I drop by only to say that I am still going to this and if anyone else out there is attending and wants to get together, I would love it.  In fact, I’m hoping to have many drinks with some of my favorite people in bloggyland and YOU are also invited. Just send me an email to mom at outside-the-toybox dot com so that I know you are attending!  You’ll know me by my bright yellow coat.

On other fronts, you may remember that I bought my daughter a set of rubber Disney princesses (not a big deal for me, no, not at all) and I thought it worth mentioning that they were a complete flop.  They got exactly zero special adoration when they were opened and have been played with 4 times in 3 months, three of which were games initiated by me. 

We played princess book group, princess soccer game, and princess presidential deabte, complete with voting.  Thing 1 voted for Sleeping Beauty because she liked her committment to raising teacher salaries as a central part of the solution to improving education in America (yes, really).  Ariel was a crummy moderator, but I liked that because it was r e a l i s t i c (remember the “Diamonds or Pearls” question? Gag. barf. snort.).  We used a portable phone for the voting booth - it was perfect, we could waddle their little 3 inch princess behinds right up and push a button.

Those three play sessions were in January. Then, the princesses lay dormant (and all was right in the universe).  Finally, 4 or 5 days ago, the baby found them in the toy bin and he waddled them over to his sister.  You know what she did?  She brought them to me and said, “Can we play that voting game again?” (and the crowd goes wild).

I also am pleased to report that I have had some success with Scholastic, Thing 1’s school is dropping them and Scholastic knows why.  What’s more, I get the impression that the company senses a rising tide of frustration with the commercialism.  So, if you have pent up rage, by all means let your school know and let Scholastic know.  There is critical mass accumulating and if the criticism beccomes great enough that they begin to get shut out of schools, they will have no choice but to respond. 

Not everything is cheery though.  Thing 1 has started categorizing everything that sits still as “boy things” or “girl things,”  she recently described marriage to me as the “man picking the prettiest girl to be his wife,” to which I very calmly replied:

and my wonderful nanny recently told me about a friend who asked her pediatrician what to do because her son kept asking for a stroller.  Not a boy with a stroller!  Someone DO something!

So, you know, I’m still here - living it.  Just like you.  I can’t wait to return –  Till then, please email if you are going to the summit! 

Thanks for welcoming a new blogger, I’ve really enjoyed meeting you. 

I’m so sad to go, I just have no words.

Meanwhile, if you find her, please let me know.  I need some advice.

I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while, but I went through this whole disillusionment thing when I found out that you didn’t exist.  Life had no meaning.  My parents had been lying to me and when I uncovered the sham and started to grieve for you, then bam bam bam down came the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny too.  It was

just

too

much.

Anyway, I have seen enough pro-Santa propaganda films lately, that it has occurred to me that maybe my Mother was actually lying about the whole no-such-thing-as-Santa thing just to get credit for your presents (snap!) and maybe you stopped coming because I just didn’t believe.

So, I’m here, and I’m giving believing one more chance. 

Here are some wishes I’d like you to consider. 

(If they sound like I’ve confused you with God, well, you might be right — skepticism, disillusionment, uncertainty, hope — that all applies to him (her) too.  No offense to you or to God.)

1. I would like the self confidence to finish my book.  Right now I plod through like a snail making tiny blips of progress day by day in a very thinly veiled subconscious attempt to avoid failing by not actually writing much, however, this is essentially the only approach that guarantees failure and I’m the only one who doesn’t seem to know this approach is counter productive.  Slap me if you must, but I need a fire under my butt.

2. I would also like to worry less about my kids and enjoy them more.  If I invested half the energy I put into worrying about them into just being with them, we’d be having a lot more great time together and I’d have less to worry about.  (Are you noticing a trend — I create problems by trying to avoid them - what a dipshit).

3. I would like a new winter coat in a vivid color.  There is a bright yellow one at J.Crew that would do quite nicely.  (Just in case you are really, really real, I need an 8 petite) Sorry to be all materialist, but much like the turkey hat, I just think I’ll feel better if I walk through winter shining like the sun.

4. I would like more time.  I’m pretty sure that if you could allow me to either survive without sleep or would be willing to give me 5 extra hours a day that no one would know about, that I would be so much more balanced.  At the very least, I’d certainly have better flossing habits.

