This is a Snow White story as you may have guessed from the clue. The poem it represents is entitled Life's Rich Pageant. I have always been curious as to why the stepmother was so jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty in Snow White, but as a woman who is nearly 50 years old I am beginning to understand.
Men are allowed to age but women are not. We see this in Hollywood. An older man is a "silver fox" but a middle aged woman is too old to play the love interest of the leading man once she gets to a certain age. Case in point-- the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was told that at age 37 she was too old to play the love interest of a 55 year old man in a film!
This poem deals with the fact that many women are told all of their lives that their only value is their looks. That at age 33 a husband might be considering trading his wife in for a younger model because her looks are fading. In the poem the woman tries to punish her blond and sun kissed stepdaughter by giving her a makeover and forcing her into bulimia and beauty pageants.
In the traditional fairy tale her stepmother tries to kill her through lacing her corset too tight with coloured ribbons, a poisoned comb and the poisoned apple. Here she gives her a makeover to look like the description of Snow White of the story -- as black as ebony, as red as blood and as white as snow. Black hair dye is more likely to give you bladder cancer and red lipstick contains lead. These are her poisons.
This ends up backfiring for both of them.
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