I snagged this little gem from Sit at my table. Really, you should. It’s poignant. Simply Abundant. I can relate to this one with my three-and-a-half-year-old who peed on a museum exhibit in Mesa and who manages to eat the candy bribery and crap in his pants. Truly, the expletives I’ve muttered under my breath while attempting the potty training of my boy!
I have a few questions:
1. How did the clothes pin end up in the toilet?
2. How did a kid without the proper equipment manage to send a stream of golden glory all the way across the room without hitting the toilet seat?
3. When the 3-year-old said, “So Mommy, go away now,” why oh WHY IN THE CHIFFON did I comply?
She had questions too:
1. “Mommy, why you not like wiping up pee?”
2. “Mommy, why you say !@”#$%&?”
3. “Mommy, you go away now again, okay?”
Hang these faux Disney mags in your preschooler’s room to ensure future Cosmo Sales. These realistic covers will ensure desperation for male attention, hatred of mothers, and poor body image pre-puberty.
Rihanna, 20-year-old music star, was beaten by her famous boyfriend Chris Brown. Evidently, it’s happened 4 times before and Rihanna asked the judge NOT order Chris Brown to stay away from her. Since the beating, its been said – and I heard this on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show so it might be true – that Rihanna and Chris Brown were in a studio yesterday recording a duet.
Oprah had this to say to Rihanna and other battered girls and women, Love doesn’t hurt. If he hit you once he will hit you again.
True that. But, what do we tell our kids? Kids who might actually look up to the singer and her boyfriend? Who previously fantasized in their bedrooms at night, “If only I could find a true love like Rihanna and Chris Brown.” Yeah, those kids are out there. Bad enough that he beat her. Worse that she’s staying.
First it’s important to understand why Rihanna would participate in this type of insanity.
Yes. She’s participating. Yes. It’s insanity.
She believes, as nearly all battered women and girlfriends do, that she has caused Chris Brown’s feelings. When Chris Brown feels in love and passionately lovey dovey and head-over-heels for her she believes it’s because she was good enough, pretty enough, nice enough, lovable enough, wonderful enough. That’s her goal. To make Chris Brown love her.
Our Love Culture teaches girls that they can change and control the feelings of men. We often believe we can make them love us.
How many times have we heard or said the phrase, You make me feel?
Belle ultimately changesthe Beastby being beautiful and wonderful and clever enough to make him feel love. The whole fairy tale centers around the idea that Belle can change, and therefore control, the Beast’s feelings if she’s just good enough, pretty enough, loving enough, and wonderful enough.
The same distorted thinking is in the wildly popular Twilight Series.Bella the teenage protagonist of the books is so stunningly beautiful, clever and all-around wonderful that she makes vampire boyfriend Edward Cullin resist his natural temptation to destroy her, kill her and take her life. Throughout the books we’re transfixed, and even turned on and aroused by, imagery of Edward Cullin’s overwhelming desire to crush her fragile and delicate hot body, which is why the couple doesn’t cave into sex.
Which is all well and good. Except that we have a Love Culture where around 30% of teenage girls and adult women are being battered by their love interest.
The sane thing to do when a girl or woman gets hit is to say, F#$& You! on your way out the door, never, ever to return.
Instead the mental Love Distortion of Rihanna and nearly all other battered women and girls says, If I didn’t make him angry he wouldn’t hit me. If I did what he wanted me to do when he wanted me to do it, he wouldn’t hit me. If I just try harder I can change him from a beast into the loving boyfriend I imagine. If I’m just good enough, nice enough, pretty enough, sexy enough, then he’ll resist his entirely natural male urge to destroy, killor berate me. I’ll just try harder and give him another chance.
Chris Brown agrees. Nearly all abusive men and boys agree with their beaten-up girlfriends and wives, she’s causing the violence because she’s making me angry.
The fundamental problem with Rihanna’s thinking is that women do not and can not control men’s feelings.
We never could.
We never can.
Ever.
