Open Tabs: Fairy Tale Violence, Data-Visualized Fighting

As I write, Amy is settling down for a nap after a Roald Dahl poem about a gun-toting Red Riding Hood. Last night she asked Josh to cover her eyes during the macabre moments of Snowpiercer: Melanie discovering stiffs in the snow, an arm in a freezer, rats swarming around a geothermal vent. I had thought I wasn’t exposed to this much violence in media as a child despite being a voracious reader, brought up on Enid Blyton, Childcraft, and large borrowed tomes of fairy tales. I probably wasn’t paying attention. The Useful Dangers of Fairy Tales lists “Cinderella” with the self-mutilating stepsisters, “Sleeping Beauty” with the rape and babies, “Donkey Skin” with the incest-minded father. Who dreamed up these tales? Mothers, suggests the author, bequeathing their daughters with warnings about the violence this world has in store for girls and women, wrapped up in stories.

I don’t remember my mother ever vetting my reading diet. Anything on the shelves was fair game—at twelve I read Marge Piercy’s He, She and It, a somewhat racy sci-fi fable about a golem-cyborg (which I might not want Amy to read until she’s at least eighteen). But books (and my overactive imagination) made me hyperaware of danger lurking around every corner.

At thirteen, having to avoid a coach who made eyes at me all throughout summer badminton camp. At fifteen, when making the eight-hour trip to our hometown alone, a stranger put his hand on my thighs and asked me if anyone was with me. I squeezed past him (ugh) and told the conductor, who made him get off the bus at the next rest stop. Perhaps I survived because someone “drew the face of that evil” so I recognized it.

I asked my parents if I could take tae kwon do lessons in sophomore high school because two of my best friends, Jaja and Veron, were in the class. I don’t know what happened to my dobok and belt (yellow), but I still remember how to kick where it hurts. Lately I’ve been watching Fight For My Way and realized I should’ve also learned some practical grappling and ground fighting skills, too. After all, what use is punching and kicking when you’re pinned down?

The Kontinentalist gloriously visualizes (yes, graphs and charts and even uniform comparisons!) different forms of modern Asian martial arts in longform and I gobbled it all up. I found it interesting that those who researched, provided consultation, wrote, and coded the dataviz were all women, and several women were featured in the chart of of MMA champions’ fighting styles.

I’d still like to learn how to fight well. I think I might do well in judo or jiu-jitsu. And when the time comes, I think I’d like to take Amy to watch a women’s match. Stories are good, and so are wit and sass and diplomacy and wile, but perhaps we ought to show girls they can fight, too.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash