Peggy Orenstein's Blog, page 9

I'm on "Motherlode"

Hi all–I'm doing a stint on the New York Times' "Motherlode" blog this week. It would mean the world to me if you'd drop on by, give my posts a read and leave comments. First up: can there be a "good" divorce? How do you minimize the impact on the kids?

As today goes on, we'll also get into one of our favorite topics: Halloween costumes…..

See you there!

-Peggy

Pearls From Ruby

The best thing we can do for our daughters is to teach them, as they get older, to make their own courageous way through the woods of the girlie-girl culture. So what a thrill to read this  blog post by my friend Marcelle's 11-year-old daughter, Ruby. Ruby wrote it after she and her mom, who live in New York City,  went shopping for her Halloween costume. Needless to say, they didn't find one, though Ruby sure found her voice.

It's one thing for us adults to talk to girls about the creepy (not in a good way) costumes, but how much more powerful to hear it from a peer!

So Ruby and Marcelle, you are my sheroes and here, with her permission, is Ruby's post:

TRICKS AND TREATS: RETURN TO INNOCENCE
by Ruby Karp

So, you know what time it is! That's right, Halloween! When you dress up as a scary ghost or zombie, right? Not for girls my age (I'm 11, in sixth grade). For us, it is dress-up-in-an-inappropriate-way time. And I know I am in that inbetween age, where I'm still a kid and almost something else, but seriously. I love Halloween, I love trick-or-treating with my friends, I love the way the neighborhood turns into a magical place with cobwebs and spiders and everything spooky-safe. And ever since I was 7, it's been hard for me to find a costume that isn't above the knee or low-cut or has a choker involved.

Like this year, I wanted to be Elmo and my friend was going to be Cookie Monster but where were the fuzzy costumes? NOWHERE. Instead of fun costumes that I would have a hard time choosing between, I found super-short dresses that aren't cute, they're inappropriate for me. How does Snow White turn into a girl in a sports bra that's blue and a yellow mini skirt and super high heels that are bright red? Tell me, how is that Snow White? I looked at a Little Red Riding Hood costume and it went up really high. I mean, the list goes on and on.

And you know, instead of just telling my mom, "So this year, I want to be a Ghoulish Girl," and going to the costume store and picking it out in five minutes, we have to search for something and my mom has to inspect it! Can you imagine trying to decide what costume is sexy and which is not with your mom? Do you know how embarrassing that is? Well, believe it. I have to do that every Halloween. Now, it isn't easy when my best friend and me had been planning to be something together and your mom tells you cant because it is too-something-gross. So this year, I'm borrowing my friend's old pumpkin costume that her Mom sewed for her (yep, she's got a Super-Mom) and it is perfect for me, a girl of 11 years old.

It is sad how for Halloween, girls have less and less options on what to wear, that they have to choose between ick and ickier. I used to love Halloween because you could dress up in public  like a fairy and not look weird! Now, when I look for a fairy costume, I look a little too weird. Why do costume-makers want girls looking like this? What is going to happen to the next generation? Maybe the GOOD costumes won't even be here anymore, the only choice a 10-year-old girl will have is to be something with the word "vixen" or "sexy" in the costume title. Sigh. I can only hope for the best.

I have to search real hard for a good non-weird costume. And it shouldn't be this hard. Really, the only thing we can do is hope that the costumes go back to the way they were when I was little, when you could be a Princess or a Baseball Player and not look like you were out to be anything else but that. And more appropriate. NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO MAKE THESE COUSTUMES: we are not 25. We are 11. Start making costumes like it. AND FAST.

What a gem. Thanks, Ruby!

Don't be a "Trick" or "Treat" This Halloween

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 October.

Disney Princess……Cancer?

According to a new report on bisphenol (BPA) in kids' canned food released today by the Breast Cancer Fund, Campbell's Disney Princess and Toy Story soups test highest for that toxin, which is typically used to harden plastic or make the linings of metal food cans. BPA has been linked to breast cancer, infertility and early puberty in girls, as well as prostate cancer in males and type-2 diabetes, obesity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in both sexes.

Isn't that magic?

According to the report BPA exposure is of special concern in children "because this endocrine-disrupting chemical can affect children's hormonal systems during development and set the stage for later‐life diseases."

Campbell's wasn't the only offender, nor was Disney. Even organic brands contain BPA, though in far less parts per billion (ppb): Earth's Best Organic Elmo Noodlemania Soup had 38 ppb (the Princess pasta had 114) and Annie's Homegrown Cheesy Ravioli weighed in at 31 ppb. Campbell's Spaghettios (with meatballs!) fared better than both at 13 ppb. According to William Goodson, Senior Clinical Research Scientists at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute, who just last week published a study showing that BPA causes non-cancerous cells to grow and survive like cancer cells, "We're all part of a big experiment to see what BPA will do to our kids and us."

