My, what pointy boots you are wearing....

 There are various reasons as to why I have a day job. Mainly they involve money as I do find the stuff comes in handy but there is more to it than that. The biggest draw is that one really does enjoy working in a creative environment and right now, this piece of creative is doing it for me big time. It’s not just that its smart, funny and beautifully executed, no, peep a little closer and breathe in what this image is really saying to you.

 
Personally speaking, I was going to write a whole piece about why this picture encapsulates everything that has changed since my grandmother’s day. We all know the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. In my grandmother’s era, and even in my own story telling days, Little Red Riding Hood tiptoed timidly through the forest, making sure she didn't get in anybodies way until of course she encountered the big bad wolf……apropos of nothing, we used to play a game in my grandparents garden when I was a child called ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf’. In it, Mr Wolf, a role performed mostly by my older, bigger cousins, would stand at the end of the garden with his back to us littler ones. ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ we would whisper breathlessly as we stole up the lawn behind my cousins back knowing, that if he turned around and saw any of us moving, we would be sent back to the bottom of the garden to begin all over again.

The hi-light, the crux, the part of this game that made us almost choke with anticipation was when we asked the question once too often and the answer came booming back down the garden, ‘ITS DINNER TIME!!’ as ran screaming down the garden as fast as our tiny legs would carry us, the unfortunate recipient of my cousin's snapping ‘teeth’ being consigned to play the part of the wolf the next time around. Happy days… and very little to do with virginity or Little Red Riding Hood, although if you read this wikipedia entry, it does suggest that the story of Little Red Riding Hood may be a parable about sexual maturity. In it, the wolf represents a man who intends to relieve Little Red Riding Hood of something that was worth far more to a woman of my grandmother’s generation than it is to most women in the western world today.

But I changed my mind because, lest we forget, in pretty much most versions of this story, Little Red Riding Hood does actually manage to outwit the so-called cunning wolf – but perhaps not in the grand style that she does it above….power boots, the unlucky wolf’s tale dangling elegantly over the edge of her basket and the bloodied axe still clutched firmly in ‘Little’ Red Riding Hood’s hand. Love it.

Comments

[Lisa McGarry]

I love this as well - brilliant.

At uni I studied lots of Angela Carter and she rewrites the Red Riding Hood story from a feminist perspective, v interesting, the versions are in her short story collection 'The Bloody Chamber'. Apparently the Victorians relied on fairytales as cautionary tales for women, and RRH was a fave, as those who strayed from the path of convention into the world of sexuality would meet a very sticky end....or at the very least, end up with frizzy hair!

[The Virginity Project]

Hey Lisa, said employees are clearly aware of the severity of the frizzy hair scenario....I came into work this morning and freshly installed in the ladies restrooms isan entire bank of GHD straighteners...woohoo. I recently confessed in an interview that they were my second favourite gadget after my laptop....

[Jordan 4]

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice. (Leon Nlum, French statesman)