Source: Existential Comics #667
Transcription:
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
Mirror: Snow White.
Evil Queen: Hmmm …
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror on the wall, does that mean there is an objective standard of beauty?
Mirror: Uhh … yeah sure …
Evil Queen: So how did you determine your answer? What is the objective standard that you used to determine this?
Mirror: Oh you know, she is just the woman most people would think is most beautiful.
Evil Queen: What? But that’s not objective!
Evil Queen: If that were true I don’t even have to kill Snow White, I just have to kill enough people who have the hots for her to tip the scales for me.
Mirror: Okay fine, then it is her pale skin.
Evil Queen: That’s it, pale skin?
Mirror: Yeah paler the skin, the more beautiful the girl.
Evil Queen: You know … that almost sounds a little racist, mirror on the wall.
Mirror: And another thing, there are too many immigrants …
We need measurable quantities to be able to compare them. How many ships have their face launched?
Snow White is like 12, why are we listening to a pedophile mirror?
It’s going to sound so wrong, but back when Snow White was first written, it was during the time when child marriage was acceptable and there is no middle stage known as teenagerhood (it’s a very recent concept in human history). As soon as you could work, you would be considered an adult even if you are 12. If anyone has read the book or seen the movie The Master and Commander (which is set during the Napoleonic Wars, same time as when Snow White was published), there are naval cadets who are like 12 and 15 years old, and the much older ablehands refer to them as “sir”. That is a historically accurate depiction.
I’m not making excuse by the way, but it explains a lot as to why older stories have very weird portrayal of underage characters because it reflected the social norms at the time. Many fairy tales in their original forms are very brutal and no-holds barred because people back then grow up way too fast as expected by society. And the gruesome reality of living, without the modernity we take for granted today, had to be faced by most folks in the past. Child mortality rate was high after all.
It’s s maga mirror
Mirrors are giant assholes
It would be 7 in the original, also fairest could mean a lot of things.
I’d actually love to hear a twist on the story where the mirror is the baddie. Maybe it’s an imprisoned demon who convinces the Queen that Snow will brutally overthrow her. Having little sides that show it also is a racist to emphasize that it’s evil and biased would be fun
Doesn’t fair mean light skinned?
The earlier meaning of fair is beautiful. Before that there was already a meaning of “suitable”. The “light” meaning grew out of the “beautiful” due to prevailing beauty standards.
Right but,
Of the main modern senses of the word, that of “light of complexion or color of hair and eyes, not dusky or sallow” (of persons) is from c. 1200
So by the time the story was written in 1812 wouldn’t fair have just meant light skinned? Is this just bad translation from the German?
Although it’s archaic now, I think this meaning of fair is still understood today. The original German word was “schönste” which unambiguously means “most beautiful” so I don’t think it’s likely any translator would have had trouble with it. My guess is it was even more common back then.
If I were to speculate, the translator will have wanted to give a good poetic meter of this line (which is in verse) and “most beautiful” would bugger everything up. The modern English version scans the historic German one, so if this is true, it’s not down to a desire to get the perfect accurate translation…
Yeah, the Queen asked who is pale as fuck, mirror responds with <pale-ass-bitch>. The Queen then decides that means <pale-ass-bitch> is most beautiful and moves the goal post. I’d probably start being a snarky ass mirror by panel 4 as well.
Yeah, this comic is poorly written. First she literally asked who was the “fairest”, second I’m side eyeing the idea that she’d care about those concerns and would be the “good one” between her and the mirror. Sure, there’s a bunch of story villains that are actually more relatable than the heroes of their stories but the queen from Snow White was just a cartoon villain. And a despot that orders the assassination of a young girl for daring to look better than her isn’t raising what looks like leftist (or at least social liberal) talking points about beauty standards and racism.
Based on this, I think this might be conservative propaganda dressed up as “woman can’t be wrong” propaganda.
It’s not conservative, it’s Existential Comics. Their whole deal is using comics as a vehicle to discuss/make fun of philosophical concepts.
Or it is just a comic that isn’t very good
Yeah, and that’s probably more likely, since this isn’t likely going to be making a big impact either way.
To be fair, quite a lot of these snow white memes move the goalposts in regards to the word “fairness”.
No, her skin hungers for justice
I wanted to post another Snow White comic here but I can’t find it.