5. Don’t ever let my daughter ask me if she’s pretty again.  When she asked this weekend, I told her she was beautiful only to slide into internal ick. Why did she ask? Has my fear of emphasizing personal appearance come at the expense of complimenting her?  She couldn’t already (at 4!) feel insecure about her appearance, could she?  Fucking Princesses and Barbies and Bratz.  If one more person asks me what the big deal is - I’ll freak.  See the answer here - just scroll down to “the differences in the stories we tell our kids.”  Worry worry worry.  Shit.  Please see #2 above.  This is apparently a high priority item.

6. I would also like more time to create.  Playlists, collages, photo books, forts, funny games, terrible songs** — anything.  I want to PLAY.  Set me free.

7. I would also like a new president. Pretty much anyone (nowhere to go but up).  Please let the new one help us not look like such complete idiots globally and please let him or her have a teensy weensy social justice orientation, but of course not actually be concerned enough about the little guy to be unelectable.  God forbid someone actually want to fix anything — they’re doomed.

8. I would like you to have scientists discover that cheese, bread, chocolate, and butter are the new “superfoods.” 

9. I would like to see Walmart, Starbucks, Toys R Us, and the Gap replaced with quirky, colorful, small businesses.  I would like the cost of things to go up a little and for the right reasons, so I don’t have to feel ill wondering how on earth my kids turtlenecks can really be on sale for less than $3.00.  How exactly does one grow, harvest, and process cotton, design a shirt, sew the shirt, ship the shirt, market the shirt, and bag it for $3.00?  For Pete’s sake — it’s no fun to bargain hunt knowing how this crap is made.  And when I asked Global Exchange for a list of better producers that I could share with my students, all they could offer was “buy vintage.”   

10. I would also like Thing 2 to outgrow his peanut allergy and his egg allergy.  I want him to enjoy spontaneity in his life — not have to worry to stray from the beaten path.  If he doesn’t outgrow them, then may he enjoy other spontaneous delights (the safe ones, anyway, I direct you again to see # 2 above) – like streaking.

11. Let Disney use their power for good not evil.  Can you imagine if every crappy female character were replaced with someone admirable — bold, sassy, strong, clever, funny, kind, and courageous?  Wow.  If they can’t grow a feminist lens, then at least be kind enough to wipe them off the face of the planet in some painful way.

Love,

Me.

PS I would also like happiness, world peace, cures for AIDS and cancer, and a newly tolerant populace.

** You probably didn’t know that I’m an incredibly accomplished lyricist. Well, I am. For example, in my house there is a song for every vegetable on earth.  We sing when the kids eat said foods.  My personal favorite is The Asparagus Song (sing veeery loudly and patriotically to the tune of America the Beautiful).

Asparagus, asparagus, I slather butter on thee.

I love your crowns.  I gobble them down.

(crescendo) And then have STINKY PEEEEEEE.

If you like that (and why would you?) you should hear the edamame song.  It’s to the tune of “You’re the One that I Want” from Grease.  Or the carrot song to “Angel of the Morning” (what - you FORGOT Juice Newton?!).  Broccoli, string beans (that one has an accompanying dance), you name it. Maybe I’ll sell my veggie songs on etsy.  My kids do love veggies.  If I could get financial security and personal fulfiullment from selling vegetable songs, I wouldn’t have to write my book.  Etsy shop coming soon.

PS If you won my bloggy fun contest and don’t send me your actual address TODAY to my 3 letter screen name at symbol outside-the-toybox.com, I consider the terms null and void  

This will take away from my blogging work that I do so diligently at my desk all day, but I wanted to point to a few things that are pretty interesting…

First, CCFC and Lisa at Corp Babysitter are all over Webkinz for adding ads to their website, on the sly.  Bastards!  We’ve discussed the need for ad free virtual worlds here before, so this is an important update.  CCFC lets you email Ganz and tell them that they are scumbags. I highly suggest you do so - it takes 2 secs.  Izzy, you’re the VW queen - comments, new ad free ideas to add?

