Tags: age compression, Disney, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization, princess culture
Posted August 30th, 2011, in Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 37 Comments
I’m still on vacation, but while I’ve been gone people have been sending me various outrageous items they’ve come across that, again and again, illustrate of increasingly sexualized, commodified ideas about femininity being foisted on our daughters at an ever-younger age. To me, some of them are the equivalent of the toddler beauty pageants–they are so out there that they become perversely reassuring: whatever the rest of us may be doing it’s not THAT bad. Ultimately, I fear, they discourage us from truly examining mainstream culture, desensitizing us to the less extreme but relentless creep (and I mean that in every sense of the word) of sexualization and consumerism. So to me, while despicable the French company Jours Apres Lune’s totally pedo lingerie for 10-year-olds ( see below) that was all over ABC and Time, risks taking our eye off the true problem. Similarly, the same outlets’ alarm over the [...]
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink
Posted August 12th, 2011, in Gender hysteria | 9 Comments
Not sure how I feel about this new Tide ad in which girlie-girl Mom tries to come to terms with her non-conforming daughter . Like it? Hate it? Troubled by it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LTRbWsGOI Jezebel finds it “a 30 second cocktail of gender stereotypes” that are hard to decipher: Are we supposed to relate to the uptight, creepy mom who wishes her daughter wore pink, or laugh at her for being neurotic and over-the-top girly? At worst, the ad plays on the fearswe’re supposed to have about girls like Shiloh, and at best it’s just uncomfortable to watch. Don’t know whether I agree. I do relate to the idea that your child can sometimes, in her individuality, do things that make you wildly uncomfortable and that you struggle to accept. I also think if this were flipped and it was a pink boy on the rug playing the ad would’ve been more controversial. [...]
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture
Posted August 12th, 2011, in Girl Crush, Recommendations, Recommendations Grown-ups | No Comments
I love Rachel Simmons. Even though she called me the grandmother of the girls’ movement when I was YOUNGER THAN SHE IS NOW (ahem!). Yes she did. And yet, we have grown to be dear friends. I’m forgiving that way. Anyway, in addition to her writing, speaking, coaching and work with Simone Marean and Ronald at the marvelous Girls Leadership Institute she has just released a revised and updated edition of her germinal (not seminal, get it?) book, “Odd Girl Out.” As she writes in the new introduction, ‘I wrote [this] as an observer, but I have revised it as a practitioner. According to Slate XX , Rachel returns to the material ”with more perspective”: Simmons’s transition has changed her book fundamentally, and for the better. In its original form, Odd Girl Out brought a largely unexamined social problem into the public eye with sensitivity and insight, but offered little by [...]
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, princess culture
Posted August 12th, 2011, in Fairy Tales | 6 Comments
The first “Hunger Games” movie is set to hit theaters in March. The next one was just announced as well, set for November 2013. Both will star Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. She’s a little old for the part, true, but I A*D*O*R*E*D* her in Winter’s Bone which was one of the best movies I’ve seen in years (MUST SEE MUST SEE MUST SEE). So I am crossing my fingers that she will be the anti-Bella……
Tags: girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted August 10th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Why I Wrote CAMD | 13 Comments
Quick break to post a photo of this week’s most egregious Princess product. Trying to imagine the parents who would drop $2k on this one…. Yes, it’s a Princess Bathtub. An ugly one. From the folks at American Standard. Boys can get a fire truck! Well, the economy should make THIS go away, no? Thanks to the inimitable Marjorie Ingall who alerted me to this via a post on the blog daddytypes. Marjorie also pointed me to this great essay in the UK Guardian about how Hermione Granger’s bookish, brainy persona was made less threatening and girlie-d up over the course of the Harry Potter movies. It starts out questioning the glaring “I can’t” our girl uttered when faced with destroying a horcrux. I do recall sitting in the theater and thinking, “Whaaaaaat??????”As the essayist writes: Did Hermione Granger really say “I can’t” during the climactic battle in the final chapter [...]
Facebook
Twitter
Email Sign-Up
RSS Feed