fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3013 ]

[ SECRET POST #3013 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3013 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 07 pages, 155 secrets from Secret Submission Post #431.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Parents can choose to turn off the tv. Parents can choose not to buy Barbies or Bratz, or clothes that look like they were made for strippers instead of for eight year olds. Nobody HAS to support the entertainment industry and it's abundance of underweight women and toxic messages.

I feel comfortable saying that it is literally impossible for a parent to shield a young daughter from unhealthy images in the media. I agree a parent can do what they can to send positive messages to their kids and help them build self-esteem, but it's simply not possible to keep your daughter away from an extraordinarily skewed industry of tiny, especially unnaturally tiny female bodies.

It's a lot more possible once you get rid of the tv. Seriously, I have not seen a commercial for make-up, fad diets, clothes, or any other crap since I moved away from a television.

Kids don't have to own Barbies or Bratz dolls or anything to internalize that thin=beautiful and desirable. By the time I hit puberty, I hated my body because I was short and dumpy and no matter what I did I'd never have a body like Jessica Rabbit. I didn't own any Barbies growing up, Bratz dolls didn't exist yet, and I didn't exactly want to be thin. I wanted the kind of exaggerated hourglass figure that's not really possible in the real world, even for people who win the genetic lottery, which I definitely didn't. My parents didn't buy me fashion dolls or let me watch tv much or buy me age-inappropriate clothes. It didn't matter. Peer groups and pop culture totally overrode all the carefully constructed body-positivity and anti-consumerist ideals my parents tried to instill in me. And I've been an adult for awhile and still hate my body some days for not being something that's literally not possible. We literally steep in this culture as we grow.

http://www.amazon.com/Cinderella-Ate-Daughter-Dispatches-Girlie-Girl/dp/0061711535

Good book.

That works really good until they are about 5 or 6 and you send them off to school. It's like parents who want their kids to be vegans. Once you start to let them loose a little in the world they are going to start to form their own ideas and figure out what they want. You aren't the only influence in town. So your wonderful child might now NEED a bratz doll or a hot dog. And yes you can send your kid to a school full of kids with parents just like you but then you lose diversity and all it's takes is one kid with a bratz doll and all your hard work on keeping them away is gone. So don't judge.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuullshit. Nobody needs a Bratz doll. And if Little Susie decides she wants one then her parents have the right/responsibility to say no.

You make it sound like someone is holding parents at gunpoint FORCING them to buy crap and let their kids buy crap. That's not true. They have a choice not to buy crap. It's not that hard to turn off the television and pick up a book.

Here's a link that will help you quit being Big Consumerism's bitch: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

I am going to guess that you have no kids yet or a child-free. With children you have to pick your battles. Are you going to fight over every single thing your child wants? It's so easy to say that your fictional child will never have any of that crap but when all your daughter or son wants is a disney dress up set to look like their favorite princess see how you feel then.

My Mom and Dad managed to say 'no' to 99% of the crap I thought I wanted. It was pretty easy for them. How many kids do you have?

Personally, I don't see Disney as being particularly harmful so I don't mind if my kid wears a princess dress. If my kid does decide that they want crap I consider harmful then it will be my job as the parent to say no and mean it. My word will be law. The whiny complainypants parental units who give in to Little Susie and Little Bobby can wonder why they raised spoiled and selfish brats.

Yeah, this. My mom bought me nothing as a kid. Nothing. She always said "If you want something, get a job and buy it yourself." So I did, I got a paper route at 10 and bought things I wanted myself.

She's the kind of person who'd get me utilitarian things for Christmas... like a violin case or something. I don't particularly like her as a person, but I respect her for that sort of frugality. It's made me really disdain parents who spoil their kids.

Re: Actually..

(Anonymous) - 2015-04-05 16:45 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Actually..

iceyred - 2015-04-05 20:55 (UTC) - Expand

*I* have kids and I agree. I've been raised expressly barbie-free, myself. when I was older (15, not 5) I bought one from my own money so I could use it to sew doll's clothes. I was a bit awkward at school, but my sister was miss popular, and she was raised just as no-barbie.

Now that you have spoken we never need to hear about anyone's experiences with anything else ever!

I grew up with Barbie, but also with an awareness that she was terribly unrealistic. On the other hand, I always thought Bratz were ugly.

so true. People tend to forget, in these conversations, that school is a thing that exists (and honestly, I'd argue that the diversity you get in a public school is generally a good thing, though not all the influences are good)

There was no diversity in the schools I went to as a child. There was 1 black person a year younger and that's it. Everyone else was white and some form of christian. I am so glad that my daughter goes to school with people of all colors and faiths. Even if it means no Christmas and Easter parties like my schools had every year. But she gets so much more in exchange. It's not all been good but we have learned so much and are better for it.

I worded myself poorly. I didn't mean to imply that public schools are all automatically very diverse - but they are, as a whole, much more diverse than private schools or homeschool coalitions. And in general a kid will be exposed to many more things in school of any kind than at home with just their family.

I played with barbies and shit all the time when I was younger and it never influenced my perceptions of body image because it's, you know, a toy and my parents had the good sense to talk to me about stuff like that anyway when I was younger. One doll isn't going to magically undo someone's efforts to instill sensible values into their children unless they were doing a really shitty job of it.

But it's not "one doll", and either you're a troll or you're being deliberately obtuse. It's dolls and TV shows and movies and magazines, it's your friends at school, it's bullies calling you "fat" - being exposed to all of these things, constantly, every day, slowly grinding away at you until these beliefs insidiously and unconsciously creep into your mind, and then you're an adult with a perfectly average body who just can't get around feeling defective somehow because you don't look like you're "supposed to".

+1
literally every girl deals with this in america in one way or another. it's not fair but i really don't believe the comment above yours

I was raised without a TV, no Barbies or Bratz, and still ended up with an eating disorder. There's no shortage of exposure to these images (and worse, your peers at school) outside the home.

I didn't say that opting out of commercialism is a surefire way to avoid harmful behaviors in the future. I'm saying that if people see advertisements and commercials as harmful to young girls they can cut out a huuuuuuuuuge portion of that by turning off the television and not buying the crap.

I think that goes without saying, but since there is no way to totally isolate a kid (and you'd be cutting out a lot of good things too, if there were) a sounder approach is to discuss them with kids and help them process them in a healthy way. Of course, moderation isn't a bad thing and moderating TV exposure is good for a number of reasons - not trying to say it's not. It just shouldn't, imo, be seen as a solution to the media problem.

Your naivety and incomprehension about how reality works is actually painful.

Have dogs instead of kids, will you? Because that's the level of control you clearly want to be able to exert.

I don't think she's being naive.

I grew up in rural Canada with no TV and very few toys (all of them hand-me-downs). I really didn't encounter any of that weird body-image stuff as a child. I did feel uneasy about puberty (but who doesn't) and I was always self-conscious about my acne (but I think everyone with acne feels that way without any media machine ragging on you). I remember being pretty surprised at a lot of things when I started watching TV and such in my early twenties. THEN I got body image issues. But as a teenager? I gave absolutely no shits about how I looked. I only started caring once I left my hometown and became more exposed to pop culture.

Nah, I'm a cat person. But I and my cat are loling at you going "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. You don't understand how HARD it is." without actually explaining what is so damn hard about turning off the television.

Personally, I don't think tv is to blame, but other people do. All I'm saying is that if you do think tv and the entertainment industry are to blame, you can opt out of that.

Maybe if you spent more time reading, you'd be able to understand that. Good luck with your whining. Lemme know how that works out for you.

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