Second, I’m intrigued by the person who seems to accuse Lisa of being a communist when she recommends an alternative to the Scholastic Book Fair (New readers? Scholastic = bad.  Venting on this Here and Here.).  Check out this little exchange in the comments from Corp. Babysitter. 

Last, I want to say I’m in love with two great blogs I finally found. I am the last reader on the face of the earth to have fallen in love with bossy, if there is one more out there, then go read her.  The second is Republic of Dogs. delightful.  Thanks for the laughs.

Speaking of laughs — I’m going to go do 30 minutes of work and take a sledding lunch break — wa-hoooo!  Thing 1 will be so excited, but not as excited as I am!

PS Did you email webkinz? C’mon - 2 seconds to save the youth of America. Not so bad.

Since I saw it as a strategic decision, part of my larger project of keeping childhood freer, I was okay with it.  But the other day I stood in Sears, looking at the “stuff” and I was just dumbfounded. 

I can’t get her this necklace. God, she’ll wear it.  Like, in public.

How about the pillow? Ick, no. It’ll sit out, on her bed. Forever.  I can’t have her cheery primary colored, character free bedroom defaced like that.  No, all home accessories — out.

Clothing  - also out, I long ago mentioned that while I do like characters (lie), especially Wonder Woman and WordGirl (well, not a lie), I’m “just not crazy about them on clothes and shoes.”  I can’t open that floodgate.

So, I really considered a cup-like thing.  I mean she could drink out of it, it was fancy, maybe.  Then I noticed that 2 of the 3 princesses were not making eye contact — they were wistfully looking off into the distance waiting to be admired.  Aren’t I so vulnerable and beautiful?  Gross.  I left.

Then I did something I’ve never done before. I went to The Disney Store.  I felt like a covert researcher or an undercover cop, like one of Charlie’s Angels out on dangerous assignment, expecting someone to come up to me and say, “Hey, lady, stop! You can’t be in here!”  and haul me away or something.  There I was, a blasphemer among the faithful. I felt nekkid at the shrine.

Breathe. 

So. OK. If I were thing 1, what in this store would delight me?

C’mon. Snap out of it.  Do you think I would seriously buy a Cinderella barbie?  Not without a frontal lobotomy.  Princess + Barbie? It’s not a double negative that makes a positive — it’s just a double negative.  Funny, though, I felt myself react to that doll.  My inner 5 year old wanted it, “buy her, she’s so pretty. Oooh. Look at her dress.” 

I meandered around, everything seemed wrong.  I almost got her a mini basketball, almost bought her a toy cell phone.  Left empty handed and a little grossed out.

One sidebar question.  What is it with the princess hierarchy? Most things that are adorned with 3 princesses have Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.  If it has 4 or  5 you get to add Ariel and/or Snow White, at 6 you finally get Jasmine, and it isn’t until you’ve got all the way to number 7 and 8 that Mulan and Pocahontas get to play (in other words, very very rarely).  I hear you that Pocahontas is a little far a field from official princessness, but Ariel is a freakin’ half-fish (I guess not at the end, but she’s usually shown in her porn star mermaid form). 

What could I buy that would make her happy and me feel comfortable? I reflected a lot before I went back out, but the third time was the charm.  I stood in Target, mustered some courage, and after about 40 minutes finally decided on a rubber figurine set:

Because, in the end, I decided that I “like” them best as toys, not as logos that enhance the value of some other object.  Our home will now have 7 (my set isn’t the 8 piece set pictured here and doesn’t have Pocahontas, see what I mean!?) 3.5 inch little princesses, it’s done.

Enjoy the $10 bucks Disney.  I know I will get every penny’s worth.  My street cred with Thing 1 is going to skyrocket and I can hardly wait to do subversive things with them.  Photos will follow, I’m sure, but not until after Christmas.

My concerns with the commercialization of childhood have to do with the damage done to kids by socializing them to be not only consumers, but consumerist, to define themselves and others by what the clothes they wear, the cache of their cell phone, the bag they carry, the gaming system they have, the sneakers they own, and/or their MP3 player, instead of their talents, interests, behaviors, and insights. 

Before reading Juliet Schor’s Born to Buy, I thought this made them shallow and spoiled.  I thought it created disturbing parameters of social exclusion.  I thought it made a lot of work for parents.  I thought it was used to promote lousy brands that harm kids rather than help them.  All true.

