Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale

Jane Yolen

I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.
I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.
I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

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Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale is a satirical poem written by Jane Yolen. Yolen
criticizes all fairy tales that have been written saying that they are unrealistic and very cliche.
Yolen is very straightforward in this poem. She doesn't use a lot of figurative language
but is sure to get her point across to the readers. If you look at the first stanza, Yolen says
she is thinking of fairy tales called Cinder Elephant, Sleeping Tubby, and Snow Weight.
All these names have been distorted in some way to make the princess's seem "big" and
not anorexic. The original princesses (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White)
seem very glamorous and skinny, however, this can't be seen as reality. It is
not normal for girls to "fling themselves down the stairs." Yolen wants realistic
princesses; one that people can see in real life. In the second stanza, she uses
parallelism to further express the types of princesses she would like to see. Once again,
she distorts the names of princesses to make them seem less fragile and weak.
Imagery is used in the last two lines of this stanza: "pillowed breast" and "fingers plump
as breast." These describe the type of princesses Yolen would like to see written about.
In the last stanza, Yolen basically is saying that there is not a single fairy tale that is not
written about an anorexic girl. She wants a fairy tale that has not been every been thought
of before, a fairy tale that does not yet have a teller or a listener, a fairy tale that does
not yet exist. A fairy tale "where everything round is good: the sun, wheels, cookies,
and the princess."