Zayn Malik, Cinderella and What Women Want

It’s about Prince Charming.

A young girl wants–yea needs–to be swept off her feet by the ideal man. This dream man is young, virile, pure and idealistic. He is handsome, strong and romantic. He sings love songs. He is funny and caring, loves children and loves life. In his eyes there is a smoldering passion–a longing and yearning for he (even if he doesn’t know it) is looking for the ideal young woman. She is pure and wholesome. She is intelligent and sweet. She is funny and caring, warm hearted, beautiful and strong. She is the very woman the young girl wants to be and her search for the young man is her search for Prince Charming.

This urge and surge within her heart is so strong that when she sees a young man who seems to fulfill that longing she screams with delighted anguish and ecstatic joy. She has seen the love of her life and the fulfillment of all her longing and that urge is so strange and irrational that she throws herself at the man to give him all.

In  other words, Zayn Malik and the boys in the band are Prince Charming for millions of Cinderellas

And “Prince Charming” is indeed what he is for while his manners may be charming, there is more to it than that, for he has cast a spell. He has charmed the young girl. She is entranced. It is as if she is under his command and has willingly submitted to his hypnotic power.

Such is the power of love and longing that it works on us like a sweet lucky charm.

What to make of such a hypothesis? I may be called sexist, but deny the truth of what I write. You cannot. What do women want? They want a strong, handsome, virile, noble and virtuous man to whom they can give their heart.

Our society, however, has trampled on such a noble and beautiful ideal. Wounded women are taught to despise and distrust men. Confused young men are taught to be anything but noble, true and bold.

The version of love which the fairy tales extol is trampled and trodden –despised as so much foolishness.

In our cynical and suffering society we sneer and say “That is no more than a fairytale. Real life isn’t like that. Real life is gritty and dirty and hard and harsh. Men are brutes and women are sluts. Fuhgeddaboudit.

True enough in many ways. Where is the man who has succeeded in being Prince Charming  and where is the girl who is as fine as Cinderella?

Despite the disappointments we should not forsake the ideal.

I watched this week’s events unfold and determined to be more like a noble Prince Charming for my wife and daughter.

That’s what fairy tales are for. They show us good and evil. They bring into focus all that is beautiful, good and true.

So, I shall hold my head high and be that sort of gentleman if I can, and may the enemies of all that is beautiful, good and true be damned.