But reading Schor showed me three things that made me go crazy:

1. that involvement in consumer culture actually causes emotional and mental health problems for children - depression, anxiety, low-self-esteem, psychosomatic problems
2. that advertisers explicitly use techniques that undermine parental and teacher authority, to ally themselves with children.  The adults in your life are controlling morons, but fruit by the foot understands you.  Think about the consequences of this — sure, brand loyalty, but more broadly, if your parents are clueless dorks why should a child look to them for guidance or insight?  Why should they share their most deeply held concerns?  If teachers are oppressive and stupid, then, by implication, so is school.  Not good.
3. that marketing, the vehicle that pulls children into consumer culture most directly is everywhere. Parents make the mistake of thinking that our children experience the advertising that they experienced. Not even close. Take the advertising you knew, up it’s emotional pull by adding insights from neuromarketing and ethnographic market research, put it on steroids, and then insert it everywhere from schools, to church, to friendships, to media, to conversations with “friends” in chat rooms, to youth clubs, to public effing space.  Yes, yes, I’ve said this before.

This made me insane. I was furious and equally furious with the lameass “parental responsibility” comeback given by those in the industry.  Come on. Give me a break.  This is a consumer culture and we live in it.  As a parent, what am I supposed to do — homeschool, forgo religious community, keep kids out of public spaces, prohibit the use of all media, and oh, right, make friendship off limits?  It’s all my fault - any good parent would clearly be willing to keep their child in a cardboard box.  Just use a blindfold on drives to the doctor’s office - no one makes house calls anymore.

We need social structural solutions to what is clearly a social structural problem.  Making schools commercial free is the most obvious place to begin, seeing as how they are supposed to support children and developing brand loyalty shouldn’t be a learning goal.

I’m right, of course, about what it would take to improve things, but I have been realizing lately that I’ve been focused on only one major problem, when there are really two.

I’ve been focused on what advertising in general, and advertising in schools in particular, does to kids.  Then, I started thinking about what it does to education.  Duh.  What took me so long? 

Schools become very defensive about the prospect of going ad-free because they need the money (paid to them for pouring rights or for a named gym, or in exchange for piping ads into school buses -gag.) and the goods (free books, for example, in the case of Scholastic) and the teacher support (ick, corporate sponsored curricula - the worst of the worst) for overworked, and sometimes underprepared, teachers.   

What’s corporate sponsored curriculum?  How about this example - a lesson plan for middle schoolers called “10 steps to self-esteem” written by proctor and gamble, and supplemented by samples of clearasil.  Yes, kids, step number one: fix that horrible face of yours. No wonder you’re in the dumps.

Reliance on in-school marketing has become the dirty secret of administrators and school boards.  Some districts even have admin staff dedicated to corporate relations.  Nope, not lying.  Given the state of funding for education, it’s hard to blame them.

But, wait. 

If this becomes the widely used and accepted crutch to fund public education, and private education for that matter (yes, there are ads in many private schools and preschools too), what are the logical outcomes?

Well, for one, we can safely wager our homes on the fact that schools who are in the poorest areas will be most likely to permit the highest amount of advertising in their schools.  That’s great. So, the children who are already the most likely to get substandard education will also be the most likely to learn about earth science from American Petroleum. 

And, secondarily, we can expect that the marketers will distribute their investments unevenly.  Let’s look to television, newspaper, and magazine advertising as an example.  What do advertisers want?  First thought - the largest possible audience?  Some do.  But more want access to a particular type of audience — those with disposable income.  Remember the show Murder She Wrote? This is the classic example (thanks to Croteau and Hoynes).  Murder She Wrote had amazing ratings and was cancelled anyway.  Why?  Because senior citizens on a fixed income don’t spend enough money and the network couldn’t sell advertising that they felt was adequately profitable.  I don’t want to go too far off on a tangent here, but look at the landscape of television faces.  They look a lot like the coveted affluent 18-34 year olds that marketers target, don’t they?  And they’re also pretty pale in the skin.