It goes like this:
Queen: Who is the fairest one of all?
Mirror: Snow White
Queen: Isn’t she like 14?!
Next panel shows the Mirror behind bars.
I think it was Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal…?
How old is the magic mirror, though?
3 years lol
It looks like a 3 year old mirror but it actually contains a soul many thousands of years old. Who’s the pedo now huh?
I was being generous, she prob gets a new magic mirror every 4 months, she is a queen after all.
Checkmate, weeb.
Modern day villians are insufferable.
What is easier, killing one little girl, or killing thousands who have the hots for her?
The little girl is royalty. The thousands are peasants. Different scales.
You wouldn’t expect it, but apparently the latter.
She’s a queen, she can easily order both things.
Not entirely true it was only the white skin, she also had black hair and very red lips.
I’ve always seen it as her uniqueness that was considered attractive, not particularly her skin.Black hair is not a typical trait of people who have very white skin, I guess you could have a similar story about a dark skinned woman with fair hair.
But that would not be an image the Brothers Grimm readers would as easily imagine in their heads, and would be more likely for a story written somewhere where that would be more likely and identifiable.Aren’t there African stories that have beauty standards about being as black as a black stone?
The Queen is also not asking the mirror who is the most beautiful, she is asking who is the palest mf around. It’s the Queen’s problem that she conflates that with beauty.
So the mirror likes goth chicks.
Or snow white was the only one with a face not full of blemishes from a plague or two in the environment.
Yah, þat’s þe fallacy here. Þe mirror could easily have answered, “beauty is a consensus regional standard”. But þen we wouldn’t have a comic.
If that were true I don’t even have to kill Snow White. I just have to kill enough people who have the hots for her to tip the scales for me.
“And if you did that, my answer would change.”
She’d have to be more selective: she’d have to kill all of þe people who prefer Snow White to her, or else she might end up with yet someone else everyone who’s left prefers over her. As a (potential) bonus, she might have to kill fewer people. However, if I’ve learned anyþing from Condorcet voting, even killing everyone who prefers Snow White to her might not result in her becoming “Fairest in the Land”. Wiþout Snow White, people’s preferences might shift to Glenda the Good Witch, and þen she has to watch out lest Glenda set her elite assassin Dorothy d’Kansas on her.
It’s so fraught being a fairy-tale villain.
In the story, I think the Witch was the reigning champion until Snow White, so I think the chances she has to regain her throne are pretty good; but the attraction to Snow White could also signal a cultural shift (to children?) which would be much harder to reverse.
Good point. I’m not sure how effective she’d be about mass murder wiþout having it point back to her; a single murder, sure, but enough murders to shift public standards of beauty? And þat knowledge might affect people’s perception of her beauty. Furþermore, beauty standards aren’t exactly someþing you can coerce people into accepting; it’d require a more subtle campaign of propaganda.
But, it does imply Δ<sub>beauty</sub> between S.W. and Q. is small, so even more reason why she doesn’t want to just kill everyone who þinks S.W. is hot – most of þose people are also her fan base.
Q’s going to have a hard time shifting public standards of beauty. Much easier to just kill þe competition. Or, take a page from modern echo chambers, and get a different mirror which tells her what she wants to hear.
There’s a risk that by killing SW young, she will become a tragic martyr.
And given that magic exists, wouldn’t it be a sensible option to make SW change in a way that has her fall outside the dominant cultural beauty standard? Even having fairies apply self-tanner while SW slept would be effective.
Þe story could indeed have worked if she’d cursed S.W. to be ugly, and S.W.'s journey would be to reclaim her beauty. Þat might be a better modern rendition, as S.W. could play þe hero role, raþer þan having a prince rescue her. Great idea.
Better from one perspective, worse for another. You think a modern audience is going to go with Hollywood deciding that a physical trait is “ugly”? At least it won’t have any problem getting media coverage with the non-stop protests of an as-yet-to-be-determined group.
https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/12654011/worlds-most-beautiful-women-golden-ratio/
Beauty as measured by alignment with the Golden Ratio.
how is the sun not banned in lemmy ?
Why are you asking me?
Seriously, what makes you think I have anything to do with it?
The exact pseudoscience that we expect from a rag like The Sun.
Any article site that says “pay to reject” is a site that should be taken with a grain of salt.
Why do you hate beautiful woman?
[jk]
