Cinderella and her scars
Cinderella has her scars. Most of them are invisible.
The permanent kink in her back from bending over the fireplace each day, picking lentils from the ashes. That faded red spot on her foot—under the slippers—where scalding hot kitchen water burned her one day.
Sure, in the Disney version she’s a vision of physical “perfection” (at least according to the white American beauty norms of 1950). But she lived through her mother’s death, years of abuse, day after day of backbreaking labor. We don’t see her wounds—yet I know they are there.
What would happen if we looked at Cinderella and her scars, all together? And how would that change how we move through the world?
**
Last weekend, I went to Disney World to run the fifteenth annual princess half-marathon and tenth Princess Fairytale Challenge. One of four themed runDisney weekends that happen in Florida each year, “Princess weekend” is the one with sequined running skirts galore. (It also has a history of high drama at the merchandise expo). There are three mornings of races. The Fairytale Challenge includes running two of them—a 10k one day and a half-marathon the next.
During the half-marathon, runners pass through the Magic Kingdom’s iconic Cinderella Castle. If you don’t care about your race time and you have a decent lead on the infamous balloon ladies, you can stop and have your picture taken in front of the castle.
When I paused for this ritual, I did what every other runner was doing, as instructed by the Disney photographers, making images of thousands of us as at a brisk rate. One shot: stationary. A second shot—on the count of three—jumping!!—trying to get that perfect photo in the air, floating, ethereal.
A few hours later, I realized that my castle jump shot marked a milestone I hadn’t intended.
It was the first time anyone else took a photograph of my scars.
**
I have physical scars that I see in the mirror every day. Most of them are “souvenirs” from treatment for metastatic colon cancer in 2018. One low abdominal scar from the emergency surgery that started it all, during Passover, when they removed my right ovary and a twenty-centimeter tumor. Several tiny ones, a faint brown now, from the robotic procedure used to begin an eight-hour colon resection (and more) in June 2018. The Big One—a remnant of the open incision made to continue and complete that same surgery. It runs from just below my sternum all the way to my pubic bone. The healing process for that wound took months, and there is a concave brown indentation, an inch wide, near the top of it. Then there’s an angry-looking, slanted slice from where an intraperitoneal chemo port nestled in my side for a clinical trial.
I see those scars every day. Most people in my life don’t. What if they could?
When I leapt in front of the castle (achieving very little air, alas), simple physics revealed two of the scars. My body landed more quickly than my thin running shirt. There they are, in the center of the image, two brown spots on my pale skin. They are tiny. Many people would not notice them. But they were the punctum that immediately grabbed my eye. The punctures from not-so-long ago that still pierce my grip on the world every now and then.
They demand that mortality cannot be denied.
Cancer survivors, survivors of violence—people write about scars a lot. I don’t know if there is anything to say that hasn’t been said. But my race weekend included another Disney ritual that adds a religious layer to my thoughts about scars.
***
Regular Disney park visitors know all about the buttons. They are simple round buttons that you can wear with pride to mark a special event—and they are a genius customer service innovation. First-time guests can opt to wear bright orange “First visit!” buttons; the color signals to cast members that they might need some extra help. Purple “Happily Ever After” buttons celebrate weddings, honeymoons, engagements, and anniversaries. Blue “Happy Birthday” buttons are easy to understand. The buttons help Disney world’s thousands of employees make guests the star of their own story—to feel special, cared for, and seen.*
And then, there is the generic green “I’m celebrating!” button. As a religion scholar, it’s an intellectual field day for me. Disney provides the template, the announcement of “specialness.” Then the visitor adds the color, the signified, the meaning—the what of the celebration. You could write a whole dissertation on the buttons alone. In the parks and online, I’ve seen a panoply of celebrations—completing races, divorce (like a liberatory trip!), work anniversaries, graduations, “Walt,” “Easter,” and more.
And of course, surviving illness.
When I checked into my hotel, the cast member at reception took my ID and then asked, “Are we celebrating anything?”
And it just tumbled out of me: “I’m here for Princess weekend—and to celebrate four years cancer free.”
This was true—I ran my first Disney race to celebrate one year cancer free, and I had meant this one to be the next iteration, three years later. For my first race, I even proclaimed this on my shirt. But—I had never before confessed it. Intimately. To a single individual.
“Would you like a celebration button?” she asked.
I hesitated, feeling somehow illicit. I’ve visited Disney world with cancer in my body and no button. Which was a lot harder. I’ve also visited Disney World as a cancer survivor with no button. Why should this visit be different from all other visits?
But why not? Who adjudicates these buttons, anyway? (“Why shouldn’t I wear it?” I thought in Bilbo Baggins’ voice.)
