Entries from July 2008 ↓

Another reason to leave your kids every once in a while – if you don’t you’ll miss the moment of reuniting. This is a pretty good moment.

Vacation Rerun from May 2007

by Tracee Sioux

I signed my daughter up for indoor soccer this season. The coach called me to invite me to a meeting of the parents and girls to determine the team colors and discuss when and where practices would be. As an after-thought she mentioned the team’s new name would be

The Bratz.

What?

Bratz, you know like the dolls.

Are you kidding?

Well, no, it’s called The Bratz.

Do we have to call them the brats?

Well, we have to have a name.

Well, can’t we pick something positive? I would prefer about any other name than the Bratz. I mean, do we want to be yelling to our preschoolers, “Go Brats Go, be the best little brats you can be? I mean, I don’t even let my daughter play with those Bratz dolls and I certainly don’t want to encourage her to act like a brat or be a brat.

Well, no one else has looked at it like that, we can discuss it at the meeting and talk to the commissioner about changing the name.

Okay, so I was a little apprehensive about going to the meeting yesterday. I even thought it might be easier to not let my daughter play soccer than face that poor coach who got an ear full of my anti-Bratz propaganda.

Really, I was concerned that this fellow mother would hate me for making such a big deal about this. I was also more than a little worried that I would handle the situation very poorly and look hysterical and crazy because they wanted to brand my daughter a brat. Then who would look like a brat? Me. And all the other parents would band against me and decide that I was just the trouble-maker who wouldn’t let anyone have any fun at all.

So, I go up to this strikingly beautiful woman at the meeting and introduce myself and the baby. Of course, hoping that the cute, fat baby would endear me to her. I even start up a banal conversation about whether or not she has to wear heals to work. Stupid and awkward.

The meeting starts and she says, Okay, who here objects to the name Bratz?

I alone raised my hand high. Everyone looks around and I feel like caving to avoid this confrontation with every other parent on the team.”

Look, I said. I’m very uncomfortable with this name because I don’t think we should be yelling Go Brats Go, Be the best little brat you can be. Brats Rule. I try all week long to NOT encourage my daughter to be a brat. I don’t want her to act like those dolls and I don’t let her dress like those dolls and I don’t even let her play with the dolls. I’m just very uncomfortable with the name.

I was so grateful that I avoided saying they looked like whores who grew out of their clothes, which is what I usually say about those attrocious little beasts. And I didn’t get into the symbolism of why their heads are so freakishly large – to fit their self-absorbed massive egos inside. Little battles for maturity inside myself.

Several people had warned me that I had better come up with a better name to subs awkward with parents trying to think up a better name – I suggested Kickers but it wasn’t cute enough. Someone suggested the Shortcakes, and I was agreeable. Then I suggested the Pink Panthers, but then it looked like there were several other teams with pink shirts and so we thought we should go with purple.

Every now and then some parent would glare at me and say, Are you sure you don’t like the name Bratz?

And I would shrug and say, yeah, I just don’t think that’s a great name for our girls.

A few parents wanted to point out that they don’t let their daughters wear the make-up or dress like that – they’re “just dolls.”

But, I guess that’s my problem, I don’t think they are just dolls. I think they’re a negative message about who the girls should emulate.

In the end we settled, quite unenthusiastically on Butterflies.

Okay, nothing great about that, but nothing horrible about it either. Butterflies are nice, they embrace change and they are pretty and all the little four- and five-year-olds like butterflies.

Of course, the girls weren’t as enthusiastic about butterflies as they had been about The Bratz. But, then I figure the girls are enthusiastic about what Matel, or in this case MGA Entertainment markets to them, which doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing.

I did volunteer to arrange all the snacks for the season and we’ll see if the other parents will hold a grudge or cooperate with my efforts.

I have to give props to the coach however. She was very nice when I went up and thanked her for volunteering to change the name. After all I am only one parent and they could have just shunned me. Hopefully the season will be a good experience for my daughter.

I do feel triumphant, if a little embarrassed, for standing up for what I believe even though it’s hugely unpopular and I want my daughter to learn to do that.

Of course, later the Soccer Commission overrode our decision and guess what I did? Read No Bratz No! Tantrum or Go with the Flow?

Read the outcome at Happy Feet Beats Bratz

And you should watch this hilarious YouTube film, Slutz, Bratz Parody, which is so not appropriate for children – but then neither are those dolls.

So I had my big BlogHer08 speaking panel, Mirrors: Ours, The Media’s, Our Cultures’ and Our Kids’ speaking panel yesterday and it was a rush.

The panelists were Laurie Toby Edison of Body Impolitic, Tracee Sioux of The Girl Revolution, Kelly Wickham of Mocha Momma, and Glennia Campbell of The Silent I (also Mom-o-crats and Kimchi Mamas).

