Debate

A very good morning to Mrs. Ashta and my dear friends

my name is Srishti Prasad the topic for today's debate
is do fairy tales affect children's perception of reality
and I am here to speak for the notion.
Most of us have grown up reading and listening to fairy
tales which most people consider to be necessary in
the upbringing of children as it boosts their
imagination, and the morals of the fairy tales teaches
them good and bad. However, often these fairy tales
have hidden messages which may influence children in
negative ways, lower their self-confidence and also
impact the way they think, defectively.
Although these fairy tales are very positive, they
usually set unrealistic expectations of life which causes
disappointment for children in the future. They create
false worlds where everything seems to work out
perfectly. ‘they lived happily ever after’ is the phrase
we have often heard at the end of the fairy tale but
this dictum ending does not prepare children for reality
instead causes children to be oblivious and ignorant
towards serious matters.
Another significant problem with fairy tales is that they
are extremely shallow and they deliver the message of
how only good-looking people can find love and
happiness while unattractive people are evil and
deserve miserable lives. For instance, one of the most
frequently told fairy tales, Cinderella, features a
beautiful and kind girl who has to live with her cruel
and ugly stepmother and stepsisters. By the end of the
story, Cinderella marries a handsome prince whom she
claims to fall in love with after one dance, whereas her
stepmother and stepsisters are forced to live
unsatisfying lives. This idea repeats itself in other
famous fairy tales such as the Little Mermaid where
the villain is very physically unappealing and the
protagonist is a pretty and skinny girl. This simply
lowers the self-confidence of young girls while setting
children up to be shallow and uninterested other
people’s personalities.
Apart from reflecting the physical appearance, fairy
tales also reflect the idea of how women are only
capable of being appealing to men and don’t have any
other abilities which could support them at becoming
individuals. Snow White explores this idea very clearly
as it is based on a girl who is only significant because
she is more attractive than another woman. She simply
lacks intelligence and power to fix her own problems
and is dependent on a man to save her. Also, it is
worthy to mention that as soon as Snow White starts
living with men, she cooks and cleans for them which
appears to be her only function. The female characters
often feel the need to change in order to get a man to
like them and the lack of empowered women is a
pattern that is seen in many of the fairy tales. This
causes young girls to think they should be dependent
on men, and young boys to think they are more
powerful than girls.
Moreover, in the fairy tale goldilocks and the three
bears, goldilocks while roaming in the forest accidently
reaches a house and decides to take rest in the it,
without knowing that the house belonged to three
bears. At the end when she wakes up, she finds three
bears staring at her and she ran away but if in real life
an innocent child gets influenced with the story and
sits with any kind of wild animal then the animal would
eat him/her up.
At last I would like to say that fairy tales affect
children’s perception of reality as it makes them
believe that only attractive people can find love and
happiness in this world and women are only capable of
being appealing to men and do not have any other
abilities by which they could make themselves
independent.

Thank You