 |
|
|
Q: Uh, aren’t you being a little anachronistic with your underwear? I mean, you’ve got princesses from the medieval period wearing bras and girdles from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
A: Yes.
Q: Why this fascination with underwear?
A: It’s not so much the underwear, really, as the opportunity for bad puns and moronic reflection in general. My real fascination is with the many ways fairy tales can be fractured.
Q: I don’t get it. The 18-Hour Girdle? The Living Bra? The I Can’t Believe It’s a Girdle? What’s the deal with those names?
A: Those are all real names of real products. The 18-Hour Girdle is still sold, as are the 24-Hour Girdle, the 18-Hour and 24-Hour Bras, and the I Can’t Believe It’s a Girdle. The Living Bra launched in 1955, as a companion to the Living Girdle, whose prototype dates to the 1930s. The Living Bra no longer seems to be for sale, though it does live on in the memories of those old enough to have seen the television commercials.
Q: What are your favorite fairy tales?
A: Cinderella and The Twelve Dancing Princesses. And almost any of the Classics Illustrated Junior comic books. Among Disney movies, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I can give Snow White with her annoying chirpiness a miss.
Q: Albert Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” I’m sure you’ve read a lot of fairy tales, but, well, how should I put this...Never mind.
Q: What’s with the princess mania among the preschool set these days?
A: Beats me. When I was a little girl, I couldn’t imagine wanting to be anything other than a witch for Halloween. Green rubbery skin, now that was something.
