Entries from August 2007 ↓

by Tracee Sioux

Click here to watch my news segment taped today.

I had big plans for today. I was going to take three teenage girls to a Dating Respect Conference and help them to understand they shouldn’t accept sexually exploitative or disrespectful behavior from boys and men in their lives. I was feeling empowered by the influence I might be able to have on these girls’ lives.

Then my plans fell to pieces. My mentee had to register for school. My daughter got a fever so I couldn’t leave her with the sitter. Kaput. I was disappointed to tell you the truth. I had gotten attached to the idea. I was as disappointed for the girls because I didn’t want them to miss an empowering opportunity. I was upset for the people who organized the conference because they might not put on more empowering conferences if they get a low attendance. I was upset for myself to miss and opportunity to report on a very girl-empowering issue.

Then my local news station called me to interview me about sexually related businesses. I asked the reporter to meet me at the conference I had planned to attend. My hope is that my empowering girl message will reach an entire geographical area. I’ll be on at 5,6 and 10 p.m. and I’m praying the message of girl empowerment goes global.

The issue? The sex industry and whether girls can find power in it.

There are two separate local issues. The first is whether a 25-year-old woman should be opening an adult store selling lingerie, shoes, books, adult toys, magazines and videos.

My response: if it’s a store for consenting adults and she’s going to check identification, then okay. I’ve purchased things from such stores and don’t find them to be terribly destructive. In fact, I’m impressed that a 25 year old woman is bold enough to open her own business. More power to her. I can see where I wouldn’t want her store to be next to my existing business, but she does have a legal right to be there according to local zoning laws. The laws that insist sexually related businesses be located 1,000 feet from a church, school, or daycare center.

I very much wish there were no women willing to be in pornographic magazines or videos to be sold. I don’t want to legislate it, because I have a vested interest in freedom of speech, as every American should. I want to empower girls so they will refuse to participate in the exploitation of their selves.

The other issue is a strip club, which wasn’t actually in this particular news story. But, I went to the trouble of articulate my thoughts, so I’ll share my perspective with you. This is not the area’s first strip club. I’ve even heard rumors about a pornographic drive in movie.

My interest is in the girls who dance. It breaks my heart that they don’t understand that there are more empowering positions to be in. There are more powerful ways to earn a dollar bill than by have it thrown at your naked body. What concerns me about strip clubs is that the women who are dancing in them don’t understand that they shouldn’t be for sale. They don’t understand that they set their own price and value. We’re raising a culture of girls surrounded by sexually exploitive images that tell them they are for sale and they should be for sale. When girls stop feeling like their value and power is so limited then the sex industry won’t be able to find willing participants.

Every person can effect this change in girls’ self worth. If you don’t want there to be an sex industry that exploits women tell 1, 10,or 100 girls they deserve more than to be put on the sale rack. Tell them their power lies within. Show them how to find it. Make them feel like they are worth more than that dollar bill. Make them feel like they are so worthy of everything good that selling their bodies won’t cross their minds as a potential source of power.

In the face of constantly changing sexual boundaries and ever increasing ways for girls to be exploited, how do we change the collective soul of girls and women to make them feel too valuable, worthy, and empowered to be sold?

One girl at a time. Find one and tell her today.

For more about my television appearance experience visit BlogFabulous where I talk about what the news industry chooses to cover in Respect vs. Sex Industry.

by Tracee Sioux

Everyone is talking about High School Musical 2, with 17.2 million viewers during the premiere , it’s the most-watched basic cable program ever. Ainsley and I watched it together.

Isn’t this just Dirty Dancing for kids? Here’s the formula:

Cute poor kid works at a country club for the summer. He’s really good friends with all the other employees. Rich girl, Sharpay, tries to buy his love and exclude his friends. She uses such “manipulation” as to try to get him on the college basketball team and use her family clout with the university to help him get ahead.

His friends do this: Who are you? Sell out! What about your friends? You’re not the guy we thought you were.

Everything culminates in a talent show (Dirty Dancing anyone?) where the employees win and the evil rich girl loses. But, Sharpay is okay with that and has learned her lesson.

I honestly think this is a fine, age-appropriate movie. However, I did tell my daughter that the moral of the story: rich people are evil and good kids shouldn’t pursue success because they’ll leave friends behind, just isn’t true to life.

I, for one, wish I hadn’t taken such story-book morality to heart. My issue is with the rich versus poor theme. Poor doesn’t equal moral or nice. Nor does rich equal evil. Allowing our daughters to think these stories are true to life or can be applied to real life situations will inevitably keep them poor. That’s all I’m saying. Poor is not a future I wish on either of my children. Neither is guilt for earning a living. Certainly, I don’t want to present it as an either/or choice.

As the only father-figure in the movie says, It’s okay to keep your eye on the prize and go for it.

It’s unfortunate the same formula films with the “poor is the moral choice” keep getting recycled and spoon fed generation after generation. It leaves people, especially women, feeling conflicted when they work hard to make money.