And so, I wore the button. “4 years cancer free,” she wrote carefully in a black sharpie.
And suddenly, my scars all became visible.
**
There is longer writing I could—and will—do, on this, someday, notes I have taken, about wearing the button. There was the security guard who congratulated me on my half-marathon but said the real win was on my button, with a fist bump and a big smile. The red-haired man in the hotel gift shop who seemed to tear up a bit as he congratulated me.
A young woman serving waffles and funnel cake at Sleepy Hollow refreshments told me she had survived cancer for twenty years. She was three years old at diagnosis. So many stories that I heard and did not hear but could intuit. Some faces, as they read the button, immediately told me they had a cancer story in their lives. Most people do. Others lapsed into an awkward seriousness. Perhaps scars are not meant to be seen quite so easily.
But what surprised me most was how interacting Disney characters while wearing the button made survival more real. The first time it happened, I was at the runner’s expo. There was a short line to meet Daisy Duck, who wore a princess dress as she greeted runners and their families.
I wasn’t even sure the character performers could see the buttons from within their giant heads.
But Daisy honed right in. She pointed to my button. She clapped. She drew a heart in the air.
And there it was. I was being witnessed. “Yup, I’m here, Daisy,” I said. “I’m still here.”
And I very nearly cried.**
**
The English term “martyr” comes directly from the ancient Greek word for “witness.” In graduate school, before I realized I was much better at writing about America, I read ancient Jewish and Christian stories that fall under the category of “martyrdoms.” Jewish texts from the decades after the Maccabean revolt, written in Greek, describing the brutal deaths of seven sons in front of their mother. Early Christian stories like the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas.
Today in English, when you say “martyr,” the term designates the person in the story who dies—or the person who suffers. (Usually some of both). But originally, these stories were about witnessing suffering.
I don’t mean to say, of course, that I am literally any kind of martyr—as witness or as survivor. Illness is not chosen. It is not sacrifice. It is, simply, different.
But witnessing is one of the most powerful things humans do for one another—ethically, religiously, just being fellow travelers on our fractious blue spaceship earth. Relationality, you could say, is how I do religions, including my own tradition of Judaism. (Cue Buber, Levinas, etc.).
Disney buttons give us back to ourselves through the eyes of other. They demand witness.
The problem most people would raise here—and it is a problem--is that these buttons are also a financial transaction, and they are only open to those who can afford them. (Yes, commerce and religions are always entangled…. But still….). I spent a lot of money last week. Money that I have through the privilege of my birth and education. I’ll never see any of the people who congratulated me or wished me well again, probably. It’s not the same as celebrating with an ongoing community, with people who know me, something for which I long, and always have.
In a recent interview, someone asked me if this wasn’t just sad, people turning to Disney because other forms of religion and community are breaking down. And I did think—how strange, how easy it is to celebrate here in a theme park; how hard it has been for me, personally, to find the right Jewish rituals along the course of my cancer journey.***
The things is, though--: it’s complicated. Brief encounters matter. I can still remember the faces of nurses who walked the halls with me when I was sick. I can picture strangers who helped me when I sprained my ankle in Manhattan almost twenty years ago.
The buttons are a customer service structure, but the feelings of the people wearing them and reading them remain human and powerful—not irreparably tainted. Or maybe they are, but we can wash them clean of commerce with our mutuality. Nothing is pure in this world. The young woman at Sleepy Hollow refreshments was not contractually obligated to tell me her cancer story. I’m sure her manager wants her to say “congratulations!” to anyone with a celebration button. That part is a transaction, a contrivance, a requisite speech act. The rest--- the rest was a human reaching out towards another human, even for a moment, received by me with grace.
**
How did Cinderella feel about her scars, once she lived in the palace? Did priceless oils help soothe the hurt away? Did the prince ever ask her about that spot on her foot? Did she think about all the women still sleeping in the ashes? The ones with no fairy godmothers, no miracles, who lingered there until they, too, were ash.
Princess Weekend for me was happy, and cathartic, and complicated, as it is for so many participants. We awoke in the middle of the night, assembled in the EPCOT parking lot, and ran away from—or into—the pain.
With plenty of glitter alongside our scars.
*If you want to know more on working at Disney and emotional labor, there’s a lot of good scholarship out there, including Inside the Mouse.
** Here, a literal performance—improvisational theater in which I was one of the actors-- emotionally cemented years of scans and bloodwork (this is how ritual works, right?).
***Many Jews do find them and I literally teach about innovative Jewish rituals in my courses—but I don’t have the right community for it here, so it’s a “physician—heal thyself” moment.