"You Have To Kiss A Lot Of Frogs Before You Find Your Prince" - But Why Frogs Though?
I was busy fiddling with my knick-knacks and I started thinking about frogs. Eventually my thoughts floated down a stream of consciousness and moored up on the lily pad of life wondering… “Why Frogs?”
How did it become the accepted norm for women that “you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince”? I doubt there is a woman on Earth, or at least in the West, not familiar with this fantasy, it’s so entrenched and normalised in our culture that the myth is now accepted as a fact, an inevitable, unavoidable right of passage through life, like it or not, and of course there is no equivalent for men.
In the West we generally assume by default that folklore and fairytales probably originated out of the dark moral warnings by The Brothers Grimm, which are then diluted in to singing saccharine sexist love stories by Disney, and the fable eventually evolves into modern cultural folklore by the 1970’s.
1970’s seductive frog reclining on a post-sexy-time ashtray.
Needless to say I’m not impressed by the Grimm threat of a vain and petulant Princess being punished, nor am I happy about being blinded by the gaslight of patriarchy that programmes beautiful young girls into believing that it’s compulsory to kiss ugly, repulsive, toxic men until a heavily disguised one jumps out on them by surprise and makes them happy once they’ve passed his covert test. Clearly, with hindsight, it’s an obvious ruse for ugly old slimy toads to trick women into kissing them. Fallen for it a few times myself.
In England, historically, women were ruled by two options 1) marry well or die. 2) marry for love OR for money. emphasis on the “OR” implies they are mutually exclusive.
1) !s self explanatory, women weren’t allowed their own money, so survival literally depended on marriage to any man that would feed them.
2) Is an equally basic option, but even more sinister. It introduces the notion that you have an ‘either or’ situation - you can either choose MONEY and a miserably lonely life with a brutal man, BUT eat and keep a roof over your head, OR choose LOVE with an utterly incompetent, useless but kind man who fails to provide food, shelter and safety, but you can’t have both. And don’t forget, it’s YOUR CHOICE = YOUR FAULT. lose lose.
[ENTER THE FROG, STAGE LEFT].
Vintage silver tone tree frog brooch or vintage enamel frog brooch, who to pick?
I don’t know what’s worse, being coercively controlled into thinking you are vain if you don’t kiss slimy toads, or for kissing slimy toads in the vain hope they will be secretly rich and handsome, but you mustn’t hope they are not slimy old toads but handsome princes, and you won’t know until you’ve kissed them, and if they are, you’re a scheming gold-digger. How did we get into this position? Look what frogs have done to us.
One defining childhood memory I have is going to a garden centre with my parents when I was about nine and standing on the edge of a poorly maintained pond watching a football sized swarming sphere of sex incensed frogs rolling through the swampy water. Every now and again the white transparent leg of the long dead female would emerge in the spin of the scrum and then disappear under the water again. They had crushed her to death in their lust fuelled frenzy and more kept piling on.
I can still see it clear as day and hear my little self say out loud “they’ve killed her”, and every one just ignored it and bought daffodil bulbs. I’ve often in life metaphorically felt like the only female frog in the pond.
Anyway, sorry about sharing that visual with you, I don’t feel better, but it did put me off frogs for a long time, including Kermit. Plus, even though we all have a new found admiration for Paul McCartney’s musical prowess, I’ll never forgive him for the Frog Chorus. No excuse for it.
As I’m now in a position in my life to collect, hoard and write about my beloved knick-knacks and vintage treats, I’ve recently noticed that I have been warming towards the wee ribbiters, without realising. I wouldn’t say I’ve become a frog lover, but I went through my crates and gathered all the ones I could find.
With them all together on the table I can look back to one particular piece that was the first to work his way into my heart. He is what I consider my Gateway Frog. It is a vintage pottery money box by Peter from circa 1970’s. It was the spectacular frown what got me, I even started collecting any animal figurines with a miserable face - so far it’s mostly, but probably not coincidentally, cats.
Miserable vintage frog money box by Peter John - my gateway frog.
But why kiss frogs? Or toads? [froads]. Why not kiss kittens or fluffy chicks?
I lined up my army (yep, that’s the collective name) of old frogs and stared at them for inspiration. None came and I wasn’t feeling any urges to lick them neither, except perhaps the Zuni boy. So, in times like these, always start with the Egyptians, they’ll definitely have a frog god and it’ll probably have a massive penis. You can Google Images that yourself.
A simple ‘Egyptian Frog God’ search straight away revealed the ancient Egyptian frog goddess to be Heqet, symbolised by a woman’s body with a frog’s head (think Jar Jar Binks), and who represented fertility, birth and abundance. It is believed that as the rains came and replenished the dried up rivers there were mass hatchings of frogs and therefore they became associated with the growth and harvest of crops.
On the other side of the world, in the America’s, the Zuni tribes of New Mexico and the premier fetish carvers of the southwest, also associated the frog/toad with the rains coming after a long dry summer and bringing fertility to the land. To the Zuni people, the frog is the RAINMAKER - ‘silently warns of danger and associated with abundance’.
A carved stone Zuni fetish frog.
That all makes perfect sense. It’s clear to see how the symbolism evolved from fertility, pregnancy, birth and abundance to representing the ‘provider’ in modern day folklore. From dirt to riches - frog to prince.
But wait…here we also have an added twist … is this also where the idea “girls love a bad boy” comes from? Who told them a. They love bad men? b. That bad men are really good men underneath, and you can c. where I’m going here…they can change them?
MY EYYYYYES! THE GASLIGHT!! THE LYING TOAD!!!
I have an alternative subplot, were woman of yore were actually creeping out the house in their nighties, grasping around in the swam for poisonous frogs to lick in order to hallucinate that that grubby old toad they married was a handsome young prince.
The moral of this story is don’t kiss frogs girls, they’ll either drive you mad or give you worms. or worse, you’ll be left mad with worms and a frog for life.
Vintage Indian brass open-mouthed chatty frog.
PS - Googled what does the frog symbolise in Hinduism? The internet said: “The frog represents prattling people who spend their precious time in speaking nonsense.” That’s enough “doing my own research” for me to prove that point 😉.
Coming soon - toads and witchcraft!
