Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked

SEX, MORALITY,

AND THE EVOLUTI{)N

OF A FAIRY TALE

Catherine Orenstein

e A MEMBER OF THE PERSEU S BOOKS GROUP

New York I .. .. ........ .. . ..... ............. ····· ·• .. ···•· . ·····•·-··•··•••· ... ····•······ ··- .J

106 • L ITTL E R Eo R101 N G Hoon UN ClOAK eo

Grimm were dead- would the werewolf h

. . , arc symbol ofEvu, or the Devil himself, get a chance at rehabilitation B h

. . · Y t e twentieth century, Its carnal desires would increasingly becorn

ea syrnbo1 of manly prowess and even a source of humor. The wcrcwo~

would become the hairy-chested Lothario of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s,

movies- horror, passion, a swooning date-while Red Riding

Hood 's dangerous foe would become a harmless, whistling dog.

Lil' Red Riding I-Iood

BY ROBERT BLACKWELL

susG •' SA" T H ' SHAM A N D™' PHARAOH S, , 966

0wooooooooo !

who's that walking in these woods?

WhY, ifs Little Red Riding Hood

HeY there Little Red Riding Hood

y0

11 s11re are looking good y

0

u're everything a big bad wolf could want- Listen to m e

Little Red Riding Hood I don't think that little big girls should

Cio walking in these spooky old woods alone

owooooooooo!

What big eyes you have The kind of eyes that drive waives mad

So just to see that you don't get chased

source: From t he a lb um UI' Red R uiin H ood • - • • •• "''"d, d by M GM , ,, 66. g by Sam ,h< Sham ,od ,h<

tro • t,,,,. Rao a,o,•c H

Oon {]Net o "I( i I) I think I ought to Wa/ k "'ith "oufi

, Ora ways

What full lips You have

They' re sure to lure so,,,.0n, bad

So until )'Ou get to grandma's place

I think I ought to Wolk ""ith You and be safe

I'm gonna keep my sheep suit on

Until I'm sure that you've been shown

That I can be trusted "'•/king ,.ith you a/on,

OW0000000001

Little Red Riding Hood

I'd like to hold you if t could

But you might think I'm a big bad wolf so I won't

owooooooooo,

What a big heart I ha11e

The better to lo11e you with

Little Red Riding Hood

Ellen bad wol11es can be good

I'll try to be satisfied

Just to walk close by your side

Maybe you'll see things my way

Before we get to grandma's place

Hey there Little Red Riding Hood

You sure are loo mg g k. ood

R BD HO H OOD

1' RIDIN G

d wolf could wont thing a big bo

'r,eVf,Y 0001 YOII 0000

owOO aaoaol I

, ,,.,,ari baa ooaooooooo. ? Boo Boaoaoo

I I I I

l A 7;',,N THe G

V V: RIMM BROT

ing Hood" . HERS turned "t ·

ences of th into a childre ' Ittle Red Rid-

e ninet n s tale for v·

embod. eenth centur ictorian audi-

ltnent of inno y, the heroine b

sexuality 11.r cence. She lost all t ecame the

. l'IOt unn racesofh

Red R'd • l the twentieth er earlier French

1 1ng H century

th h ood defrocked Was the bowdlerized

e and , so to sp k

defr k s of the legendary . ea ' and redressed. Or, in

oc ed Av anunator Te

Euro . ery brought the her . x Avery, simply

£ . pean forest to the IioU oine and her wolf from the

airy tal . YWood n · h 1

R 'd • e lllto a caricature of A . ig tc ub and transformed the

t mg Ho d tnerican court h.

0 , released in s 1P· In his Red Hot

traditi 1943, the sw h .

on-who in Perrault' eet eroine of storybook

served s seventeenth

h up a warning about th d -century original had

er own s b . e angers ofp . .

