Girlie Stuff

Leafing through an early July issue of People during my lunch today, I found two things worth bringing up. They address girls.

There is a book called The Lolita Effect which I have't read, but was highlighted in the magazine when they briefly spoke to the author, a U of Iowa professor. The book discusses what is happening to girls as our culture "sexualizes" them. And this is the first time I've ever seen anything negative written about Bratz. A quote from the book: "This doll projects a sexuality that has more to do with working on the Sunset Strip than enjoying a healthy girlhood." Amen to that.

I hate Bratz; I think they are deplorable playthings that objectify girls who then become woman who can easily fall into the mindset that what they are are objects to be visually admired, rather than real people. When Madeleine received a Bratz doll for her sixth birthday, we promptly returned it to the store. It wore a tennis outfit and on the back of the package was written some ridiculous blurb about how it doesn't matter if you win or lose the game, it's how good you look playing it.

I do not mean to offend anyone, but as I am entitled to my opinion (and it is my blog!), I have to say that I cannot understand why parents let their children play with these things! Look at the picture - they have woman hips, bigger-than-life lined and shadowed bedroom eyes, lips that make Angelina Jolie's look like pencil slashes, and skin-tight clothing. Why not throw in an apple martini and a long black cigarette for accessories? They look like total sluts! But they're like, what, 12?

The other article is about a high school in Gloucester, Massachussetts. At this high school, students push strollers with their babies down the halls. Currently there are 17 girls under the age of 16 who are pregnant. I am not here to judge those girls, but 17 of them at once? There was talk of a "pregnancy pact," but that has been pooh-poohed. In my own unsolicited and unresearched opinion, I think that these girls got pregnant because they were swimming in waters too deep. Sex is expected; it's everywhere, and it's practically shameful not to do it.

So People puts in these articles about how girls are being shoved into the adult world too early. Yet the rest of the articles, at least the ones about the stars, feature gorgeous, stick-thin (and if they are not stick-thin that's a whole separate article), rich, jet-setting women who flit from one high-profile romance to the next. How's that for role modeling?

And yet, I continue to read this magazine. It's like the proverbial train wreck.