Laurie Toby published the transcript on her blog and I’d love if you would hop over and read it. I think it went really, really well.

Tracee: I write about empowering girls, specifically daughters. How girls internalize the media and what we as parents can do to give them tools to fight that. Daughters inherit our emotions about our bodies. So many women self-deprecate for humor; I used to do it all the time. When my 4-year-old said “I hate my fat thighs,” I said “What have I done?” Women use this to bond–I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect. I was joking, but my daughter couldn’t tell it was a joke. Daughters feel that when you criticize yourself you’re criticizing their DNA.

Truly, I had the best time. It was so encouraging to see how many women are thinking about the complex world our daughters live in and how best to approach the building/moulding of their selves.

Princess Bubble by Susan Johnston & Kimberly Webb is the antidote to the Disney Princess Culture.

It’s got all the “pretty” little girls want with the crowns and flouncy dresses and the gobs of bubble gum pink and castles and lavish parties. It’s full of the exaggerated femininity little girls crave, but balanced with more modern-day images of her in jeans, at the gym, going to work, driving a car and doing yoga.

The illustrator, Maria Tonelli really outdid herself with the perfect amount of bling and gaudy and mixing artistic elements of yesterday and today.

Ainsley loves this book. Her favorite part is “all of it.”

My favorite part is that Princess Bubble is happy and empowered with or without a prince.

Princess Bubble has a career with an airline and travels the world and has lots of great friends and family.

The Queen tells her she needs to get married to live happily ever after.

All her princess history books tell her she needs a prince to live happily ever after.

She stands up to social pressure when all her friends have their bridal showers and engagement parties and begin to marry off.

She dates princes (that’s right, plural), a good boy from the Charming family and the Right family’s young Mr. (Isn’t that so clever?)

She signs up for www.FindYourPrince.com. (How very new millennium!)

Ms. Bubble realizes her circumstances in the 22nd Century are different than Princess’s past. She doesn’t live in a dungeon, or under the sea, or work for an evil step-mother. Instead, she has a great career, money of her own, lots of friends, a great family and she’s already happy.

When Princess Bubble’s Fairy Godmother appears she has this empowering message to give “Living happily ever after is not about finding a prince. True happiness is found by loving God, being kind to others and being comfortable with who you already are!”

If you’ve ever complained about the gift selections available for girls put this book at the top of your list of empowering possibilities.

Certainly, Ainsley would love to get it and parents would be hard pressed to find fault with it.

Kudos to the women who wrote it – I hope they make a Kagillion dollars on the t-shirts, costumes, posters, back packs, party supplies, room decor, tennis shoes, umbrellas, notebooks, movies and television shows. We know there’s a market.

My daughter thanks you for bringing her beloved identity as a princess back into her life and I thank you for bringing a more empowering message to our princesses.

A mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem. Naomi Wolf

The reverse is also true.

Divorce expert M. Gary Neuman says the worst thing any parent can do to their child is to criticize their other parent. Because children hear this as criticism of self. You criticize a child’s DNA when you criticize their parent.

The same holds true when daughters hear their mothers criticize their own appearance. This is obvious if they share the criticized feature. Even if they don’t, a “not pretty enough” feeling passes from one generation to the next.

As life coach Martha Beck says, Children feel about themselves the way we feel about ourselves. We only wish they felt about themselves the way we feel about them.

Wishing it doesn’t make it so.

My Beautiful Mommy, a children’s book, written by a plastic surgeon, who is incidentally depicted as a superhero who manages to make Mommy “pretty” (as both God and Mother Nature evidently could not) with a nose job, implied boob job and tummy tuck, has prompted media criticism.

As a parent, this book touches something inside us that we know intuitively is bad for kids.

What is plastic surgery if it’s not the ultimate self-criticism?

What is plastic surgery if it’s not the ultimate in criticizing both our children’s and our parents’ DNA?

The premise of this book is that we can resolve our self esteem and low self worth issues with surgery, and that we have the ability to articulate that to our children with a story book.

This can never, ever work.

What we CAN do, is grow a self esteem and teach our children how to grow a self esteem too.

The first step in feeling good about one’s own reflection is to stop criticizing it. If we can learn to love how we look, our children will intuitively inherit a good self esteem.

I make it a point to compliment my own features as beautiful, especially those I share with my daughter.

Your hair is thick like mine, I love my hair.

We have perfect bow lips.

You’re lucky you got my eyes, they are one of our best features.

I do it because I want to actively vaccinate my daughter against a low self esteem as Naomi Wolf suggests.

Try it. As with anything it takes practice, feels awkward at first but quickly becomes a habit.

If self-deprecation is becoming a problem in your house please read My Face/Her Face and Self-Loathing Sin Bank.