Now that the new live-action reimagining of the classic 1937 film Snow White is hitting cinemas across Malta, is it time to ask whether the step-mother could sometimes be the fairest of them all?
Last month, nearly 14 years after divorce was legalised in Malta, the first International Conference on Strong Blended Families was held in Valletta following a recent national study of families in Malta by The Malta Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society. It showed a high rate of re-partnering among separated and divorced persons, many of whom had children. Remarriages and new long term-relationships often lead to the formation of reconfigured families.
In the real world rather than Disney’s dark or dwarf-rich woods, what are the joys that accompany the challenges for these blended families?
The number of stepmothers steadily increases across the land yet their true nature has long been tarnished by the wicked stereotypes of Cinderella’s stepmother and other Brothers Grimm caricatures. Stepmothers in books and movies are generally mean, wilfully ignoring their stepchildren, neglecting and denigrating them.
For this film, while Rachel Zegler in the title role plays a lusciously Latina Snow White, Gal Gadot has put aside the golden tiara from her warrior princess role as the strong and compassionate Wonder Woman, to become instead yet another reincarnation of an evil stepmother.
When impressionable small children are belt-fed negative imagery of step-parents, how does this diet of Disney princesses prepare a young girl for her father’s new partner? Is it any surprise if they’re predisposed to be wary of them?
Other than the cartwheeling Eidelweiss-picking ex-nun, Maria von Trapp, who kindly orchestrated an escape from the Nazis for her newfound tribe in The Sound of Music, it’s hard to think of anyone else who is well known and well-liked for the way they mothered another woman’s children. (Mind you, insisting siblings wear matching outfits in a floral curtain fabric, other than for the Għajnsielem feast, probably counts as abuse in today’s society.)
In real life, yes, there will be stepmothers who are self-centred and spiteful: biological mothers can be unkind or selfish too. However, there are also thousands of kind, doting and supportive stepmothers and stepfathers who love their partner’s children and consider them their own. Why are they so rarely represented on screen?
I have two daughters. I am step-mum to one of them whom I love very much. I am proud of her, and to be part of her life. I am not an evil stepmother. I have never tried to feed her a poison apple or left her in a foreboding forest or in sight of a witch’s gingerbread house when I know she’s easily tempted by a sweet treat.
Just as it has been a blessing to incorporate this additional child – one that didn’t come with swollen ankles or stretchmarks – to our blended brood, my original daughter describes having an ‘additional father’ as a privilege. She does, however, describe awkward occasions such as when she can invite only two parents to an event.
“My family does not take this shape. I have three parents,” she comments.
It’s also a pleasure to see the strong sisterly relationship that the two girls have developed: together, as adults, they continue to remind me of the princesses Anna and Elsa in Disney’s Frozen. Bloomin’ Disney. It gets everywhere.
However, our family terminology can be a minefield and a riddle. Depending upon whom I’m talking to, and in what context, there are times I say I have three children rather than four, to keep things simple. Then, when I told someone about the four, as I generally do, it then it surprises them when I then refer to ‘The Middle One,’ a moniker he’d acquired before he gained a stepsister.
Even more baffling is the phrase my (genetic) daughter rolls out when she talks about her sister’s sister. Take a moment to think that one through: my stepdaughter has a half-sister who is related to neither me nor her father. And so, instead of being a nuclear family unit, we have become a link in a modern family chain, a joyful festa paperchain rather than shackles.
With repartnering and remarriages, today’s families are a more diverse, dynamic and sometimes downright confusing mix of personalities, connections and unexpected moments.
I’m looking forward, for example, to The Eldest’s wedding later this year, where my older daughter’s mother will be at top table. And whilst neither of us should (or could) outshine the bride, I’m hoping the magic mirror will suggest it is fair enough for me too, to hold my head up high.
In the interim, I’m suggesting that stepmothers across the world unite: we may not have the singing voice of Julie Andrews or have sewn enough clothes from vintage fabric to clothe the seven dwarves, but we can perhaps petition Disney for a stepmother who is loving and lovable, who, instead of a wicked witch, is a decent (if sometimes-fallible) human being. Is that too much to ask?
