My sons were just watching Max and Ruby while I was making cookies. Ruby was the Princess, and Max and his grandmother (the Prince and the Queen) conspired to test the Princess’ true royalty by putting a pea under tens of mattresses to see if she felt it. She did feel it, of course, and her sensitivity proved her to be a real princess.
This annoyed me. I have always hated this fairytale. Why was her weakness/inability to find the source of her discomfort a sign of true femininity? What the hell does femininity even mean?
So it occurred to me that some women go through life complaining about being uncomfortable, but have no idea that it is due to the pea under their mattress.
Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test and still complain about being uncomfortable to be seen as feminine.
Other women feel the discomfort, get down, examine the mattress, find the pea, remove the pea, realize it is a test, and then get mad as hell that someone put a goddamn pea under the mattress to test their femininity. These women then organize, tell others, and make it their life long goal to expose the vast Patriarchal Pea Plan.
Oh, Heidi – I haven’t read anything from you in too long (not you, it’s me and my “got to finish that BA degree before I’m 50″ thing). This was delightful.
And Patriarchal Pea Plan sounds like it could also be some kind of toilet conspiracy. Wish I could make it to momentumcon like all the other cool chicks.
I always took the story as a dig toward class rather than sex. That, being a princess, she was used to such luxury and comfort that she’d notice such thing while a member of a lower class would be used to sleep in much rougher conditions and not detect such minor discomfort.
I haven’t read the tale in a while, though…