Ytn ohc opposit . ronuscwty- became

Red Hot Riding H, d be. ~ Hollywood stripper.

v· oo egUls on th

Ine, the legendary spot f L, e corner of Hollywood and

wh O ,ustory'

ere the wolf, dressed to th . . s most famous nightclubs,

an evewn f e runes lil top hat d .

g O carousing. Grand , h an tails, arrives for

the mas OUse i

corner, a penthouse apartm snow a bordelloaround

"Grand , . ent Iit up b

mas Jomt~ ome up and y a neon sign:

w · . see me " (

igglmg finger, a la Mae West in . . A neon hand with a

' vites the passe b r Y Upstairs.) And

RED HOT RIDI NG H OO D • JIJ

S . a chic nightclub that advertises "30

eat the Sunset tnp,

on stag ,, Red Hot Riding Hood steps into the spot-

eous girls, no cover,

gorg . k -up and cape-which she quickly tosses

li ht all dolled up m ma e

g ' 'th her basket. No kid anymore, this Red's a buxom

aside, along w1

ll . short (very short) red strapless number. She

bombshe m a

launches into her song and dance-"Hey Daddy, you ~etter g_et the

best for me"-which sends the wolf, seated in the audience, mto a

frenzy. He hoots and howls, claps and whistles, and employs a clap­

ping and whistling machine to amplify his appreciation. "Hey

Daddy! Hi Pawl Say now Father," Red goes on, undulating her hips

and shaking her fanny. The wolf's eyes pop out (literally-they fly

across the room), his tongue unrolls like a red carpet, and he rises in

the air and stiffens into a full body erection.

As soon as Red finishes her routine, the wolf snakes a long arm

onto the stage to whip her to his table. "Fly away with me to the

Riviera," he says in a smarmy French accent. But after he follows

Red to Grandma's Joint, the tables turn. Granny, a hot old dame

in a slinky red dress, is besotted. Now she whistles and levitates

and hoots, as she chases him from door to door with puckered

lips. "That's a wolf! Whoo hoof'

"Little Red Riding Hood" was apparently Avery's favorite

fairy tale. He repeatedly returned to it, or some semblance of it,

throughout the 1930s and 1940s, transforming the tale into a

full-scale romance, told in multiple episodes. In Little Red Walk­

ing Hood, the first of Avery's flirtations with the tale in 1937, he

gave Red the body of a little girl but the demeanor of a grown

woman. She trots along the boulevard, as the wolf- here a pool

hall city slicker, all oily charm and questionable intentions­

drives slowly behind her in a shiny black car, throwing out pick-

I 14 • LITTLE RED RIDING Hoon UN CLOAK ED

up lines as fast as his lips can animate. She eventually •

. . . tn terrupts the narrative to comnuserate wah the women in the aud·

Jenee about lascivious male behavior.

In The Bear's Tale ( 1940 ), Avery cast Red as a smart-mouthed,

freckle-faced kid from Brooklyn. She teams up with Goldiiock,

to defeat the wolf by leaning over a split-screen line that sep,.

rates their plots: "Hello, Goldie! This is Red Ridin' Hood. I just

found a note from that skunk the Wolf. . . . "(She hands over the

note.) In Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), the last of Avery's

pseudo-fairy-tale burlesques, he drew a gangly, toothy redhead

as the country cousin of Red Hot Riding Hood. She opens and

closes doors with her long, unsightly toes, and puckers her enor­

mous, almost snout-like lips.

Of all Avery's variations on this t eme, owev , . h h er Red Hot Rid-

ing Hood gave him his guiding stars. The uxom re . b dhead and the

wolf quickly outgrew the plot t at mspire ' h . . d them becomrng

recurrent characters in numerous animate s orts. d h Avery placed

d ,, d ups but also the couple not only in his "Red Riding Hoo sen - '

. Sh ;rt Cinderella in other fairy-tale cartoons. The heroine of Swing t;'

. the familiar ( 1945) is really Red Hot all over again. She appears m

. thesame nightclub set, with the same upswept red hair, gyratmg .

va-va-voom figure. She Wears the same revealing outfit, only this

time it's conjured up by her fairy godmother. (Red: "You do wave

· her first a mean wand, don't you old girl?") And of course, as m

. 'th the appearance m Red Hot R;d;,,g Hood, she is paired up w• ,

same eternally aroused Wolf, who falls into throes of ecstasy ~ her song and dance. This tirne the tune goes, "Oh Wolfie, ain t you the one!"

Avery placed Red Hot and her Wolf in cartoon parodies of

RED H OT D • 11 5

R IDING Hoo

F r MGM, 1943. . is Red Hot. o

. er heroine G

Tex Avery's stnpp . . of Dan M c oo

. The Shooting Uncle ell includmg (1945), and

other genres as w ' Wild and W olfy Little Rural

. k western, he couple,

(1945), his moc ) I his last spoof on t . e fable about a

Tom's Cabana ( 1947 . n h Jean de La Font.am d ncer at the · d by t e in a a

Riding Hood, inspire . mouse, Red is aga olves: a hor-

and a city . for two w country mouse . perfornung ·t·ous urbane

b his tune superc1 1 same nightclu , t kin and a usin).

ntry bump 1 country co mone-crazed cou Red Hot's home y d transcended

£ llsfor 'ding Hoo Romeo{who later a f Red Hot Ri r were not

h racters o . . ous pursue For Avery, the c a . land her lasc1v1 d mbols of the

howgir rs an sy

the fairy tale . The s lf but the characte b ' t His wolf, stiff-

. d a wo ' . · a sex o Jee · J·ust a girl an H's herome is •s personified.

ma 1

· the peru hwnan sexual dra . ·ght of her, is . tthe s1 ·taunga ening and lev1

I 16 • L ITTL5 R

6D R101NG

Such Hooo lJN gags Were not CtoA1< po

Avery's R d unusual . e Ridin l..J

10 the car

dren. Th g qOod riffs toons of ey Were Were on! . an earli

lllain attractio £' Pre-television, sho ~ lllciden1a1Jy fi er era

n 1or a g Wn 1n th or ch·i tao, but th eneral aud . eaters b , ,

ey Were Jenee Ch 'Id efore

ists Work' an afterthough r . I ren went lhe

Ing at this t' t 10r Avery t· to lllovie

lifed11 .. · 1rne,Avery · · 1keoth s, -ing the incorpor er can

War into h . ated deta ·1 <>on,

1942, the three little . is anitnations. In Blit I s of American

now taken on the pigs face their old enelll zwo/J, released In

trademark role lpersona of Adolph 1-litl y the Wolf, Who has

as asciv• er (a br k contrast to th N . . ious nightclub . ea from his

e aZJ inte . suitor, and

Jew). Avery's S . rpretat1on of the lf a startling

wing Shif1 Wo as th

she has to fl h t Cinderella is a n d e marauding

ee t e ni h o to R •

the "sw· g tclub to be on t' os1e the Riveter·

ing Hoo:~/::~, at the Lockheed fac:: f:nher ~dnight joh the "moral " iously modeled on the .· d his Red liot Rid-

A e of World War II soldi Plll-up girls who raised

very subverted th ers.

Walt D1' e prevailing stand d sney wh ar sofan · .

h , ose Snow Wh . unat1on set by

t e first full-length fi tte and the Seven Dwarfs b eature c 1· ecame

revered the G . artoon in I

rimms' tradition A 937. While Disney

running g ' very disrupt d h ags, ridiculed fai _ . , e · is plots with

Europe with contempor ry t~le chches, and blended Old

mak · f ary America wh e tt unny (as in the tav erever he found a way to

. d ern called "Yi

nuxe and matched tal . e Old Beere Joint"). He

d es, provided pro uced self-aware h unorthodox settings and

. c aracters who fre '

narrative to COlllll)ent h quently interrupt the on t e plot or mak

ence, completely rupturin ~ a statement to the audi-

Riding Hood begins with! atrnyds'u~pens1on of disbelief. Red Hot

d h a 1t1onal Euro-D'

an t e conventional storybook 1 (" isney landscape

p ot. Good evening, kiddies,"

Reo HOT RIDIN G HOOD • I 17

rrator intones.) But then the characters rebel

be off~screen na t d th tit be done a new way. (The narrator agrees and

and deman a . . .

l be ins again.) In Little Red Walking Hood, the girl and

obUglng Y g . . . .

If spend animation to wait for a pair of late moviegoers

rhewo . su

h mselves· the fictitious offenders' "silhouettes" appear

to seat t e , rtalistlcally on the screen. Above all, Avery worked in opposi-

tion to Disney's saccharine sweetness, epitomized by the

bleached heroine of Disney's Snow White.