So, I would be interested to see which schools are getting the high end, value-added type of corporate presence — the named gymnasiums, the science and tech centers, and shiny new multi media equipment.  What about those playgrounds home depot is building — are they in the poorest communities?  Doesn’t sound like it to me.  So, if the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior (that’s STRAIGHT from Dr. Phil, btw), then we can expect the revenue to chase affluence.

We need social science research to track the flow of advertising funding, but I’m willing to bet that we see a fairly egregious cycle that will, unchecked, only exacerbate inequalities in public education.

Education funding is without a doubt in a sorry state of affairs, but allowing advertising to ameliorate the situation, places us on the proverbial slippery slope.  That’s F#@kd Up.

So, my concerns about commercialized schools - only the tip of the iceberg.

Okay Amy, Lisa, Josh — who’s going to do the research?  Let’s get one of these, I’m game.

First, an anti-princess reading list (you have to look for it on the sidebar, it doesn’t pop up) that includes many ideas that some of you have mentioned along the way as well as several new finds. Super.

Second, a best princess list. Eureka!  Tree, where have you been all my life?

I know this sounds odd from someone who has issues with consumerism, but over the last couple weeks I have been thinking alot about my daughter and how much I want her to have that moment when she walks downstairs Christmas morning and sees IT.  The gift she has always wanted from Santa. 

Don’t you remember that?  Oh, the rollerskates!  Oh, the Barbie dream house! I wanted that Barbie dream house so badly and there. it. was. In my living room.  Thank you Santa.

Don’t get me wrong, I want holidays that are a much more than gifts, and I want the gifts to be in moderation, and I do want them to be gifts I feel good about. 

Here is where I found the challenge. 

Until yesterday, she had only mentioned two things of interest: Dora boots / backpack, which I find surprising, a) since she’s only ever seen the show once 2 years ago when we were at a friend’s house and b) since she’s starting kindergarten and frankly, her peers are into other things.  The other wish? A Tinkerbell costume.

So, I told her those were nice ideas and that we’d add them to the list of possible things to ask for from Santa.  But I was starting to

really

dread

the impending list-making (hard swallow - glunk)

because I knew that any list that she would make would be based on what the other kids at school have/bring, much of which I would not feel good about, what with my being replete with issues and all.  She doesn’t see commercials or go shopping (by design, of course), so how could her list possibly be anything other than the items her friends are tittering about on the playground?

So…I was dreading sitting down to ask her to make a list on the one hand, and on the other hand, because I want her to have that moment where the clouds part and the angels sing when she looks under the tree, I didn’t want to “just” surprise her with things that I know she’d enjoy.  I wanted her to have wish fulfillment.  Quandary.

Luckily, I’m completely brilliant.

I went through a bunch of toy catalogues that had come in the mail (how  they find me and why  they keep coming since I’ve requested they stop, is beyond me), and I cut out pictures of different toys.  About 30 things — very diverse — that I thought she might like and which I thought we’d be completely happy buying for her.  I put them all on a big royal blue posterboard and called her down to see my surprise.

What fun!

First of all, she acted like the board itself was a present, she loved it.  Then, I told her it was time to write a letter to Santa.  I went through and told her about all of the toys and she was jazzed about everything.  Then, she went about starring her favorites, which turned out to be everything, because it’s fun to draw stars in marker on posterboard.  I told her to choose the 3-4 things she thought were most exciting for her letter.

I loved watching her choose.  She decided to pick 4 things.  Duh.  Would you have picked 3?  She picked: a kids’ guitar, a mini trampoline, a princess dress (small p - I’ll get a flowergirl dress on ebay, I’ve out fancied Disney before, I’ll do it again.), and a make your own rainbow poncho kit (the poncho kit was the thing she was most excited about, couldn’t-contain-it kind of excited.) 

But then she decided she wanted some colored wooden blocks even more than the trampoline (seriously? yes. seriously.). 

So, she wrote to Santa - one carefully printed letter at a time - and nearly squealed as she showed her Dad her adorably wretched handiwork.

So, we’ll get her that stuff.  And (gulp) we’ve also tentatively decided, although it’s not on the official list, to get her

something

Disney Princess. 

yep. The lone Snow White toothbrush is getting a friend.