Not me, baby.

As a mom–and, hell, as a human being–I'm more disgusted than ever that these products, which claim overtly or subtly to be healthy for our kids, not only are loaded with sugar, salt and, often, fat, but now with carcinogens. And since the exposure is cumulative, eating a can or two of kid chow won't hurt you, but a lifetime of canned goods may be another story. If Disney and Pixar and Sesame Workshop care about kids the way they SAY they do, they should immediately insist on safer packaging or pull their licenses.

You may recall BPA as the stuff that was in baby bottles and water bottles. Public outrage–especially from parents of infants–encouraged manufacturers to voluntarily change that (although it's not always clear what they're using instead). 10 states have restricted BPA in baby food containers, though not in canned food. Meanwhile, the Canadian government declared BPA toxic in 2010, though it had already banned the substance in baby bottles two years earlier.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. has authored a bill that, if it passes, would ban BPA from all food and beverage containers.



Meanwhile, better safe than sorry. Get your food fresh. Get it in boxes. Get it frozen. Get Tetra Paks. And when you can: can the can….

Here are Breast Cancer Fund People discussing the findings.

And here, in case you're interested, is a refutation.

 

Eden Wood, Wouldn't She?

Even though I don't like to harp on Toddlers & Tiaras contestants (because as I always say, looking at their extreme behavior desensitizes us to the every day sexualization "regular" girls face, plus they get enough PR) I can't help but be fascinated–and concerned–by the trajectory of Eden Wood. I wrote about her and her mother, Mickie, in CAMD back when Eden was four. Now she's quit pageants and, according to People,  it's become clear as to why: she's got bigger things going on.

This week 6-year-old Eden made her Fashion Week debut modeling footwear for the kids' line Cicciabella:

 

Ahem. You're supposed to be looking at the boots.

The evening's hostess, Kelley Bensimon  (could this GET any weirder?) said Eden was just having a "fun girly moment." Because, you know, she's wearing PINK and all. But I guess that's the kind of comment  you get when you look to   a Real Housewives cast member for insight.

According to People, the fashion crowd adores Eden. No surprise–the industry has a history of sexing-up little girls   from Brooke Shields (here at age 10–a cropped version from the infamous nude photo series by Gary Gross):

to 15-year-old Jaime King (taken by Nan Goldin backstage during a Lagerfeld show):

to that 10-year-old in French Vogue that caused all the fuss recently. It's part of the fabric of contemporary fashion to make little girls look like sexual adult women, then urge adult women to try to look like those little girls.

Heads are messed with on all sides of that equation.

And yes, I'm aware that the two photos above are taken by real-and-true artists while the Eden Wood shots were taken by, you know, whomever. That is not the point.

It's not just fashion-types who are noticing Eden. People says in addition to her  "high-end photo shoot," and being dressed by Marc Jacobs, she is going to be a guess star on the TLC series, Next Great Baker where they will make a cake in her image. According to her mom, she also has two animated films and a live action film lined up as well.

I'm starting to become kind of interested to see what happens to Eden over time. Not that I wish it on her, but if any child is set up to completely implode in a Lohan-esque way it's this one.

At the same time, if Eden (or, more pointedly, her mother) is truly successful at becoming a star through the one-two punch of  premature sexualization and self-objectification, that will, no doubt, become a strategy for others. Eventually, it could become  normalized: imitated until it is mundane, even expected not only for those pursuing show business, but for all girls, at least to a degree. That's the path we've been on, though it's been slower. We will stop seeing it as unusual. And then, to get her own shot at the limelight, the next ambitious little girl's mother will have to figure out how to top it.

Man, I'd like to know what Shirley Temple thinks of all this.

Here's My 8-Year-Old's Halloween Costume

Ta da!

 

Ha! I'm just messing with you. Over my undead body would my kid be wearing this Clawdeen Wolf  Monster High costume, available at  Toys'R'Us, in sizes "recommended" for  4-6 year olds.  So all that rot you Monster High fans are telling me about how the line isn't MEANT for little girls? Tell that to Mattel. Or to the 4-year-old rocking a  Frankie Stein costume.

 

Or the kindergartner who wants to dress as Cleo de Nile:

 

 

Now THAT'S scary.

Look,  I don't mean to pick on Monster High. These images just happened to come across my desk today.

A reader recently sent me this one:

Helloooo, Kitty!

It's no secret that  little girls' Halloween costumes have gotten sexier. The topic comes up in the media every October. But the issue is so much bigger. Two of the world's wisest  women,  Deb Tolman and Lyn Mikel Brown broke it down for HuffPo last year. Among their observations:

 

The constant visual cues suggesting there are only two options for what girls can be, not just on Halloween but every other day of the year, reflect a media and marketing machine that pits one type against the other, even as it sides with the consumer version of sexy. The reality, of course, is that there really are more choices. Girls can be whatever they want to be, but they have to be encouraged to find out what that is, and the media messages with which they are bombarded make that a harder task each passing day.