Avery's endless, obvious visual metaphors for sexual excite­

ment earned him the scrutiny of U.S. government censors. He

was known to create salacious sequences that he knew would be

cut, hoping to distract them from the sex gags that he truly

wanted to keep-though not always successfully. In the pu blidy

released version of Red Hot Riding Hood, the wolf is driven mad

by the attentions of Red Hat's grandma and vows to kill himself

if he ever sees another woman. He shoots himself when Red Hot

appears on stage again, and his ghost rises to cheer her striptease

on. But the original version that Avery animated, struck by the

Hays Office for its explicit theme of bestiality, was much racier.

In that version, sent to Gls abroad but not shown to civilian audi­

ences, Grandma and the wolf are married in a shotgun wedding

(with Red sitting in the seat of an antiaircraft gun pointed at the

wolf's back). They appear in the next scene back at the Sunset

Strip, for Red's last act, with a litter of howling wolf pups in tow.

Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood captured a changing vision of

the American woman in the 1930s and 1940s. She was not only

more frankly sexual, but also tougher and more self-reliant than

the demure woman of the Victorian era. In Avery's animations,

the roles of sex object (even stripper) and self-reliant heroine are

II8 • LITTLER

ED R IDINc Ii oo0 0 Neto

Al( Eo

TexAve , ., ry s eternal! Miss Rid. y aroused wolf

rng Hood" atth woos

not mutuall e Sunset Strip.

Y exclusive ff of his cartoons sh . is Red Riding Hood

ily able t r e appears in, can tak , no matter which

o 1end off h . e care ofhe l a snowb 11 . er suitor with a lit al rse f: She is eas-

a m L. I er cold h li h ztt e Red Walk · s oulder(drawnas

g ts-out b h. mg Hood) lam . y Itting him over the or to give his ardor a

P (m Red Hot Riding Hood) head with a nightclub table

Avery's contemporar . tured this ne y, the humorist James

(

. w street-smart gual. Thurber, also cap-

mmus Av , ity of A .

l

ery s explicit sexuality) . mencan womanhood

t e Red R.d. macartoo d I mg Hood" that . n a aptation of "Lit-

and Fa appeared m his F. b mous Poems in 1939 "It . a /es for Our Time

nowada . . is not so easy t ti ys as It used to be ,, r d h o ool little girls

' ea stem lb ora eneath hi d . s rawmg

R ED HOT R IDING HOOD • I I9

heroine arms akimbo, who regards the tongue-

of a no-nonsense ' . . . If ho waits for her 10 bed with evident annoyance.

wagging wo w . , toon like Avery's animations, reflects changes 10

Thurber s car , . f American women from the 1920s t hrough the 1940s

the 11ves o ke

d new ideas and attitudes. Among those changes:

that spar suffragettes won the vote, bras replaced corsets, and women

began wearing pants- finally following the advice of nine­

teenth-century dress reformer Amelia Bloomer. Amelia Earhart

new solo across the Atlantic in 1932; the Gibson Girl gave way to

the flapper, who stepped aside for Rosie the Riveter; the "new

woman" went to work, wore lipstick, and smoked cigarettes;

and in Hollywood, female stars like Joan Crawford and Betty

Davis made names for themselves playing tough femmes fatales.

Avery's and Thurber's work capture some of the sexual and

political attitudes of this era, with its revolutionized manners.

Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood is the new leading lady-she's a

sexpot, sure, but no pushover. She's a cross between Rita Hay­

worth (the market-savvy redheaded sex goddess who dyed her

hair and hid her Spanish heritage to become an ' /\nglo" star) and

Mae West, who herself trafficked in fairy tales, but also restaged

and rewrote them. West's one-liners captured the public imagi­

nation and entered the language as cliches for the same reason

that Avery's cartoons became famous: because they put the fairy

tale in twentieth-century terms. "I used to be Snow White,"

West once famously quipped. "But I drifted."

TEX AVERY'S Red Hot Riding Hood, with its wartime pin-up

girl heroine, captured a slice of American history and gave

new meaning to the fairy tale as a courtship story. It also her-

120 •

James Th 1.-urUC"r's girl is n as sh ot as easy to fool

e used to be.

aided the on set of a spccifl

In twentieth-century ic new role for Little Red Rid ' H

adult fetnal 'd pop culture she . mg ood

e I eals d ' increasin J

graphic· th . an represented g y conveyed

· e smgJ a new a d

calls her. Of the e woman. " Miss Rldin h n ,, growing demo-

Hood rema . best-known fairy-tale h g ood, as Avt'ry's wolt

prin ins unattached at tale' eroJnes, only Red Riding

ce, not even a bi, send- there's no .

fairy t I other or two. Th wedding. no

a es becam . us, overih

ideals h e increasingly de e next decades, as

, s . e develo voted to ex .

other£ . ped a slgnifican pressing feminine

at the t~1ry-tale heroines, who undce very different from that o(

tme. erwent their own transitions

R fl 1, II o r R I D I N c Hoo D • 1 2 r

Identical Prince Charmings wear matching outfits,

in Hudson Talbott's book adaptation of Into the Woods.

