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
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: 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: fight fun with fun, fighting back, premature sexualization
Posted October 25th, 2011, in Creepy Marketing, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 2 Comments
My beloved friends at SPARK have teamed up with HollabackPhilly and Beauty Redefined to sponsor a “Taking Back Halloween” contest for teenage girls. I wish they’d extend it down to 5-year-olds, whose costumes are getting sexier all the time, but hey, it’s a start. Here’s what the site says: Submit your spookiest, creepiest, punniest, funniest, most creative and brilliant costumes to our Costume Contest for the chance to win amazing prizes (including an iPod!). But we don’t want just any store-bought costume–like SPARKteam member Melissa says below, this contest is about creativity. Over to you, Melissa: SPARK has created a fabulous space where girls can talk back to the media that tries to define and narrow them. It’s also a great resource for us adults looking for “what we can do.” Take a look at their SPARKit! Action ideas. There. Now I feel a little teeny bit better about [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back
Posted July 15th, 2011, in Asian American Me, Girl Crush, Japanophila, Recommendations, Recommendations Girls, Recommendations Grown-ups | 12 Comments
Oh my goodness! More good news! The next Studio Ghibli movie, Arietty, will open in the U.S. in February. Ghibli the Japanese company founded by the visionary auteur Hiyao Miyazaki is responsible for the fight-fun-with-fun screen gems My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke (not for little ones), all of which feature spectacular, wonderful, natural female protagonists. I could not have gotten through my daughter’s childhood without him. Plus, Miyazaki totally blows out of the water the old chestnut that female protagonists can’t be universal or hold boys’ attention. His creativity puts Pixar to shame. In fact, John Lassiter idolizes Miyazaki. According to an article in the UK Guardian: Ghibli is often lazily dubbed Japan’s answer to Disney, but the comparison only holds true in terms of box-office sales (Spirited Away is still Japan’s all-time top-grossing film – three other Ghibli films are [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun, fighting back, girlie girl culture, Let kids be kids, pink, pink princess culture camd, premature sexualization, princess culture
Posted July 15th, 2011, in Recommendations, Recommendations Grown-ups, Why I Wrote CAMD | 3 Comments
Let’s take a break from chronicling the problems today and–hey. in honor of women’s soccer (woot!)–be a little solution-oriented. I just spoke with the magnificent Diane Levin and she mentioned an organization she’s founded: TRUCE, which stands for Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment. Our mission is to raise public awareness about the harmful influence of unhealthy children’s entertainment and to provide information about toys and activities that promote healthy play. We are working to eliminate marketing aimed at exploiting children and to reduce the sale of toys and entertainment that promotes violence. This is not specifically about girls–it’s about the unhealthy messages beamed at both sexes. On their web site they have a fabulous set of action guides teachers and parents can download on play, toys and media for infants, toddlers and young children. They’re totally grass roots, so if you do it and like it PASS THE INFORMATION ALONG! I’ll [...]
Tags: fight fun with fun
Posted April 28th, 2011, in Recommendations, Recommendations Girls | 15 Comments
One of Daisy’s favorite toys of ALL TIME is a set of Lennon Sisters Paper Dolls that my friend Dawn gave her for Christmas when Daisy was 6. Some weekend mornings, Daisy will wake up early and I’ll find her in her room, happily cutting out elegant dresses or winter ski jackets and inventing stories for the four girls. She doesn’t know who they are. And again, they are not licensed to the hilt. And their clothing is always appropriate. Sometimes I blow bubbles at her while she plays with them, though she doesn’t know why and gets annoyed if they get on the paper (you’ll WRECK the, mom). It’s just all so sweet and incongruous it cracks me up. So what a thrill it was, after I mentioned the dolls in a post I wrote for Motherlode to hear from the Sisters’ publicist. She wanted to tell me about [...]
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