Emma Raducanu has delivered an empowering message to young girls as she recited re-imaged fairy tales.
The 20-year-old British tennis star reads from Fairer Tales by Emma Dodd in a nine-minute advert for HSBC’s financial education programme.
Dodd’s stories re-imagine Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel by ditching Prince Charming as a main character.
In the re-written stories, Cinderella is a successful businesswoman who designs her own sports shoe, Rapunzel is a property tycoon who rents out her famous tower and Sleeping Beauty capitalises on the interest earned during her 100-year-long sleep and makes a fortune.
Raducanu, who reportedly netted £12.2 million in the past year, including sponsorship and advertising deals, praised the re-vamped Disney characters.
“Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel are all successful young women,” she said. “They have used their brains, imagination and good sense to earn enough money to look after themselves without a Prince Charming in sight.
“What a great story. So in the end, the princesses didn’t need a prince to save them. They set up their own businesses, saved their money and spent it very wisely.”
In Fairer Tales, Sleeping Beauty wakes up from her centuries-long leep to the sound of her doorbell ringing.
She opens the door and sees that it’s Prince Charming who tells her he wants to give her a kiss to break the spell she was under and marry her. But unlike the original, which sees Sleeping Beauty saved by the royal’s advances, this Sleeping Beauty is having none of it.
She hits back: “I don’t need a kiss because all your noisy ringing has already woken me up and I’m certainly not going to marry you, we’ve only just met!”
In the original Cinderella wants out of her difficult life when she hears about the ball and thinks meeting the prince and hoping that he falls for her, will help her escape her situation.
She’s told by her fairy godmother: “You shall go to the ball but you don’t need to marry a prince to get away from all this."
After the ball, Charming does a nationwide search for Cinderella through her glass slipper. In Fairer Tales, after the publicity from the glass slipper, Cinderella rakes in a fortune with her own shoe business.
Raducanu also commented: “You have everything you need for success and happiness right inside of you,” before adding about Rapunzel, who instead of being rescued, escapes her tower using her hair and puts the space up for rent: “Rapunzel is now a free woman, who earns lots of money and is able to live well.
“She even has some spare money, which she can use to buy a share in Cinderella’s new and exciting sports shoe business.”
Raducanu became a household name after winning the 2021 US Open at just 18 years old. She has since suffered a string of injuries since the record-breaking victory forcing her to skip the recent US Open, French Open and Wimbledon.
She fell out of the world’s top 100 this week but has vowed to make a comeback next season.