What I’ll actually get, I’m not sure, something small, but she is asking for it in no uncertain terms, and I can feel it starting to become a bigger deal to her (she’s feeling left out), and I certainly don’t want her laying in bed pining away for princess.  You know what a mess unrequited love is.  Chalk one up for word of mouth marketing.  If not for preschool, she wouldn’t even know who they are.

Of course, I’ll probably have to steal it to avoid actually giving those sneaky bastages my money, so if you see a quirky human interest story on the news about professor and mother of two who was arrested for stuffing a Cinderella chapstick in her bra, well, I guess that will be the end of my pseudonymous life.

The last 2 days I actually gave my husband a promise over a handshake that I would not go online even for a second at the office. And, because I never, ever break a promise, I really didn’t (no one more amazed than me). But, today he forgot to make me promise (SQUEEEE!!!), so here I am. The shame, the shame… (ba-wah-ha-ha)

In all seriousness, I’ll make this quick to retain the spirit of the effort. I just had to mention that Thing 1 asked me to play her favorite “Christmas song,” Chanukkah, O, Channukah on my pod in the car. The version we have has a very clear soprano voice - light and airy and warm. Quite lovely.

So, I put it on.

“Mommy, her voice is BEAUTIFUL! Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL? Wow.”

“Sure is.”

“It’s just so pretty the way she sings.”

“Yep.”

“MOM! I think it’s BARBIE! It sounds just like Barbie.”

my head thinks: wtf? my mouth says: “Really? Who? Which Barbie?”

“The character I like.”

“Barbie the character?”

“It’s her! It’s her!”

“I don’t think so, Barbie’s plastic, honey, I don’t think she does a lot of singing. Besides, I’m almost certain she’s a wasp” (a mother has to amuse herself, no?)

“You’re silly. Barbie’s not a wasp! She’s a lady!”

And not to ruin a perfectly light hearted post, but she also told me yesterday that she knows who Ursula is from Carly’s book at school. Really? “Yes,” she says, “and she’s really bad and mean. I didn’t read the book, because I didn’t get a turn, but I could tell by her face.”

Yep. yep. yep.

Update: A bloggy friend emailed me offblog to ask if I was agreeing that Ursula was ugly.  NO!  Ah!  Sorry.  What I was doing an apparently lousy job of saying in this post is that Thing 1 has not only internalized our standards of beauty - she knows “pretty” when she sees it - but that she has also internalized our rather disturbing cultural understandings of the meaning of beauty.  Since the singer’s voice is wonderful, she MUST be beautiful (blond, thin, and, in this case, plastic) and since Ursula is depicted as garish, old, and overweight, she must be mean and bad.

We spend plenty of time talking about what constitutes beauty and the consequences of this narrow (and white) definition, but there are also, of course, consequences that stem from appearance and the way others’ react to us (and the way we react to others) based on their appearance.  This is also true, if less so, for men — as has been shown in research on employment (taller men get hired more than shorter men, other factors held constant).

Didn’t mean to be vague - I was just trying to post quickly and get back to working at work (it’s not as bad as I thought it would be)!

First, commenting on Shrek’s outrageous full throttle marketing blitz and near complete ownership of the Macy’s Day Parade, she goes exploring at amazon and finds:

Books (1,469)
Toys & Games (539)
Apparel (321)
Home & Garden (287)
Health & Personal Care (98)
Video Games (64)
Jewelry & Watches (51)
Sports & Outdoors (50)
Everything Else (48)
DVD (48)
Baby (46)
Office Products (34)

That’s over 3,000 Shrek-branded products, folks. And I left some out.

The Shrek machine, especially in food brand extensions, has been criticized and made fun of.

So, Shrek really is an ogre.  The video linked at the end of Lisa’s excerpt (where it says “made fun of”)  shows all the Shrek food (well, “food-like items” is probably more accurate) available.  Sweet Jesus, do we really need Shrek painted on our frozen breakfast waffles? Go ahead, google Shrek waffles, they’re real.

What next? Advertising on produce?  Oh wait — that already exists. Maybe you weren’t lucky enough to get bananas with the Curious George the Movie stickers, but I did (extended eyeroll).  And this week? A DVD release announced via canteloupe. No. I’m not making this up. 

