For Baba Yaga Boney-Legs

I was recently reminded of my once favourite childhood story. I can still feel my fingers scratching at my Grandmother’s shirt sleeves pleading with her to read me the story of Baba Yaga Boney-Legs again and again. This Russian folk tale has all the familiar characters; a beautiful daughter, a jealous step mother and a cruel, ugly witch who lives in the woods.

As a child I revelled in the imagery painted in this story. The young girl who carefully braids her luscious, thick hair before venturing out to meet the old woman with long, boney legs and a mouth full of iron teeth who lived in a rickety old house perched on two great chicken’s legs.

But with adult eyes all I see is a narrative which tells us that women cannot coexist. It’s hunt or be hunted because there simply isn’t enough room in the world for us all. And my slightly off beat story book isn’t unusual. Join me for a sail down the mainstream where we meet Cinderella, the poor and beautiful orphan who partakes in the ultimate beauty contest in which all women are compelled to vie for the affections of a prince. And Snow White, who poses a dangerous threat to another woman’s mission to be ‘the fairest of them all’. Because not only is there just one acceptable image of beauty, only one of us may fulfil it and the other must have her still beating heart cut out of her chest.

What happens when we nurture girls to compete with each other like this? What are we teaching our boys, the (not always) innocent bystanders to the bloodbath? And who benefits?

As we know, these formative tales are powerful tools in laying down our worldview and values. I grew up in a world where a queen bee was to be identified and overthrown. But this is changing in the most exciting and invigorating way. We are seeing the impact of women in leadership who are leading for and with other women, of sisterhood and of allyship.

What if Cinderella and her sisters rather than competing had joined forces, identified a need and solved a problem? ‘Tinderella’ might have been born and succeeded in matching the prince and his one true love without the need for him to inspect all those shoeless feet (I really hate feet) and the women of the town might all have had a piece of the dating pie. Meanwhile the formerly wicked step mother would be transformed as if by fairy godmother into ‘the Momager’.

Maya Angelou said ‘when you know better, you do better’. There is no sense in back tracking a childhood of poorly directed rhetoric. The task now, is to rewrite the future and to showcase what could be.  As women, it’s important that we show ourselves and each other that we can not only coexist, but we can elevate one and other. Lighting another woman’s candle does not diminish our own. It just makes the world a little brighter.

I wonder if Baba Yaga was lonely out in the woods on her own. Maybe she wanted a friend to tell her she was beautiful. Or just to keep her company and tell her that she was enough. Maybe I could be her friend.