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Cinderella
Premise: what if marrying a handsome prince isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
I first met Cinderella and Prince Charming as a couple about five days after their honeymoon.
They were doing a post-wedding interview and photoshoot for Fairytale! magazine - all pretty
standard stuff. Setting-up-home, happy giggling, hints-at-pregnancy sort of thing. I wasn’t the
photographer or the interviewer; I was the stylist. It was my job to make sure they both looked
perfect - more than perfect - for the shoot.
So, I arrived at the castle early, ahead of the rest of the team. Got through security without any
problems, and was shown into the Atrium. Very grand. Sweeping staircase, portraits, antique
furniture everywhere. A maid took me up to the master bedroom suite and asked me to wait
outside while she checked that the dressing rooms were ready for us. She was gone for about
five minutes while I hovered in the plushly-carpeted corridor, laden down with endless make-up
bags and hair curlers and a suitcase full of potential outfits. Eventually the maid came back,
looking a bit rattled, and gestured for me to follow her inside the suite.
It was vast. She took me into a side room lined with mirrors and asked me to wait - again. I was
getting worried that I wouldn’t have time to get Cinderella and the Prince ready in time for the
shoot. I was just getting to my feet, about to find the maid to complain, when a pale, long-haired,
young woman slipped through the door. I saw two things straight away: that the young woman
was Cinderella, and that she had been crying.
My first instinct - based on my professional training - was to pretend not to notice. In my line of
work, you meet high-profile people all the time, and discretion is very important. You’re not
supposed to be friends with them. Your job is to make them look good, and then disappear. But
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something was different this time. This was a young woman clearly gripped by misery, whom
the rest of the nation believed to be in newly-wed ecstasy. I needed to help her.
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‘Good morning, madam,’ I said.
‘Good morning,’ she replied - quietly, mournfully.
I guided her to sit down in the chair in front of the mirrored wall. When she’d sat down I saw that
she was in an even worse state than I had thought. Her face was puffy with tears and her eyes
were downcast, as though she couldn’t bear to look at herself, much less at me.
‘I’ve brought several outfit options for you to choose from,’ I said, beginning to extract the
clothes from my bag. ‘Have a look and let me know what you-’
Suddenly Cinderella burst out crying. ‘Whatever I wear, he’ll despise me!’
Well. I hardly knew what to say. But it’s not like I haven’t known similar discord in my own life.
So I simply plugged in the hair curlers and said, ‘Let’s start with your hair, shall we?’, and began
to work on her, waiting for her to say more. She wept quietly for a while, and then asked me for
a tissue.
‘I don’t think he ever truly wanted me,’ she snuffled. ‘I think he just enjoyed the thrill of the
chase. He’d rather have had one of my stepsisters - I saw the look on his face when I married
them off2. He doesn’t even talk to me most days. And everyone said we’d live ‘happily ever
after’! No one understands what it’s like!’3
I pondered this for a moment. After all, Cinderella’s romance and wedding had been one of the
events of the century. The story of their meeting and reconciliation had captivated the nation. As
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Her godmother, who saw her all in tears, asked her what was the matter. Perrault, Cendrillon.
Cinderella, who was as good as she was beautiful, gave her two sisters a home in the palace,
and that very same day married them to two great lords of the Court. Perrault, Cendrillon
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He thought her more charming than ever, and, a few days after, married her. Perrault,
Cendrillon.
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I glanced at her puffy, misery-stricken face in the mirror, I realised that today’s magazine shoot
was going to be a disaster if I didn’t cheer her up.
‘You know,’ I said cautiously, ‘nothing really does last forever. My own marriage didn’t. I’m
divorced.’
As I looked at her in the mirror, Cinderella’s eyes lifted to mine, and I thought I saw a glimmer of
hope in them. But then there was a crash as the dressing room door was flung open and a
young man strode into the room.
‘Where’s the stylist?’ he shouted. ‘I’ve been waiting for two hours already!’
I turned to Prince Not-So-Charming. ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’m just working with your wife.’
He ignored her, his eyes boring into mine. ‘The shoot starts in half an hour,’ he snapped. ‘It’s my
turn. I’ll look awful if you don’t get to me soon.’
I nodded deferentially, but privately thought that I would have a job to improve his appearance
to any great extent. In the publicity photos I had seen he looked glossily, traditionally attractive,
but up close he was pallid and a little chubby, his deep-brown eyes watery. I thought I could
smell beer. ‘I’ll be finished with Cinderella in five minutes,’ I said, ‘and then I’ll come and find
you.’
‘No,’ he hissed, putting his face close to mine - so close that I could be sure the smell of beer
was coming from him - ‘you’ll come and style me now. Leave her. This is just for the cameras
anyway.’
