I know I already said “ditto” to your great comment but I want to emphasize how much I really AGREE with you that Hollywood glamorizes pregnant teens/new mom teens such as Jamie Lynn Spears… and that this is not the message we should be sending our youth.

I agree with you about such magazine cover stories instilling a warped impression into the heads of our children.

YES, discussion is important to counteract the media’s tragic glamour covers of ‘Jamie Lynn the new mother/teenager who is having “the best feeling she has ever experienced”.’

Jeanne

That T-shirt you referenced with the slogan across the chest was really troublesome to me… so DIS-empowering for any female to wear the shirt pictured in the story. The notion that a well-endowed chest is a substitute for intelligence is scary indeed! That Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt REALLY bothered me! When I see stuff like that I just CRINGE!

I can see why you’d find it easier to make purchases for male children than female children! It is getting hard to find clothes for my 7 year old for warm weather! Just because it’s a “skort” rather than a “skirt” does not mean it needs to be up to her bottom, for example. Yet a size bigger would fall off of her at the waist while still being too short!

So how about girls’ shorts, then? (Granted, my daughter is on the petite side). However, even if she were morbidly obese her thighs would never fill out the massive leg holes in most girls’ shorts nowadays.

I swear I have to keep her in jeans or leggings under summer dresses year round for when we’re going out in public UNLESS I want her displaying her underwear! It’s getting worse and worse.

Summer is the worst because she’s hot and wants shorts or skorts but they NEVER fit her properly no matter what size or brand we try. It is a real problem.

I won’t let her wear half-shirts. If you walk into a girls’ department in many stores now, most of the shirts displayed are these “belly shirts”. Why? I don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t dress her in Little House on the Prairie outfits with petticoats under ankle-length dresses (ha ha)… but I don’t let her wear what many girls do nowadays either.

Half-shirts… No.

Miniskirts… No.

Skorts that still show underwear… No (…at home but not OUT if underwear shows) …

Shorts with huge leg holes that show underwear… No (…at home but not OUT if underwear shows) …

I don’t want to have to dress my daughter for winter when it’s 80 degrees out but I WON’T have her displaying her underwear either!

If I had the money, I’d start a clothing company that targets young girls and sells appropriate clothing like what I wore as a child! Shorts that actually fit properly would be an example of what I’d sell.

I know there are other moms out there like me who’d throw plenty of business to a company like that!!

Jeanne

Oh, I forgot to mention… I don’t like the letter “Z” used to make “Brat” or “Webkin” or anything plural.

I also don’t like the letter R being backwards in “Toys R Us” or “Babies R Us” either!

In addition, I dislike ads in “fake kids’ writing” full of backwards letters. (Do you know the ads I mean? The ones made to look like a child wrote them?)

Maybe fewer children would write backwards and mix up letters if these ads weren’t out there.

I really dislike when products use the letter “z” to make something plural. This is especially true for products targeted and marketed to young children who are still learning how to read, write, and spell. It just annoys me!

Jeanne

Well, I have been pretty busy lately… that's for sure. If I never saw the inside of a doctor's office again, it would be fine by me!!

Yeah, as I had told you… I'm not really a big Webkinz fan either.

My niece got one (Webkinz) and my husband & I vetoed my daughter using the one given to her. She was allowed to keep it as a regular stuffed animal but she never went and used it online, as it designed to be used by the kind folks at Webkinz.

My hubby and I went online and looked at the Webkinz site and agreed that we weren't going to have her use her Webkinz kitty cat as anything but a plain old stuffed animal kitty cat. No computer. No marketing bombardment. No begging for accessories. No fights over computer usage/time. No discussion. The end.

Her cousin has friends she uses Webkinz with and the (mutual) grandparents heard about it & bought one for our daughter. They didn't really understand what our objection was to it but we stood by our beliefs. Just a regular stuffed animal. No Webkinz computer usage.

If our daughter wants to talk to her cousin, she can use our free long distance minutes and talk over the phone state to state.

She doesn't need Webkinz to communicate with her cousin.

Heck, she could even practice her writing skills by writing a letter and snail mailing it. No Webkinz for our house and for a young child. That's just what we believe is best for her.

An EXCELLENT book that covers many things (including marketing to children) is: Fast Food Nation. The movie of it isn't so good. The book is engrossing, disturbing, fascinating, gross, interesting, sad… It is about far more than just "fast food". It analyzes the American way from an unflattering angle.

The obesity epidemic, the way things are marketed to children, the way things have changed (I mean for the worse) since we were younger… It's sad. Fast Food Nation (the book, not the movie) is very well-written and changed the way I look at many things: DISNEY INCLUDED!

Some of the insidious marketing practices corporations use to prey on children (and their parents) are covered in Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.

If his name sounds familiar, he was on the special features section of the Super Size Me/Morgan Spurlock DVD. The two of them talked about some of this stuff on the special features.

Jeanne