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This newly purely sexual wolf was rarely entirely unwanted. In a 1953 Max Factor ad, a grown-up Little Red Riding Hood holds an open, extended red lipstick in front of her smiling but closed mouth.6 The tag line reads: “To bring the wolves out.” Smaller text adds that you will wear it “at your own sweet risk” and calls the cosmetic “a rich, succulent red that turns the most innocent look into a tantalizing invitation.” Note the explicit reference to danger; note, too, the food and blood reference in “rich, succulent red,” and the casual acceptance of desire as simultaneously innocent and inviting. The woman of the 1950s tries to get the wolf’s attention with the knowledge that he will either rip her to pieces or become her faithful woodsman. A recent Pepsi ad featured actress Kim Cattrall in a red riding hood and sporting CGI wolf eyes, glowing yellow with vertical pupils. Cattrall was the forceful sexpot on the television show Sex and the City, so she made sense as both wolf and tempting prey. This may be an image that particularly pleases women at our moment of history, but we know that the fairy-tale wolf wearing Grandma’s nightie always hinted at the sexual hunger and ferocity of women. In today’s cultural discussion of fairy tales, we zero in not on the threat of being eaten, but on the gender roles of the characters. These aspects were always there, but look at the difference in what gets the central attention of the culture: The story once was primarily about death, and it is not at all about death anymore. Now it is about gender, how we struggle over personal value and agency. If buying a fur coat was once an adventure of symbolic survival, now it is an adventure in symbolic worth and control. It used to enhance her value more if he bought it for her; now she might brag that she bought it herself.

In Steven Sondheim’s 1987 musical Into the Woods, it is Little Red Riding Hood who ends up with the wolf’s pelt, and she fashions it into a cloak to wear instead of the red cape. It is a big deal, since her old identity was so completely associated with the garment. Pretty girls sometimes choose to get both tough and ugly in order to protect what they hide: the beauty in the beast. Sondheim’s Little Red is not just hiding; she has put on the aggressive coat, and she remains aggressive and suspicious. The wolf had gotten her off the path to Grandma’s by tempting her to go pick wildflowers in the deep woods. After that defloration, she will not let herself be tricked again. She gets fierce. It is a harsh modern solution that turns an innocent girl into a flowerless wolf. Once upon a time, a fur coat was imagined as a gift from the woman’s husband; even if she did the shopping, this was his money and affection draped on her, protecting her from the cold world. Today women do all this themselves, making the money, deciding they have earned the gift, and shopping for it. Today, of course, there is the amazing added factor of empathy for the wolf. The antifur movement realizes our full mastery of the wolf. We are so in control that we feel sorry for the wolves. It is symbolic, of course, since the real thing killing animals is the sprawl of the suburbs and the malls themselves, and we have no intention of giving up those.

Here in early-twenty-first-century America, people jokingly refer to a trip to the mall as “retail therapy.” Having money to spend means that either someone is taking care of you or you can take care of yourself. The money is confirming, and the performance of that confirmation is shopping. We feel that value should be rewarded, in cash when possible, and when our pockets are empty, we have a suspicion that we are not valued. Yet context is everything. If you buy a magnificent chocolate-brown leather coat with a beige cashmere lining and fur accents, is the coat more pleasurable when you are among other people with fabulous fur-trimmed coats, or when you are with people who are wearing last year’s wool? Are you, on any given day, a wolf or a lamb?

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