Tags: fighting back
Posted May 15th, 2013, in Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups, Why I Wrote CAMD | 1 Comment
So many people have sent me links to Jamie Moore’s work. Moore is a photographer and mom to a 5-year-old girl, Emma. In response to the cultural omnivorousness of Disney Princess, she she began to think about: …all the REAL women for my daughter to know about and look up too, REAL women who without ever meeting Emma have changed her life for the better. My daughter wasn’t born into royalty, but she was born into a country where she can now vote, become a doctor, a pilot, an astronaut, or even President if she wants and that’s what REALLY matters. I wanted her to know the value of these amazing women who had gone against everything so she can now have everything. Gosh, that is so beautifully written, isn’t it? Anyway, she and Emma chose five of those women for Emma to dress up as to honor for her [...]
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: pink, premature sexualization, princess culture
Posted May 17th, 2012, in Recommendations, Recommendations Grown-ups | 8 Comments
Sociological Images is ruining my life. I can spend hours looking at their images tracking….well, everything (God and the U.S. dollar) but especially the evolution of gender: there’s their current Lego series; the periodic rants on pet ownership; how video game ads have changed; men’s/women’s toilet signs from around the world and the take-down of Zoe Deschanel-style “manic Pixie dream girls” (a term coined by Nathan Rabin at A.V. Club and further explained by Feminist Frequency). Things you never think about, never notice, but that shape us all the same. Love. LOVE!!! One of my favorites, is from about a year ago: a round-up of products for kids. Among them, onesies that include a list of “ingredients” on the tummy. What are boys made of? Love, energy, and dirt: And girls? love, beauty and kindness: Then there’s this photo of ride-aboard trucks at Target: The boys’ version is red and is, appropriately, called a Lil’ Fire Truck Ride-On. [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back
Posted May 11th, 2012, in Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 2 Comments
I wrote earlier this week about the must-read YA novel, Kepler’s Dream, which was officially published yesterday. I’m thrilled to report that the book is already racking up stellar reviews. In this coming Sunday’s New York Times “Book Review” the discerning Dani Shapiro–herself a wonderful writer–calls the book “delightful” and “marvelous” and ”full of smart, subversive commentary on the numbing effects of contemporary youth culture.” She adds: But in the end it is Ella’s voice–utterly captivating, idiosyncratic, rich and memorable–that ties all the pieces together in, yes, a kind of dream logic, making this not only an entertaining book but an absorbing and artful one. From Library Journal: Ella’s divorced mother has leukemia and her father is busy guiding trips for his fly-fishing-trip business so the 11-year-old is sent to stay with her grandmother. Neither of her parents gets along well with her father’s mother, and Ella hasn’t ever met her. She joins [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back, Let kids be kids
Posted May 9th, 2012, in Princesses, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 3 Comments
Looking for a new “fight fun with fun” book for your middle grade daughter (or son….)? Honey, have I got two for you. Kepler’s Dream, the debut YA novel by Juliet Bell, is about 11-year-old Ella, a clever, compassionate girl whose mother’s cancer treatment and father’s disengagement exile her to “Broken Family Camp” for the summer: staying with her severe-natured grandmother in her peacock-ridden hacienda in Albuquerque. Neither of them is happy about the arrangement. Ella is afraid her mother may die, but all her grandmother seems to care about is her crazy library full of books When a rare and much-loved volume, Kepler’s Dream of the Moon, is stolen, however, Ella decides it’s up to her to find it. The result could be the key to healing her broken family. This is the kind of book I used to love as a girl, back in the days before the [...]
Tags: age compression, fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization
Posted May 3rd, 2012, in Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups, Why I Wrote CAMD | 4 Comments
When we called people “plastic” back when I was a teenager, it was an insult. These days, apparently, not so much. Joe Kelly, over at The Dadman (an expert on how to father girls, as well as husband to Nancy Gruver, founder of New Moon Girls online community/magazine) sent me a press release discussing the 71% rise in chin implants in 2011, in large part driven by teen girls asking to have the procedure done…for prom. That’s right, 20, 680 surgical procedures at $3,500-$7,000 a pop were performed last year. There has also been a spike in “ear-pinning,” (for those up-dos) which Darrick Antell, a spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, informally called “Clark Gable Wings.” Antell told the Sunday Times: At proms in the past, teens would line up for photographs and face the camera. But the rise of more informal images, captured during video chats or by smartphones when they are [...]
Tags: fighting back
Posted May 2nd, 2012, in Recommendations, Recommendations Grown-ups, Why I Wrote CAMD | 31 Comments
Sarah McMane, a high school English teacher in Upstate New York , accomplished poet and mom of a 2-year-old girl. She also founded an annual coffeehouse-style annual performance of original student poetry. Each year, as a model for her kids, she contributes an original poem of her own. She sent me this year’s piece, which I loved so much I thought I’d post it here. Enjoy. Clementine Paddleford, incidentally, was an American journalist, food writer and activist. _________________________________ For My Daughter “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.” –Clementine Paddleford Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes— be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat [...]
Tags: fighting back, girlie girl culture, pink princess culture camd, princess culture
Posted April 24th, 2012, in Creepy Marketing, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 1 Comment
I’ve been off-line for two weeks which is like two centuries in social media time. Here are some of the things I’ve apparently missed. A reader sent me a photo of Kraft’s Girlz cheese. Beyond the gratuitous sexualization of dairy products…um, cheese pods???? This one is from the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum: So, blue or gray for historical accuracy and pink….for girls? I would hate to have been wearing pink in a field of gray. Seriously, pink Confederate soldier caps? As a 7-year-old, my parents took me to Gettysburg. I happily popped my traditional Union blue soldier hat atop my favorite outfit: a red-and-white striped t-shirt (decorated with a jaunty, patriotic blue anchor), cut-off jean shorts and navy blue sneakers. If my scanner weren’t broken, I’d post a Kodak moment of my brothers and me decked out in our caps, dangling our legs over a cannon, waving Old Glory. [...]
Posted March 9th, 2012, in Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups, Stuff I've Written | 3 Comments
Ben Freedman, my friend, inspiration and the co-author (with his wife Nancy) of my favorite book as a girl—Mrs. Mike-died on February 24 at the age of 92. I found out earlier this week when the New York Times obituary page called me for a quote. Here is a picture of my original copy of Mrs. Mike, which I still have, held together by scotch tape and rubber bands. Ben and Nancy (who died in 2010) led rich, full lives—I loved going to their apartment to listen to stories of their adventures, schemes and foibles. Even in failing healthy, they were exuberant and intellectually engaged, full of plans for the future, still writing every single day. In honor of their lives, and to mark their loss, here is a link to Ben’s obituary. And here is a link to a piece I wrote for Oprah Magazine about what they meant to me [...]
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 [...]
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