My husband and I are sitting in the doctor’s office and we’ve done the math – Ainsley is officially “overweight.” Her BMI is over 19. Not by much, but over.
I’m trying to wrap my brain around how this could happen and what it means.
Like every parent, I’ve compared her to the other children – in her class, at church, in the neighborhood, in our family, on her sports teams – and she’s squarely in the middle.
Of course, I believed if she was in the middle she was “normal,” “average” or “just fine.”
It took several weeks for me to understand that this doesn’t mean my child is at a healthy weight, it only means that the children who are larger than her – about 30% of children she’s around – are just fatter than she is.
She’s officially in the fat category – the larger children, and there are lots of larger children, are fatter.
There’s an obesity epidemic in the country. So, comparing your child to the other children just isn’t an indicator of whether or not your child is at a normal weight. The average is now too big.
Really, it was a hard concept for me to get. It was a hard concept for me to accept. The beauty of DNA is that we usually only see our children as perfect miracles.
Someone had to be the first to attempt to capitalize on our collective fascination with the First Daughters, and the Ty Corporation has that dubious honor.
Ty is responsible for the Beanie Baby craze and the questionable TyGirlz line of plush celebrity dolls.
Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia join a collection of dolls that include Lucky Lindsey, Bubbly Britney, and Precious Paris.
Following First Mother Michelle Obama’s disapproval along with public criticism, the dolls have already been “retired.”
A spokesperson for the Ty corporation insists that the dolls, despite being two of only three brown-skinned dolls in the collection (the third is Supercool Serena), are not based upon the youngest members of the first family. The dolls are named Sasha and Malia simply because the names are “so beautiful.” Yup. Apparently, we are supposed to buy that along with the dolls.
Michelle Obama’s spokesperson, Katie McCormick Lelyveld expressed the first lady’s sentiment in a statement that read “We feel it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes.”
I couldn’t agree more. Is nothing sacred?
Others, like authors of Packaging Girlhood are upset that Ty inappropriately and unnecessarily sexualized the 7- and 10-year-old Obama daughters by making the dolls with breasts.
“TY has made two dolls, Sasha and Malia, to match their other dolls. They’re the same height, look very teen, and even have breasts. What’s going on here? And they surround them with butterflies and hearts… typical little girls, soon to be partying little teens?”
The authors of Body Impolitic, feel Sasha and Malia dolls could be a healing thing for black girls especially.
“They represent black dolls that all kinds of people will want to own–and that bit of doll magic can also be a good thing.”
Sasha and Malia are making a difficult transition from girls who earned a weekly allowance of $1 to overnight celebrities and fashion icons. When the girls appeared in CrewCuts outfits during the Inauguration of their father, viewers quickly turned to the J. Crew website hoping to buy coats identical to those seen on televisions around the world. J. Crew’s website crashed.
Michelle and Barack Obama have gone on record as saying that they will try to maintain a sense of normalcy for the girls.
In an interview with Barbara Walters, Michelle explained her conversation with White House housekeeping staff:”I said, ‘You know, we’re gonna have to set up some boundaries,’ ” she said. ” ‘Don’t make their beds. Make mine. But skip the kids’ – let ‘em make their own beds.’ They have to learn these things.”
Perhaps President and Mrs. Obama have the political muscle to bring stop Ty from mass marketing dolls of their daughters. But, for how long?
Americans are fascinated by Sasha and Malia, as they have been by other First Children.
How do we celebrate Sasha and Malia for who they are – two adorable little girls – without rewarding those who seek to inappropriately profit from them?
Leola Dublin is a third year doctoral student in the Program in American Studies at Washington State University. Leola’s interdisciplinary research examines the effects of mass media on identity development in adolescent girls, investigating the ways that gender, sexuality, race, and beauty are constructed and marketed. She is especially interested in the representations of African-American women’s bodies and the ways that young African-American girls negotiate these images as they attempt to define themselves. A native of North Carolina, Leola grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC. She is currently preparing to take her preliminary exams this spring, and hopes to successfully defend her dissertation by May 2010.
