Yikes

Oh, God help us. Really.

I've been surfing, looking for articles, news stories, etc., based upon research recently released from the American Psychological Association regarding the early sexualization of girls. (Skim the report--it's 72 pages, not one word wasted.)

Read this. All six pages. Print it, copy it, distribute it. At church or coven, I don't care. The conversations we have with the minors we influence will continue to speak unto the seventh generation.

This is a short clip of a TV news story.

(Added: Also, view The Merchants of Cool. It's a Frontline piece. I watched it when it was airing the first time, about six years ago? I recently watched it again and was blown away by how much of the material has a.) become commonplace and b.) still shocks and horrifies me.)

This reading is agonizing, yes. Yes, it begs several questions. The most important, I believe, is for the manufacturer of Bratz dolls: At the end of your life, when it's time to tally up the good influence vs. the tepid vs. the evil, where does your contribution to civilization place you?

I believe that there are some acts which place a person out of range of receiving credit for their good works. The guy who did the best research to date (okay, last time I read about it was several years ago) on prions, specifically Creutzfeld-Jakob and mad cow, also had his career curtailed by accusations (and, I believe, a conviction) in the general category of pedophilia. See--that sort of thing just messes with progress. Now the guy can't get funding (duh) and we'll never know how we all might have benefitted from the work he'll never do. (For the strictly logical among us, this scenario represents pretty well what's known as an ad hominem attack. Too bad things work this way--or is it?)

Same thing with the jackass who manufactures the Bratz dolls. No amount of protestation about just giving the girls what they want (they like sugar by the bagful too, but nobody's arguing that, for goodness sake) can change the fact that he's changing who our children are (and for piles of filthy lucre, the twit). This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. You may well have put your darling child under glass somewhere, locked the kid safely in a tower, even. But how about the person bringing up the food--might they interact? The available clothing choices? Even the Abercrombie wimple has a logo. How about reading material? The village children who congregate beneath the tower window (after prayer meeting?) to discuss the latest escapades of their Bratz dolls or their mom's boyfriends? It creeps, baby.

Your children know a lot more about sex and what the implications are for them than they're telling you. No matter how you've tried to shield them. Chances are excellent that they believe things you don't want them believing, so go get inside their little heads. It's okay, you can do it--you're all grown up and in charge.

When you're done, you're welcome to come back and comment. We can sit and whimper together for awhile before getting back to parenting.

(Why didn't anyone mention this part as we were leaving the hospital with the little bundle?)