But for various reasons, we as parents have not said "no" to the retailers, because too often in this ever more consumer-driven society, we do not say "no" to our children. We're afraid of what can happen when our children don't conform or we resist too much, like the six year-old kicked off her cheerleading team in Michigan because her parents protested a sexualized cheer.

It's easy for moralizers to blame parents for saying yes and to blame girls for wanting and wearing. Placing the blame on individuals deflects attention from the rampant commercialization of childhood and the pornification of products marketers peddle to younger and younger children. Sure, we can say no. Many of us do. But we're up against corporations willing to invest billions to cultivate our child's desire for the right look and heighten their anxiety about not matching up.

Halloween can be just one more reminder that a girl has to be all sexy or she's nothing, or it can be an opportunity to explore what lies between the extremes. Help her discover all the amazing options available. Challenge her to come up with the most fun, fascinating, silly, scary costumes she can imagine. Unleash her creativity. Make it a contest, make it a party, make it a school challenge. Like the Connecticut cheerleaders who refused to wear skimpy uniforms that undermined their ability to perform, like the Texas teens who decided not to wear makeup to school, encourage her to make news with a protest, a petition, or a video that can go viral.

Raising a daughter with a chance at sexual health and sexual literacy is difficult enough; when sex is overused to oversell, it can feel like a Sisyphean task. It is more urgent than ever that we encourage girls to use their power to pull back the curtain on the paucity of what has been marketed as "choice" and reclaim what it means to be a girl.

So the problem is not Halloween. It's not Toddlers & Tiaras. It's the messaging that surrounds girls in much more mundane ways EVERY SINGLE DAY that reduce them and define them by their bodies. Yet, there are certain times, like Halloween, when those messages grow more intense. So how about it? Rather than bemoaning what's happening yet again, let's us adults do our job and get together, talk to one another and say NO!

Of course if you know my motto–fight fun with fun–you know "no" is not enough. How about telling your daughter to (or helping her to or challenging her to) make her own costume?  I suck at crafts, truly, but I overcame last year and got out my safety pins and glue gun and some muslin  to make a reasonably credible Athena costume. And the year before that, heck, my girl tossed on her karate gi and stuck a wooden sword in her belt and said she was a "martial arts girl." It  wasn't the most inspired  costume out there BUT SO THE F*CK WHAT???? She is a KID. It's Trick-or-Treat, not Project Runway (though speaking of runways, maybe a pilot??).

It would be invading her privacy to give away what she's going as this year (though she's been talking about it since 12:01 am on Nov 1 2010). But I guarantee you this: her costume will be  warm enough to wear outside without a jacket.

 

 

Disney Princesses: The Gateway Drug

I just received a press release (excerpted below) below from the Disney Store. Those  pseudo-empowering" Rapunzels and Belles are just  bait-and-switch for trusting parents. The big money–the REAL money (the $5 BILLION a year) is creating and selling to what here is called the "Princess Fashionista" and then keeping her business and loyalty as she reaches the high-spending tweens and beyond.

Interesting  that girls here are no longer encouraged by Disney to live HAPPILY ever after but STYLISHLY ever after. Hence my theory that really, the thing to be concerned about these days is NOT the rescued-by-the-prince fantasy  so much as the way today's Princess culture  girls to a of femininity that is  sexualized, narcissistic, self-objectifying, vain, commercialized, self-objectifying….and need I say UNHEALTHY?

 

Fashionistas receive the royal treatment with an enchanted evening of pampering and accessorizing, Disney-style

PASADENA, Calif., September 7, 2011–Disney Store will celebrate New York City's Fashion's Night Out with an event fit for royalty, inspiring its guests to live 'stylish ever after'. Disney Store Times Square will host an array of fashionably fun festivities on September 8, 2011 from 4 p.m.-11 p.m., highlighting the newest Disney-inspired lifestyle product lines. Guests will be treated to a magical evening including free mini-manicures with the new runway-inspired Disney Princess Designer Collection nail polish, featuring hues ranging from Snow White's luscious apple red to Belle's gleaming gold. Guests will be able to customize their very own bracelet at the Kidada for Disney Store charm bar, and be the first to get a sneak preview of the latest Disney Store fragrance inspired by Tinker Bell—Pixie Dust.

"We've created products that tell Disney stories with a fashion-forward spin with the goal to keep our guests excited and looking forward to what is coming up next," said Robin Beuthin, vice president of creative for Disney Store North America.