The very least we can do, as parents, is point out the discrepancies between culture and reality.

by Tracee Sioux

I went to the soccer league meeting on Saturday and they gave some interesting advice to the coaches.

If your team is winning 5-0 at half time, it’s your responsibility, as the coach, to stop making goals and try to lose. Put yourself in the other team’s place. You wouldn’t like it if you went home defeated 15-0. It’s no fun for the kids or their parents.

Dur. Huh?

I get it. I’m on board with their reasoning. I just think it’s interesting.

What planet are we preparing our children to live on?

by Tracee Sioux

I hate that I have to admit this. I really, really do. Like you don’t even know how much it pains me to admit that . . .

My tone has become a problem. I know this because I hear my tone come out of my daughter’s mouth and that’s a problem. A really big problem.

I suppose I used to think of my tone as an effective way to make myself be heard. The problem is that it’s not really effective anymore, if it ever was. Highly questionable whether my tone has ever gotten me what I really wanted. Perhaps I was just fooling myself there.

If I could legislate my daughter’s tone, without having to admit that she’s imitating me, believe me, I would jump on that.

However, if there is one thing the last 5 years of parenting has taught me, children are fantastic mimics. If you want to know how you look to others, look at your children. If you don’t like what you see in the reflection, you have to trace it back to yourself and fix the root of the problem. Otherwise the problem just gets worse and far more out of control.

My daughter’s tone stopped being cute about a little while ago. She’s 5. I’m 34. So, this stopped being cute what, like 29 years ago?

All my life I’ve heard this, You have an attitude problem.

To which, I’ve replied, if only in my own head, I have an attitude, I wouldn’t say it’s a problem.

For the past little while confronting some issues in my marriage I’ve realized that my tone goes a long way in creating the problems. To admit that takes a lot of courage because I don’t want this to construed as “a get out of jail free” card. But, tone does go a long way. Tone, I’ve realized and have had several people point out to me, is often more important than what you’re actually saying.

So, if people are only hearing the tone and not the message I’m trying to convey – well, that’s a problem. It’s ineffective.

I don’t know what the solution is. Step One, in breaking any habit, behavior or addiction is always, admit that you have a problem.

My tone is a problem. OUCH! It’s painful to admit.

I’ve got several solutions in the hopper too. The A Complaint Free World bracelet is a good reminder that I don’t have to complain about everything. (Although, it’s kind of hurting my self-esteem because I am such a failure at not complaining.) I’ve installed a Tone Turtle Bank, in the same spirit as the Self Loathing Sin Bank, on the kitchen table. The idea being that my daughter and I must deposit quarters into the banks to penalize tone usage. (The obvious problem with this penalty is that she has no job and has to get the quarters from me. So, it’s a theory in progress.)

Most importantly, I think, is that I took it to God and surrendered my anger and my tone.

Of course, as is my nasty emotional habit, I trace all my negative behaviors back to my mother – which is totally unfair as I’m 34-years-old and must be responsible for my own shit eventually, right?

Really, the fear of Karma (by which I mean, what comes around goes around and do unto others and you get back what you put out there) is getting to me. I’m totally aware that if I keep blaming my mother for all my personal crap, then my daughter will have cart blanche to blame me for everything and I’m not at all into that. I’m doing the best I can here. As I know my mother did too.

So, I took all my issues with my mother straight to God and surrendered those too.

by Tracee Sioux

Completely violating my goal to say no to good things as I vowed to do in my column Priorities, I am the new coach of Ainsley’s soccer team.

Perhaps you recall my protest last fall when my five-year-old daughter, Ainsley’s, soccer coach informed me that her team was being named The Bratz. If you missed it, you should check out Go Bratz Go! where I reported how I was the only parent against naming a little girls’ soccer team after vapid dolls that dress like hookers. I convinced the parents to change the name to Butterflies.

The soccer commissioners refused to be flexible about their deadline and wouldn’t allow the name change. After a lot of consideration in, No Bratz No! Tantrum or Go With The Flow?, she played on the team. She was wearing an unempowering uniform which declared her a brat in bold black letters.

Playing sports is a huge confidence builder and seriously empowering for girls. Girls must have exercise, let’s not forget the BMI Red Zone. Soccer beats cheerleading, in my opinion, as I said in Give Me an “A“. I didn’t see how anything empowering would be accomplished by yanking her off the soccer team in protest of the name. I certainly didn’t want the message to be – if you don’t get your way, pick up your toys and go home.

My protest, I do think, made some people think about the issue of what kind of influences their expose their daughters are exposed to. So, it wasn’t a complete waste.

This season they needed a coach. I volunteered because I, as the coach, get to name the team. I also think it’s important to be involved in my kids’ education, activities and sports.

We’ll be making a fashion statement in black shirts with pink script, pink shorts and pink socks (hopefully). I know penguins are black and white, but I didn’t want to try to keep white clean.

I’m the new coach of Happy Feet.