It's no secret that today's best-known fairy-tale protagonists

are female: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beau ty,

and Red Rid ing Hood , to name just a few. These heroines act

amongst a cast of banal male foils. The men are simply fathers,

beuts, dwarfs or princes, all interchangeable and usuaUy iJJus­

trated as one and the same from tale to tale. In Stephen Sond­

heim's Broadway musical Into the Woods, the Prince Charmings

of two interwoven fairy tales swap places without so much as a

ripple in the plot. In an UJustration from the book adaptation of

the musical, they wear matching outfits in matching colors, j ust

iS they share a common name and common romantic mission.

(''l\nd how do you manage a visit?" says one to rhe other.)

In these fairy tales, the heroines make decisions that illustrate

the expectations of women in real life, while the male figures are

simply metaphors for punishment (misbehave and you' ll meet a

wolf) and reward (a prince in rhe end- Jf you're good!).

i.22 • L 'TTte R Eo R

IDJNG I.J

But Wha c:iooo UN

ta contra CtoAl<f

Past. The b st today's f e . . o

. rothers G . llllltine fau-

tw1ce as Olan nnun, Who Were . y tale is to the

tents y lllale as fetna1e J Prolific coU genre's

can befud eads. Look.i ectors

Thrushb dle the tnod ng over th . , Penned

C.U-d? Wb em reader· u __ eirtableof

an . ere have th .• .l<UJS rny B d con.

SWer: They hav . ese tales of l!lal e gehog? Kin

folkJ . e lost out . e advent g

Onst I<ay Stone ob in the ganie of edito . l l.lregone?The

only a handful served, tnost childr , na selection. As

G . , of the original ens storybooks co .

°ll'Uns complete Ch 1d .212 stories th nta1n

of those that surv· z rens and Household Tt. I at appear in the

l lve feature c a es--and

eads are als C Lelllale-dr· nearly au

o Lar .rn . iven plot Tal

White a d he ore likely to be lllad . . s. es With female

n t Seven D e lllto movies D" ,

With Cirzd~ ll . Waifs, an overnight ·. ISneysSnou,

e a lll 195 success in

lective 1 o, established th £ .

1937, along

ro e .model for every . l e auy-tale heroine as a col-

and tnoth . g1r and woznan ..

. er, D1Sney's Snow Whi . aspmng to be a wife

sprmg cleani . te gives the dwarf: ,

. ng, smging "Whistl . s bachelorpada

dishes, sweeps floors, dusts b e While You Work" as she washes

the assistance of bu-· d d co webs and scrubs clothing- . h

~ e~rabb· ~

sintila ' its and

r scene in Disney's la . other forest fauna. In a

h . ter CmcJere/ia . .

erome by sewing a gown £0 th b , llllce and birds assist the

h r e all hil

ousc and dressing her step . w e she finishes cleaning

s1sters--cho ha

as happy housewife to Prince Channin res t t anticipate her life

These two movies, like the new tw!· . fairy tale in general, captured the all nt1eth-century feminized

. . Ure of tnarr·

ticJty that became the dominant id l iage and domes-

ea for women a1i

the 1950s, the age of newlyweds dro terthewar. In pped, as did the

motherhood, and divorce rates plu"'-- ageoffirst ...... ..,.ted. Men

their jobs, and Rosie the Riveter was uroed b k . returned to

w · -e, ac into th h

1th the family as the center of American lif. e ome. e, managing the

RED HOT RIDIN G H OOD • 123

h Id became the preoccupation of women's Jives. Despite

house o new labor-saving appliances, the number of hours devoted to

housework increased. Child care took up twice as much time as it

bad in the 1920s. Joan Crawford posed for pictures mopping

floors. Ozzie and Harriet acted out an idealized version of their

real-life marriage on TV. And during this time, American culture

produced a parallel ideal in fiction: the "fairy-tale wedding"-a

romanticized union that in fact has nothing whatsoever to do

with the forced matrimonial trades behind Charles Perrault's

seventeenth-century fairy tales-which never existed before

the twentieth century.