Disney Store's new Pixie Dust fragrance…captures Tinker Bell's personality perfectly – it charms with a subtle sweetness yet it also has a hint of sassiness that we love about the beloved Disney character.  Pixie Dust comes as a range of personal products including Eau de Toilette, Body Mist and Body Lotion, available in all Disney Store locations in fall 2011. Gift sets with body glitter, a roll on Eau de Toilette and lip gloss will also be available.

Here are some of the new products:

 

Yes, this is for your preschooler.

 

No that is not the new OPI line. It is, again, for your preschooler .

And, oh no, look what they've done to poor Mulan!!!

 

 

Sigh. Honestly, do you WANT your 3-year-old to be "fashion forward?" Do you want her even to know what that phrase means? And by the by, why does a preschooler need perfume, let alone one with a "sassy" edge?  Don't children  smell perfectly delicious as they are (assuming they are potty trained)?

Oh, and in other Mouse House news, Andy Mooney, creator of the Disney Princess line and head of consumer licensing for the past 12 years, resigned yesterday. Unclear where he will go but in an email to  his staff and colleagues he wrote, Together, we have radically changed the licensing business." Damn. You can say that again.

One from the OMG Files–and One from the TG (Thank God) Files, Too

Okay, yeah, just when I think Toddlers & Tiaras can't sink any lower, it does. And though I think the whole T&T business detracts from the real and (God, I hope) more subtle forms of sexualization most girls face every day it also desensitizes us and, as I have said (and said and said) can let viewers off the hook with its extremity, making us think, even unconsciously, "well, nothing I do with my daughter is THAT bad."

Still, posting this video of a 4-year-old with FAKE BOOBS YES I SAID FAKE BOOBS is irresistible. They got me. I can't help it.

totalVisit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

But to do penance for posting that–and because it's FAR more important and worthy and necessary and totally mandatory viewing, here is a clip of my aforementioned Shero, La Rachel Simmons on the same show talking about the updated version of her classic, required-reading bible on girls' social dynamics, Odd Girl Out. Watch the vid. Buy the book, unlike the T&T stuff, you won't be sorry afterwards.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just as an aside, I wonder why the ad before this video is for men's shaving gel. Whatever.

 

It's Really Not the Underwear

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 10-year-old  model, again in France, styled like Pretty Baby in that country's Vogue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on our home turf, while one hopes that the company Baby Bangs that is, essentially, selling WIGS FOR YOUR BALD BABY GIRL will never get off the ground, it is also the equivalent of focusing on a brush fire when the forest is burning.

Baby without wig

Okay, I can't resist posting the company's "philosophy":

At Baby Bangs! we believe in the beauty of childhood. Our unique designs are sprinkled with MAGIC! ~inspiring a world of whimsical wonder and mystical magical memorable moments for you and your baby girl to cherish Forever! For she is, and always will be, Your LiTTLe PRINCESS! [boldface and capitalization original]

I'm not saying these things aren't worth our attention. And I still TOTALLY appreciate people sending me emails and facebook updates on what they're seeing out there (more on the diet book for girls another time. Sigh). But the real problem is not any single item but that these products and images are  CONSTANT and have created a truly toxic culture for girls.

Meanwhile, girls are commodified in  every day, garden-variety, banal ways  that we barely even notice. By trusted companies like Disney and Mattel. And trusted retailers like…JC Penney. Take this t-shirt. I can't seem to download the picture to post here, though if I figure it out I will update So please hold your breath and click.

Yes, it  does indeed say, "Too Pretty to Do Homework, So My Brother has to Do it for Me." And it really is intended for 7-16 year old girls. And the description really does read:

Who has time for homework when there's a new Justin Bieber album out? She'll love this tee that's just as cute and sassy as she is.

Must I comment on this?  First I will have to reattach my jaw which hit the floor and then broke through to the next level down. The fact that a TEAM of people had to have okayed this, that they thought it was appropriate, attractive and that parents and girls (who should be INSULTED by it) would dig it is so horrifying  I'd say the message was a throw-back to the 50s, but it's not. The propaganda for girls and women back then was about taking pride in housework and child-rearing which, yeah, was a touch limiting. This, however, is arguably worse:  taking pride in being a narcissistic, willfully ignorant, spoiled, superficial, self-objectifying, helpless (save for the ability to manipulate) PRINCESS. So not funny.

You want to protest? Here you go, folks. Click to send an email. Or call 1-800-322-1189. Or post on their facebook page. Or tweet @jcpenney.

(thanks to Johanna Cohen for alerting me to this one).

Bucking the Tide or Caught in the Undertow?

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?

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. And I have certainly seen moms uncomfortable with kids who don't hew to stereotypes. So what IS going on here? Progressive? Regressive? Both??????

Thanks to my Obie-dobie Stella Kim for alerting me to this one.