Tags: Let kids be kids, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization
Posted May 1st, 2013, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Equal Parenting, Why I Wrote CAMD | 11 Comments
When I started my career, back in the mid-1980s, I was hired to be an editorial assistant at a certain top tier magazine in New York City. As part of the job interview I took a typing test. I was also informed that the guy I’d be working for had a reputation for groping his assistants. “Can you handle that?” I was asked. Not “If it happens report him.” Not “He is being brought up on charges.” Not even “We’re trying to deal with it and we’re sorry.” Just “Can you handle that?” WWAMD? I thought (That’s “What Would Ann Marie Do?“) Of course, I said yes. I worked for the guy for over a year and “handled it” by keeping six feet away from him at all times–believe me, I earned my $13,500 salary. (Note: I also worked for two amazing, generous, encouraging editors and mentors to whom I [...]
Posted January 25th, 2013, in Boys and Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 9 Comments
Here are some of the questions a 9 1/2-year-old asks: “Mom, when did you go through puberty?” “Mom, when did you get your period?” “You mean you can get PREGNANT when you go through puberty????” “Mom, what’s a tampon?” “Mom, what’s anna…anna…anna…Anorexia?” Here we go. As a journalist, I have had mixed feelings about the American Girl line, mixed feelings I never had to confront as a mother because Daisy thought the dolls were creepy. However, they publish some fabulous books and one that is absolutely worth getting for your pre-pubescent daughter is The Care and Keeping of You. It covers all the above questions, plus basics like why you really, really do need to wash your face every morning. I do wish they hadn’t made the Asian girl on the cover quite so bowl-haired and slanty-eyed, though. For those other birds and bees-type questions I’ve found the best books are It’s [...]
Tags: girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd
Posted August 5th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Why I Wrote CAMD | 4 Comments
Reader Jocelyn Conway Malone was strolling by the GAP the other day and noticed the difference between their back-to-school clothes marketing to girls and for boys. Feel free to tell the company how you feel about skinny jewel-box girls versus “active stretch””made-to-move” boys at the following address: custserv@gap.com (subject line: marketing & advertising) Girls: Boys:
Tags: Disney, fight fun with fun, fighting back, princess culture
Posted July 6th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 25 Comments
A recent Christian Science Monitorarticle confirmed that there are still gaps between girls and boys in STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) subjects despite larger gains in education for women over the past 40 years. Among the high school graduating class of 2011, for instance, 80% of computer-science course Advanced Placement test-takers, 77% of those taking the physics exam for electricity and magnetism and 74 percent of mechanics exams. Also, 59 percent of those taking Calculus BC, the more advanced of two AP courses offered in the subject, were male. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows continued achievement gaps between boys and girls in STEM fields as well, especially science. Boys outperform girls at the 4th, 8th and 12th grade level with the biggest gap being in 12th grade. No bueno, right? I was thinking about this the other day, when I attended the orientation for my daughter’s drama camp, [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization, princess culture
Posted April 5th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 39 Comments
I can’t get this new study on preschoolers and outdoor play out of my mind. Initially brought to my attention by KJ Dell’Antonia at Motherlode, it found that roughly half of parents of preschoolers did not take their children outside to play regularly–suggesting that those children are not getting the level of physical activity they need (see KJ’s post for important caveats). But here’s the kicker: parents were 16% more likely to take preschool boys outside than preschool girls. Why? Researchers theorized it was ingrained (and probably unconscious) stereotypes about how much exercise girls need. This sets the stage for sedentariness in adolescence and beyond. Which, I’m guessing, plays into distorted body image and unhealthy dieting. Great for the 60.9 billion dollar diet industry (with its 95% failure rate); not so great for girls. So you know I’m going to loop this back to the Princess Industrial Complex, right? Girls don’t seem to [...]
Tags: Disney, fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted February 29th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 26 Comments
In today’s Motherlode Emily Rosenbaum struggles with what seems to her to be a contradiction in the how she parents her daughter vs. her sons. The revelation was triggered when her 3-year-old girl returned from the Home Depot (with Emily’s husband) brandishing a Disney Princess light switch plate (in case you’re keeping track: that would be DP item #25,978 of the 26,000+ I mention in CAMD). It probably looked something like this: Emily was furious, but her husband said: You know, you’re reacting just the way I react when Zach wants to buy pink clothes. You should allow her to express herself as much as you let the boys do it. That pulled Emily up short. Turns out their son, Zach, “is the only boy in his second-grade class to regularly rock a pink hoodie and pink socks. Benjamin spent his toddler years dressed as Tinkerbell, and we potty trained him [...]
Tags: Disney, fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted February 29th, 2012, in Boys and Girls, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 6 Comments
Yikes! I just realized I accidentally posted this twice. For the real version please see above. I will also copy the comments from this post into that one. Sorry!
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, Let kids be kids, pink princess culture camd
Posted December 31st, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Creepy Marketing, Equal Parenting, Princesses, Recommendations, Why I Wrote CAMD | 19 Comments
In the wake of my recent NY Times editorial on nature, nurture, gender and the new Lego Friends line, a reader sent me this photo of the gifts she and her husband gave their 5-year-old son this Christmas: her husband’s old Lincoln Log and Tinker Toy sets. He was born in 1972. He (the husband/father) was born in 1972. The Tinkertoys package explicitly states, “For boys and girls.” And note the girl happily building a ranch on the cover of the Lincoln Logs! Their son’s response: “I didn’t know these were for girls, too!” Point made (my point, that is). FYI, you can still get gender-neutral Lincoln Logs (with pictures of cabins on the box, no kids shown). But there is also this set: Again, necessary? Why? How does it affect the potential for boys and girls to interact? Play together? Is it relegating girls to pink and pretty [...]
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 [...]
Tags: Disney, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd
Posted June 18th, 2011, in Boys and Girls, Princesses, Why I Wrote CAMD | 10 Comments
Blogger Lainey Feingold pointed out a little tidbit on the front page article in the New York Times in an article titled, “Stores Emphasize Mannequins with Personalities?” The piece is about how retailers are using unique mannequins in unusual poses or bodies to entice customers to part with money in hard times. Nike has made its mannequins taller, and added about 35 athletic poses. Armani Exchange has ordered models that will lie down to help shoppers imagine wearing lingerie. A new accessories-only store by Guess features glossy black mannequins in model-like poses on an actual runway, while Ralph Lauren’s new women’s store in Manhattan commissioned mannequins with the face of the model Yasmin Le Bon. Whatever. But get this one: The Disney Stores chain has added little-boy figurines that fly from the ceiling and little-girl ones that curtsey. Seriously? Little boys that soar and little girls that CURTSEY? Is that one going [...]
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