Yet if America idealized the family, behind the trimmed

hedges and driveways of suburbia the reality of mid-century life

was more complex, as scholars like Stephanie Coontz have thor­

oughly documented. Despite the cult of domesticity and the

prudery of Ozzie and Harriet, the 1950s were a time of new sex­

ual freedoms. Terms like "going steady" and "petting" (or even

"heavy petting") came about to describe them. Teenage girls got

pregnant, were sent away to have their babies, and came back

"rehabilitated." The number of pregnant brides skyrocketed­

though with the appearance of better methods of birth control

(particularly the pill in 1960), premarital sex became Jess risky.

And alongside the glorified housewife, there was increasingly

the woman who did not go straight from father's to husband's

anns. Living on her own. she navigated the double standards of

the age. This is the demographic that Red Riding Hood, the sin­

gle heroine, rose to serve•

As Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White rruirched

down the aisle, mid-century pop culture depictions of Little

1 2 6 . L ITTtE R

R Eo R 10 1-.,

cd Ridin G l-lo oo U

g Hood ·' ·cto

Brown's I96 seelll as if AicEo

2 best 1J llle.1nt

the ti~ h se er ~x to illusr

s e is c and the s · rate li

.itld fa.st a.st as a felllJn fa t11g/e Grr/ I elen Gu .

., . cars. Ri e tale, h . . n adv . r1~

bnng the WolVer,e, Young "riding h awking liquo % iJlgOf

ad appca . s out," M 00d red" . r, lllaJce.

nog .in v. ax Factor p . lipstick tip

fortncd the tal , ogue lllaga.zine in rolll.ised in a Po \\•ouJd

str.itlgers O es traditional 1953 that tad · ster-sized

. n one . waroi l(:.llJy

vi.xen SllliJ side of the ng against trans..

es coyly spread a 5Peakin

On the o . as she appJie red-hooded g to

PposJte pag s a bright h ' ted-nau

coltlpazi e, a backg s ade of ed

th y of Gregory Pee Jc 1 round shot show red lipstick_

e tr~, gn .. - · OOk-aJiJc· saforest .·

-~1ng es pee · · \\1th

1-i<>od Red at COlJlically lecher ring our from beh · a

go. Your own ous grins ., llld

t.ng to be r◄ 11 sweet risk . Wear Rid·

0 owedr' · · · • We zng

~d that tu says the ad Warn you • .

. rns the mo . copy: "It's . , )ourf'

t1on." A 196.2 ad .st Jonacenr look int a rich. succu/enr

o d vertise.rn o a tan•~J· .

"e as a 1 ent in The ... lZJng invfr, _

Gr.a , ~ amorous felllll)e fat New Yorker sirnJJarJ

n4n.i s 10 her 'T I ale: this ti Y cas1

her hood Jtt e red Hertz ,, u me, on her wa\' r

now a hi h . qercaris . o

Dior; her coy g -fashion item th . a racy converobJe;

corne--b. b at .might h

identical to th it er SJU.ile and sid l ave come from

at of the M e ong gla .

notlti.ng d . ,, ax Factor n, d nee is almost

01ng sa o el And ,,

which show , ys a 1983 ad for Joh . . W ithout red,

s a wolf b nny Walk

W..ots to bu . }'passing a girl d er red labd,

I ya dnnk for bleach d ressed in White. Wh

ll pop .music, San, th Sh e goody-two-shoes? o

n("\y pop 1 e arn and the Pb.tt

hen,· , u ar Version of the tal aobs also ech~d th

Utes new avaiJ . e as a counsbi e

SJ:n.is.h h ' ability- both SOcial p dance, and the

Jt "LiJ• Red Ri and se~

the r-h ding Hood"- whi . In their 1966

cine song for M.adi cli could easuv ha

son A~nue ads ✓ ,,e btt-n

or for Avery' R s ed Hot

RED H OT R IDI S G HOOD • 1.2'"'

JiooJ-the wolfpursuesthcgirJ no t in se..rch of a~ but

RJ,ng s ofa date. Thjs time it is he who noti~s what big evcs-

jn bope th h . "b' l '' h

•on full lips--that e erome, now a 1g gir , as .

noc co menu . ,.