Feelings originate with the person feeling them. They do not come from outside of us.
The only person who can control one’s violently angry feelings is the person feeling the violently angry feelings. For a batterer to stop beating his girlfriend or wife, he has to take responsibility for and learn to control his own feelings. For a battered woman or girl to leave her abuser she has to hold him responsible for his feelings and stop trying to change or control his feelings with her behavior.
This almost never happens while a couple stays together. Not never. But, almost never. In fact, what generally happens is that she becomes worse and worse at controlling his violently angry feelings and sometimes he kills her.
Why?
They both believe it’s her fault. They both believe she’s causing it. They would have to both agree that its his fault and hold him accountable for it to change. How often do two insane people reach a clarity of thinking at the same time, in the same relationship,when its already gotten to the point of physical violence? Almost never.
Which is why in many progressive and right-thinking states the court refuses to give battered women an option of not prosecuting or of having immediate contact with their abuser. They realize that the victim’s thinking is as distorted as that abuser.
There is not a lot we can do about Rihanna. She’s deep in Love Distortion, a form of insanity clinically referred to as Battered Woman Syndrome or Co-dependence. Hopefully, she’ll find her inner Tina Turner or Madonna and kick Chris Brown to the curb. (Ike who? Congratulations on your new Oscar Sean Penn.)
As parents, counselors, educators we do have a lot of power to teach both our daughters and our sons these fundamental lessons for prevention:
You are responsible for your feelings.
You are responsible for how you behave.
You can not control other people or their feelings.
Other people can not make you feel anything.
We can also use Rihanna and Chris Brown as a teachable moment by repeating Oprah’s advice to our girls – just in case they fall for the wrong guy: Love doesn’t hurt. If he hits you once he will hit you again.
By now no one will be surprised when I say that I’m not a huge fan of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
Some might see Belle as a redeeming character because she is smart and loves to read. She is, after all, bright enough to tell Gaston, the quintessential good-looking football player type, where to go. Good for Belle, even though all the other village girls love Gaston, she thinks he’s a moron and is looking for something different.
When her mad scientist father gets held as a hostage by the mean ugly beast, Belle, the loyal daughter, finds him. Selflessly, she trades her own freedom so that her father can go to the invention festival. What?!?
Here’s the first lesson we need to tell our daughters, Your dad and I will never, ever trade you for anything. If you are ever held by a beast or anyone else we WILL bring the police and find you or die trying. If you are ever kidnapped or someone tries to take you then you should do anything you can to get away. Scream, bite, scratch, kick and run as fast as you can.
The rest of the story is basically how Belle is such a good and sweet young woman that she transforms the compassionless, angry, self-absorbed, violent, ugly and mean beast into the Prince he always was inside.
Basically, the story is just early training for future battered women everywhere. This is Stockholm Syndrome. Women love to love their abuser and fantasize that eventually she’ll love him enough that he’ll start treating her with love and respect. Every woman who gets abused desperately wants to believe that her compassionless, angry, mean, self-absorbed jerk of a husband or boyfriend has a kind prince locked inside and if she is just a good and sweet and forgiving enough wife or girlfriend then she can change him into a sweet guy.
What kind of codependent crap are we feeding our daughters at bedtime? We’re setting them up to be victims with this story. Is it any surprise that 30% of women put up with abuse at some point in their lives? Come on!
I recommend telling our daughters the truth.
If you marry a mean and selfish or violent beast of a man you will never, ever change him into a nice guy. People are who they are. No one has the power to change anyone else. Don’t waste your life trying.
The best thing to do is to marry a guy who is already good and sweet and kind and generous. Find someone who treats you with respect from the beginning and skip all the fairytale drama.
Here’s the Challenge: add, if not completely replace some of these princess horror stories with stories that have good messages like The Practical Princess, and other liberating fairy tales. And give your daughters a new perspective on the old messages found in Disney’s version.
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.
. And give your daughters a new perspective on the old messages found in Disney’s version.