Did you see my series on the book So Sexy So Soon? Authors Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne made a very compelling argument that companies – with their marketing – are making humans sexually attracted to objects. They are sexualizing objects. We used to be worried women would be turned into objects via porn – and that is true.
But we didn’t really expect the opposite to happen. That companies would use all their marketing power to make us turned on by their products. Sex produces dopamine in the brain. If they can produce enough dopamine in the brain when we think about Doritos or GoDaddy, for instance, we are likely to buy them. Because we have “feel good” feelings about them.
We can see this in children. When they talk about “sexiness” or being “sexy” they might say something like “those shoes are sexy.” Or if they mention that someone is “sexy” or looks “sexy” you might ask “what about them is sexy?” Ainsley will say, “her clothes, her shoes, that dress, the bikini, the belly shirt.” Things. Not personal attributes like her boobs, her hips, her lips, her hair.
Ainsley, like most girls today, are tying the feeling of L-O-V-E and her innate sexual feelings, desire to be loved, to companies like Disney with saturation of Disney Princess Culture, High School Musical, Hannah Montana. Disney is telling her “this is what love/sexual attraction/romance is and you can get it through our company.”
People are supposed to be sexual, sensual, sexy. Not objects or things. But, a kajillion dollars in marketing and media has been spent to change that part of our brains. To make us associate sexuality and our sexual feelings with their product or brand.
It sounds insanely fundamental and not at all what Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives fight about when they fight but sex.
I think the key to regaining the sacredness of our sexuality and indeed, to achieve a fulfilling sexy life is to convince kids – and ourselves – that certain human beings in our actual life are sexy and worthy of attraction. And that their personal attributes like a great sense of humor is what really attracts people to each other. Instead of the imitation sex we’re sold everywhere we look to make us feel hot for brands and objects.
On Blog Fabulous today I wrote Porn Killed Sex, referring readers to a very insightful article by Naomi Wolf in The New York Times about the true impact Free Porn 24/7 on the Internet has had on human sexuality.
Companies will keep doing it if it keeps working. Also, I know many of you are pissed about the GoDaddy Super Bowl Commercials, Glennia Campbell from The Silent “I” is leading a campaign to cancel domain registrations with GoDaddy in her post How to Transfer A Domain Name: Phase I (or, Bye-Bye GoDaddy). I’m thinking I will jump on that train. Vote with my dollar.
I bought that book Eat This, Not That! and already I’ve found a list of foods where I’m totally falling for the lies on the packaging.
Eat This, Not That! is crafted to specifically target belly fat—by filling you with smart, healthy choices that rev up your resting metabolism and helping you burn away flab all day, every day, even while you sleep! Sign me up for that.
Keep in mind – I read the labels now. I try to figure out which noodles are really the healthy ones. I try to figure out which bread makes the healthiest sandwich. I have stood there for 45 minutes reading all the lies and misinformation all over the packaging – weighing organic against price, trying to see through all the claims meant to confuse. Just on the cheese aisle. But, as I said – it’s really, really complicated when they’re BIG FAT LIARS! I bought the adult book because we eat all the same things in this family – the children do not get their own cartoonized food.
But, here are some foods we’ve been buying believing they were the healthier choice or the “not that bad” choice, but it turns out we’re wrong. We make a lot of these choices because we can get them for way cheaper at Sams Club.
We’re eating the turkey one from here on out.
Prego Sauces taste better than Ragu. But, it’s scratch from here on out. I make a killer sauce anyway.
We’ve been buying the light mayo, but it says you cut half the calories if you buy the Mayo Olive Oil and there are actual health benefits. I didn’t know what to think about the olive oil mayo before.
I was totally falling for the “muli-grain claim” in the wraps and feeling bad about the flour tortillas. Turns out it’s the White Corn Tortillas that are the Eat This! recommendation.
Okay, I’m off to the grocery store now. Hopefully this new tool will reduce the amount of stress I feel as I stand before the many, many choices. I seriously do think quite a lot of our family’s weight issue is accidental calories hidden in the foods we think are healthy.
Visit the Eat This, Not That! website and there is even a menu decoder for when you’re eating out.
and already I’ve found a list of foods where I’m totally falling for the lies on the packaging.