Why on the cantaloupes and not on the cucumbers?  Oh, right — it was a family film.  Was that it?

Tell me, oh scary marketing people.  I mean you, you doing the invasive ethongraphic market research and you, doing the freaky neuromarketing research, what is it that differentiates the cantaloupe consumer?  What does the cantaloupe connote?  Why not the pomegranate?  Certainly, they would reach the oh-so-elusive demographic with disposable income.  I think pomegranate eaters are early adopters.  Tap in.  Sell me a volkswagen on my pomegranate.

Market research freaks me out because so much of it is good.  And by good I mean horrifically manipulative - playing on our every unfulfilled wish and the latent images we nurture of who we wish we could be.  They know more about my subconscious than I do.  See this fun-ny blogger’s take on her Disney vulnerability.

Speaking of Disney, which I do way way too often for a 36 year old professional… 

Lisa’s second post drew on a Wall Street Journal article addressing the 4 billion dollar princess franchise.  I was glad that she pointed to this article so that I could feel happy.  And by happy, I mean completely defenseless and miserable.  The whole article can be found here, but for effciency’s sake, here are the highlights:

Tomi-Ann Roberts, a professor of psychology at Colorado College, complains that the princesses have become more sexualized, with more skin showing and bigger heads, eyes and breasts. “The ever increasing marketing to younger and younger girls of an adult sexualized version of the princesses is concerning,” says Ms. Roberts, who co-authored a report on the sexualization of girls.

Other critics worry that encouraging young girls to obsess about being a princess sends the wrong message, with too much focus on being beautiful and not more substantive achievements.Disney doesn’t see that as a problem, and says most parents understand that Disney Princess is simply a role-play phase that kids go through. “For every mother that sees an issue, there are a million that don’t,” says Mr. Mooney, who adds that even beyond the target age group of 3 to 6, “girls do princess in private.”Still, many parents of princess-obsessed daughters notice they abruptly drop the brand at about age 6.

In an attempt to keep girls enchanted longer, the company launched Disney Fairies, a slightly edgier group of characters (including Tinker Bell) aimed at 7- and 8-year olds. Mr. Mooney estimates the Fairies franchise will generate $750 million in retail sales this year.The ultimate aim is to waltz girls from one franchise to another well into their teens. After fairies, Disney is attempting to hook them on “Kim Possible,” “That’s So Raven” and “Hannah Montana,” all playing on the Disney Channel, and then serve up “High School Musical” for older kids. “Then they come back to us as brides and mothers,” says Mr. Mooney.

Blech. I feel so dirty. But wait, here’s my favorite.

A gaping hole was babies. Mr. Mooney says mothers are highly gender aware these days (he estimates at least 80% elect to know the sex of their baby before it is born). Disney had historically sold gender-neutral characters like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the infant market, but mothers surveyed have shown more interest in gender specific products, selecting princesses for a girl and “Finding Nemo” for a boy. Disney has both in the works.The key for the princess infant line was to make sure it didn’t damage the core business — something they tried to get around by making it a more subtle, less character-driven design. Mr. Mooney says, “We don’t want to turn off the older kids.”

A gaping hole was babies?  A gaping hole was babies?  Riiight.  Better get on that.  The scary thing is that they will and it will work.  I can hardly wait to see how the Ariel seashell pasties look on a 5 month old.   

Guess how many Disney Princess items Lisa found at amazon?  Over 7,000.  What the hell haven’t they liscenced? Do they make snow white tampons yet?  Those, I would buy.

And as I type, dh tells me that Thing 1 asked tonight if she could get some princess books “like Janie and Carly.” 

Sometimes it just seems impossible.  I want to win a little, but how much energy can I possibly continue to invest in fighting this?  My first thought was to start looking online for princess books that aren’t Disney and maybe offer some WordGirl like behavior in fancy dresses, but I’m getting tired. 

Look at how they’re taunting me.  I always said I wouldn’t forbid.  I’ll say maybe a couple times and see if it goes away.  Tomorrow I’ll find the energy for this again.  In the meantime, I think I’ll go to the corner store and see if I can find a Shrek-free bag of cheetos to soothe my soul.  If you know of any pretty dress heroine books, do share.

Damn you saturation marketers.