After a fun conversation with my colleagues about our childhoods as little girls, later in the day I found myself daydreaming about the things I’d do with my daughter, if and when she chooses to arrive in my life.

With some time to kill on my hands, I started googling fairy tales and children’s stories, not just to see what’s out there but also to revisit my own childhood through them. I came across popular fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Princess and the Pea and many more. And as I skimmed through most of them, it struck me that all of them have one thing in common: they all are damsels in distress and are much in need of rescue by handsome princes. Anything wrong with this picture?

Plenty, I say. Right from infancy, our kids are shown stereotypical portrayal of men and women. Who here is unfamiliar with the story of Cinderella, waiting for her Prince Charming to whisk her away from the cruelties of her step-mother? Cinderella’s role in life is to be tortured by her stepmother by doing all the housework and wait for life to magically get better. How? By marrying Prince Charming, of course. God knows she is incapable of improving life on her own, right?

Or take Sleeping Beauty, for example: leading a life of passivity and awaiting her savior, yet another Prince Charming who apparently has the power to turn her life around; something she cannot do on her own. Rapunzel’s story is pretty much the same, except she’s trapped in a tower, making her prince work a little harder to get her and has ‘Garnier Fructis Long & Strong’ hair to help the prince reach her.

So our daughters, right from the beginning, imagine themselves as damsels in distress and spend their lives looking for that Prince Charming. Well guess what? He doesn’t exist…or if he did, he’s probably stopped going to the gym, is now fat and paunchy and spread over a couch, yelling at some poor soul to fix his dinner. Doesn’t sound as charming now, does he? And our sons expect to grow up to be that heroic, be-all do-all Prince Charming and go around looking for damsels they can salvage (or in current times, ravage and rape).

Not only do these stories propagate and promote stereotypical roles of both men and women, they also glorify marriage. Am I the only one who wondered why these tales of fantasies always end at marriage? Why aren’t there tales of what happens after marriage? Does Cinderella get fat after ten kids? Does Prince Charming help out in the kitchen? Does Rapunzel ever throw out her prince after they fight? Haven’t we all seen enough Bollywood and Hollywood movies to know that marriage is just the beginning of the struggle, not the end? Are we telling our kids that marriage is the only thing you should aspire for…?

While I understand that these stories have their origins in times much before women demanded equality and had real careers, things today are very different. The times have changed, our attitudes are changing, social and economic structures are evolving, so why aren’t these stories?

Why aren’t we telling our children stories of girls who want to grow up to be architects or pilots or presidents? Why aren’t our boys hearing stories of a tall, dark and handsome man who married a beautiful girl, had three kids with her and worked from home to become the best father ever while Mommy was away on a business trip? Or a prince who loved to take care of people and became a great nurse at a hospital?

We may not realize it, but these fairytales, just like our overtly romanticized Bollywood movies, play a significant role in shaping children’s perceptions of being a man, a woman or even just an adult. I used to watch the cartoon movie Cinderella as a 5 year old and that fantasy of dancing in a ball, having a beautiful prince fall in love with me and the concept of ‘happily ever after’ didn’t leave me till my late teens. Even as a 17 year old, I fantasized about being whisked away in a carriage to and exotic location with by an even more exotic man. I dreamt of (and sometimes still do dream of) walking in a room full of flowers and candles and a beautiful dinner laid out for two, all courtesy cheesy chick-flicks and the ageold fairytales. In my 30 years of being, I have never come across or heard of any man who has done all of this for his wife. And yet I can bet you thousands, if not millions, of girls out there must have shared this fantasy at some point in their lives. Does it ever come true? I’ll let you answer that.

I’m not saying ban fairytales; I just think we need to change the way we tell them to our kids. We need to rethink and reinvent what goes into these stories. There’s no doubt that there are many great morals to be derived out of these fables: selflessness, honesty, inner beauty, true love and many more. And don’t get me wrong, these are all values that I think we should definitely pass on to the generations to come. But with the evolution of our social structure, our outlook, our financial status, there needs to be an evolution in our storytelling too. Just like movies and literature, fairytales should mirror society, not paint a picture that no longer exists. So the next time you pick up Rapunzel to read to your little one, tell them YOUR version of it, TODAY’s version of it.