"()WOO! Lirtle Red Riding Hood-you sure ue looking good!

As Sam rhe Sham and the ads of Madison Avenue suggest . t ht""

D'!W grown-up Red Riding Hood has a suitor · in de-ed. she may

!,ring out as many wolves as she plea~- but s.he is defined by

her independence from them. Brown's Sn an.i tr.e Single Girl,

which described the prototype of the Cosm o Girl, offers ,m

in.sight into the son of woman who might purd use Max F.1c-tor 's

ripe young "riding hood ~d" lipstick. Bro~ .. rn·s advice, though in

opposition to some of the coming ideas of feminism. ne\-cn hdess

stands in stark contrast to the dich6 of 195os gender s tereo­

types and epHomizes the son of po\",.-er th.at at the time was a,·.iH­

able to single women- as "gold-diggers" ,md flins. During .a

woman's best years, Brown counseled, "You don' t nttd a hus­

band," just a man, and men "arc often ch~p<'r emotion.illy .1nd .a

lot more fun by the bunch ." She advised flirution ,,dth butcb~rs

to get a better side of beef. and counsded single women against

having an affair with only one m1rried nun-though t.bc~ ~'aS

nothing wrong with dating many.

F AST-PORWA~D to the end of the l\,'t"ntieth century, when a

1998 television spot cnfted by Luc &sson for Chanel No. 5

perfume updates the heroin<''s conunctci.lJ sex .1ppal. This timc,

Red is a Parisian beauty (model Estelb W.irrcn, s.bown in cos­

tume in the opening un.ige of tbl' introduction to lhis book) wh 0

c.tlls htt own shots. She S.J:Shays through a nunsion in a red 5.ltin

bustier-.uid-prtticoats numbcr---remlniscent of the outfi t worn

128 • LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD UNc LOA KEO

by Avery's Red Hot. In her vault bottles of Ch ' anel No fume, stacked ceiling high and wall to wall l'k b . · 5 Ptr-. ·r I e ricks of gold sigm Y her incredible stock of sex appeal, here d fi d •

. e ine as sceni After dabbmg her pulse points, she dons a shiny red . · satin cloak and heads for the door, where she turns at the last rn ornent and places a finger to her lips to shush a howling wolf- h h

er ouse pet. Subdued, he sits obediently as she flips her hood over her head and with a smile heads out the door to the Paris skyline for a night on the town with a different set of wolves. "Share the fan­tasy," exhorts the legendary Chanel tag line.

In just thirty seconds the Chanel ad inverts the tale's tradi­tional message: The admonition to obedience has been redi­rected- now he is tamed-and instead of the womanizing wolf, this time it's the heroine who goes on the prowl. But has the mes­sage really changed? Although Chanel's "Little Red Riding Hood" has tamed her wolf, her implicit lesson is hardly different from that of Max Factor's femme fatale in 1953: namely, that sex­ual appeal-or lack thereof- is the source of female power and value, whether in the perfume vault or in the open market of dat­ing and mating.

The sultry single woman has been one of Little Red Riding Hood's great twentieth-century roles, whether Red H ot or "ripe, young" or just a fantasy in a perfumed red dress. Chased by a pack of smitten bachelors in the cartoons of Tex Avery, the croonings of Sam the Sham, or the ad copy of Max Factor, by mid-century our heroine emerged as an icon of feminine avail­ability: the image of woman as man desires her, distinguished by her ability to turn his head (or make him levitate, steam, and lose h is eyeballs) and always desirous ofa romantic romp.

H OT RI DI N G H OO D R ED

• I 29

arable of . of the tale as a p ular understanding . version of the story

while tbe pop he present day, this n and tbe sut es into t Luc Besso , }ove endur men like Avery, w ith the way p1.1pPY crafted by trasts sharply .

as a romance, dison Avenue, con _ ntury retold t he fairy-e.xecutives of Ma half of the twentieth ce . ists cast Red Riding

. tbe latter d ames, f eIJllil women ill tic fun an g inister light. from roman lfin a far mores tale. far with the wo ao0d's encounter