Strength is a specific concept - this is some internal energy, the power necessary to perform any work. And this word itself is primarily associated with the male principle - heroic strength, remarkable strength - an active principle realized externally, in society. In fairy tales, these are victories in military battles, protecting the weak, battles with evil spirits, searching for or conquering the feminine (tests for the sake of the king’s daughter, princess or lost wife who needs to be returned). In contrast to the male principle, female strength is about the ability to live in harmony with the world, build harmonious relationships with it, the ability to feel and trust one’s intuition, to create beauty. However, in many cultures we meet heroines who embody the Amazon archetype (Tatyana Vasilets and Natalya Romanova - the concept of initiation therapy of male and female maturity) [1]. Images of strong women in fairy tales and myths are few but impressive. Bogatyrs Marya Morevna, Nastasya Okulyevna, Savishna, Zlatygorka in Russian folklore, Valkyries in Scandinavian mythology, the goddess Athena in ancient Greek, Goddess Sekhmet in Egyptian. They are all warriors by nature. In some fairy tales, the heroines inevitably have to bring out their inner Amazon, becoming strong, purposeful, protecting their borders and defending their beliefs. Fairy-tale stories in which a woman acts as a seeker or savior suggest trials that the heroine must overcome in order to rescue her brother, fiancé or husband from trouble. And here male characters play the role of an exhausted, passive character, while female characters, on the contrary, are endowed with activity. Sometimes heroines not only have to show strength according to the male principle, but also literally take on a male form. These are so-called fairy tales with gender intrigue, with plots of a woman dressing up in a man's dress. Let us remember the famous heroine Vasilisa Mikulishna. Its history is known from the epics “About the Beautiful Vasilisa Mikulishna” and “Stavr Godinovich”, and someone may remember the cartoon “Vasilisa Mikulishna” (1975) directed by Roman Davydov. At a feast at the Kyiv prince, Stavr boasted of his wealth and his young wife, who was beautiful and smart, for which he fell out of favor. Having learned that the Kiev prince imprisoned her husband in a dungeon, Vasilisa, cutting off her braids and donning the clothes of an ambassador of the Golden Horde, went to save her man. No one recognized her as a woman, except for the daughter of Prince Vladimir, Zabava Putyatishna. The prince should listen to the voice of female intuition, but in traditional ideas “the hair is long, but the mind is short,” well, what can a woman say? Just nonsense... And now the Kyiv prince must pay tribute for twelve years and give the ambassador his beloved daughter as a wife. Fun insists that the prince test the guest, and the ambassador famously defeats three young men in a fist fight, wins in the pursuit of a hare and beats the prince at chess. In fact, a woman did not acquire male strength, but turned to her benefit the ability to be flexible and agile, the ability to see a goal and follow it, and her natural mind. And all this is coupled with courage and determination, and, of course, with the inherent female cunning. In difficult times, when there is no protection and active manifestation of the masculine from the outside, a woman has to undergo tests and be active, like a man. In a sense, she has to discover her masculinity, it's time to get to know her new self. She does not become a man, but expands her arsenal of capabilities due to external transformation. Hair is a symbol of natural feminine strength. By sacrificing her hair, Vasilisa Mikulishna symbolically passed into the status of a man, she temporarily renounced the stereotypes that prescribe the rules of behavior for a woman. Along with the new incarnation, an internal transformation also occurs - the recognition of another facet of one’s human essence, which is initially present in every woman. 1. T.B.Vasilets. Man and Woman - the secret of sacred marriage, 2010.