When I was in grade school, my family would visit our local library almost every week.
I would pick up a chapter book to read for the week, as per my dad’s instructions, but also always a book of fairy tales to enchant me.
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Ever since I was a kid, I have loved fairy tales. I have spent my childhood and adulthood searching for stories.
Everything from Western Grimms Fairy Tales, to Greek Myths, to Arabian Nights.
As a kid, I didn’t think of my stories as particularly childish or adult-ish, but in the real world, fairy tales have clearly been relegated to children.
Since the 19th century, fairy tales have been associated with a children’s genre, as Jack Zipes writes in The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films.
This association has only gotten stronger with the advent of Disney’s fairy-tale films, which create utopian fantasies that prioritize children’s happiness.
Fairy tales are for kids, but I don’t think that I am the only adult still drawn to them.
Disney World is one of the most visited amusement parks in the world, receiving over 17 million visitors annually.
That attendance includes not just parents and children, but people of all ages, and one particular demographic of Disney Adults who have garnered a bad reputation.
The term refers to adults who are obsessed with Disney, especially its fairy-tale movies. It is usually used derogatorily to describe a fanatical and childish love of ‘childish things’.
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In Disney adults: exploring and falling in love with a magical subculture, AJ Wolfe boils down disdain for Disney Adults into three core issues:
First, Disney is considered for kids; second, Disney Adults are considered immature; and lastly, Disney Adults are unrealistic and impractical.
Disney Adults are singled out for what the world considers an inappropriate love of fairy tales and fantasy, but I think criticizing them ignores the space fairy tales occupy in our media landscape.
Adaptations of fairy tales exist across adult media, and especially in film.
Where Disney offers sanitized, enchanting spectacles, Guillermo del Toro films like Pan’s Labyrinth or Pinocchio manipulate the conventions of fairy tale and carve out ominous realities.
And then there are Studio Ghibli films, like Howl’s Moving Castle or The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, that flourish in fantasy but remain grounded to – often grim – adult realities.
“Adults have never stopped reading, producing, reinventing, and experimenting with fairy tales,” Zipes writes.
No fairy tale exemplifies this more than Cinderella.
Its rags-to-riches narrative fits easily into romantic comedies, dramas, superhero films, and all manner of films, and has once again appeared in Season 4 of Bridgerton, Netflix’s ‘fairy-tale’ reimagining of Regency-era Britain.
Fairy tales have never been exclusively for children. Of course, that does not mean children should not read them.
Research has recognized that fairy tales are a fun and important tool for helping children learn morals and develop, but this space has room for both adults’ and children’s unabashed, unbridled enjoyment.
The world’s disdain for Disney Adults stems from concern about adults who cannot seem to grow up, or “kidadults,” as Wolfe describes.
But, really, the label of kidadult has little to do with what someone indulges in and everything to do with how they manage adult responsibilities.
The lines we draw between adult things and children’s things, adult themes and children’s themes, do not really exist, and with fairy tales, that line is blurry at best and completely arbitrary at worst.
In my life, it is arbitrary. Fairy tales are just another part of my personality.
I wonder if the same should be said of many things left in our childhoods.