Cinderella looked stricken. I realised that I had better do as Prince Charming had asked - or told
- me. I gathered up my things, watching Cinderella’s tear-stained face crumple as she
understood that I was leaving. I handed her some tissues, some concealer and lipstick and
followed Prince Charming out of the room.
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He led me through the master bedroom suite with its four-poster bed, where photographers
were now busily setting up their equipment and assistants were rushing around gabbling into
walkie-talkies. The schedule had stated that the day’s shoot would begin with a shot of
Cinderella and Prince Charming leaning against each other, staring romantically out of the
bedroom window.
‘Let’s get on with it.’ Prince Charming threw himself into a chair in the corner of the room. ‘You
can do my hair and make-up here, so I can keep an eye on what the photographers are doing.’ I
didn’t know why he bothered. The photographers seemed to be used to his irritable manner and
were ignoring him.
I began to work on him. His skin was bad, and needed more make-up than I would usually use
on a man. He swore continually at me as I styled his hair, but otherwise took no notice of what I
was doing. It was easy to see how he was making his new wife utterly miserable. I saw that his
eyes kept flickering towards the photographers and cameramen, bright with narcissistic
anticipation at the shoot that would ensue. Then I had an idea. Slowly, I began to comb his hair
in a different direction.
I finished with Prince Charming about 5 minutes later. He got up and wandered towards the
photographers, who began to shuffle him into position for the first shot. They looked at him a
little strangely, but did not comment. One of the assistants asked me to fetch Cinderella.
‘Don’t say anything,’ I murmured, as I led her out of the dressing room to the master bedroom.
She looked at me curiously, but there was no time for questions. She was ushered into position
next to Prince Charming, by the open window. When she saw him, her jaw dropped.
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I had styled him as poorly, as hideously as I knew how. I’d coated his face in orange concealer,
sculpted his hair into two little devil’s horns on the top of his head, and smudged red eyeshadow
around his eyes. He looked horrendous. He was no longer Prince Charming, even in
appearance.
From then on, things happened very quickly. I saw the look of horror and realisation in
Cinderella’s eyes, and knew that she had now seen through him; that any glamour and
glossiness attached to him had vanished. I could see her wondering what she would do. The
photographers, whose job it was only to get a decent shot, asked her to take up her position
leaning back in his arms in front of the window.
‘No,’ Cinderella suddenly said.
‘What?’ Prince Charming was staring at her.
‘I’m not doing it,’ she said. ‘I want to stop the shoot. I want to leave before we give the public
any more false evidence of our happiness.’
Prince Charming’s eyebrows contracted as he glowered at her. ‘You ungrateful bitch,’ he said. ‘I
rescued you from the gutter. I gave you a chance at a better life-’
‘This isn’t a better life.’ Cinderella shook her head, suddenly firm. Then she glanced over at me.
‘I want to divorce you,’ she told Prince Charming.
‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ he said, but then he noticed her looking at me. He wheeled around,
scowling at me, before striding over to me and seizing my make-up bag. He shook the
contents out over the floor and picked up my mirror. He stared at his reflection.
‘It’s what she’s done to me!’ he shouted to Cinderella, jabbing his finger at me. ‘She’s made me
ugly! I’m firing her, and you’re going to stay as my wife!’
Cinderella shook her head. She was crying again - but in a different way; a way which showed
her relief. ‘It’s nothing to do with what you look like,’ she said. ‘It never should have been.’
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She detached herself from him and walked over to me as the photographers and assistants
looked on. ‘You’re fired,’ she told me, smiling slightly, and I knew exactly what she meant.
Together, we silently collected my things and left the master bedroom suite. As we opened the
door Prince Charming began to run across the room towards us, but as one, the photographers
seized him and held him back.
Cinderella and I walked down the numerous flights of stairs of Prince Charming’s castle and out
of the front door. It was a bright, brilliant day: still early, and stunningly beautiful. We could hear
Prince Charming’s yells from the open, high-up window of the master bedroom suite. Cinderella
turned to me.
‘I’m never going back to him,’ she said. ‘I’m scared of what is to come, but I’m not scared of
him.’
‘Don’t be scared of what is to come,’ I told her.
‘Why?’ Her brow furrowed as she looked up at me, but I thought I saw a flicker of understanding
in her blue eyes.
‘Because,’ I said, linking arms with her and beginning to walk with her down the long driveway to
freedom, ‘fairy godmothers come in many different guises, even if they do sometimes make
mistakes.’
The translation of Perrault’s Cendrillon I used was this one:
https://www.pookpress.co.uk/cendrillon-french-cinderella-perrault/