article a lot, because I can relate to it. I was raised with 2 older brothers, and so it turned out I wasn't into fairies and princesses. Your argument makes sense that girls love to believe in fairies because they are women that can essentially do whatever they want, and women are arguably limited in what they can do.
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