Sleeping Beauty and the White Witch

I have recently been watching Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” in order to get a better look at Maleficent. Maleficent plays the evil villain, Hell-bent on ruining the lives of everyone in the kingdom because no one loves her or invites her to parties. Anyway, she is a very dark character in multiple ways, but what I was focused on specifically is how she looks. Visually speaking, she wears all black –with a bit of violet on the inside of her cloak. The cloak itself is shredded at the ends and has this sort-of hood thing that spirals up into devil horns. The fire that she conjures in a rage is green, rather than blue or red (which I think might seem a bit too light or calm in color for her evil self). She is a complete contrast to the heroine, who lives in a bright happy world and has sunshine hair.  Why make her this way?

Maleficent is not ugly. She is tall and thin and has a fair face. Her hands are actually quite beautiful to watch, and they appear perfectly manicured. Her movements are graceful, I didn’t notice that she ever moved in a way that seemed hurried. Even when she snaps up her arms to conjure a spell to stop the escaping Prince Philip, her cloak makes the movement fluid.  My point here is that Maleficent is no ugly hag, but I am repelled by her anyway.

So. What the heck does a witch look like, and why do we have so many negative connotations associated with the word witch? Even the word warlock doesn’t inspire as much fear as the word witch.

Also, what is up with fairies? I started thinking about “Sleeping Beauty” and how the counter magic to Maleficent’s evil magic is that of the three good fairies. Why is that? The Wizard of Oz is guilty of playing a fairy against a witch too. In the new popular T.V. series “Once Upon a Time” the only characters who wield good magic in opposition to the magic of the evil queen and Rumplestiltskin are fairies (the blue fairy from “Pinocchio” being the leader of these). Even cartoons are guilty of this mix. “Winx Club,” a popular cartoon series that has been around since 2004, is about a group of young fairies who fight evil and (at least in first season) are hampered by their witchy counterparts.

I started to look into this a little more and found that some scholars believe that fairies are a sort-of feminine precursor to witches. In old lore, fairies are sometimes known as white witches or good witches. One of the most popular medieval witches, Morgana of the Arthurian legends, is also often referred to as Morgan le Fey. Translated this means Morgan of the fairies.

So what is a witch then? We think of fairies as being something entirely different from wizards or sorcerers. If a witch is a fairy gone bad, can a witch also be the opposite of a wizard? Would their magic be something totally different? Is this all just some crazy amount of sexism?