Posts Tagged ‘HR 4925’

That’s why Stripper Barbie came with me to meet with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D -WI), co-sponsor of The Healthy Media for Youth Act (H. R. 4925). You’ll notice, in the lower right hand corner of Stripper Barbie’s box, it says ”Ages 3+”. I thought Stripper Barbie provided an excellent visual aid for the kind of sexualization that goes on during the preschool years.  

You’ve read about the 4925 legislation here, when I went to Washington DC this past spring and met with memebers of Rep. Baldwin’s staff to ask for inclusion of little girls in the wording of HR 4925. Stripper Barbie is the kind of media preschool aged girls see, and right now there aren’t many groups specifically advocating for preschool aged girls and their familes and their right to healthy media and products. In my opinion, image after image after image of Barbie, Tinkerbell, the Disney Princesses, and Moxie/Bratz dolls are just as harmful to a tot as the constant viewing of photoshopped images of models in magazine are to a teen girl. Both examples reflect a fake perfection to being female. We have to know that if it is affecting our older girls, it is affecting our little girls, too.  Preschool girls are too tiny to be involved with amazing organizations like Girl Scouts, Girls Inc, or Girls Leadership Institute. These pint size girls are too young for that kind of outreach, yet are marketed to relentlessly, and have precious few examples of anything outside of the beauty myth disguised as toys offering fashion, beauty, shopping, makeup, pop stardom, etc.  

There is a lot of focus right now on tween and teen girls, the images they see in magazines and the media, and how it harms their developing sense of self and worth and body image. That is all VERY important and relevant and cause for concern because much of the advertisting and media out there is junk. Older girls are bombarded with a sexualized, false version of womanhood that skews their development into healthy, balanced young women. There is immense pressure on girls regarding their appearance and body size.  

My little four year old girl doesn’t watch television commercials or read fashion magazines. She doesn’t know the words “diet” or “sexy” or “boyfriend”. My husband and I have worked hard at making sure our daughter is four going on five, instead of four going on seventeen. Yet try as we might, when we go shopping we come across toys and clothes and accessories that carry messages that have no business in a child’s world and twist the meaning of “girl”. Like a plastic doll with heavy makeup and impossible body porportions dressed like a prostitute. “Miss Sassy” is not something  I would ever hand to my daughter.  

I asked for the meeting with Rep. Baldwin so that we could talk about the sexualization that affects very young boys and girls, how it affects both genders as to their own identities and how they view each other. We discussed that kids are being introduced to manufactured ideals of feminimity/masculinity and sexuality at ages that should be criminal. For girls, it begins at birth. And it is relentless.  

What I stressed most to Rep. Baldwin is that 4925 needs to include the support and promote outreach to preschool families and their girls who are being sexualized from infancy. If we can train families to raise their girls the right way, programs that help girls to grow, like the Girl Scouts, will be that much more successful. We discussed a movement I would like to see (and will be helping to create in the coming months) led by older girls on behalf of themselves and their little sisters. A mini-suffragette movement of sorts, teaching empowerment and media literacy to each other. Raising an entire nation of strong, confident girls. (insert happy, happy sigh) 

We also discussed the notion that small, parent-owned businesses like Pigtail Pals that offer healthier products for girls needs help with funding and PR to have a fighting chance against giants like Mattel and MGA Entertainment (who give us Barbie and Moxie Girls and Monster High). We discussed education programs (like the one I am starting this fall) reaching parents and caregivers of kids ages 0-5 years.  

Here are the notes I left with Rep. Baldwin, and what I wanted her to take away from our conversation:  

• Media Literacy efforts and girl empowerment initiatives need to begin for parents and girls at a preschool level.
• Media Literacy efforts and girl empowerment initiatives should be made available to girls who are preliterate and therefore most vulnerable to sexualized imagery. Images and pictures are a child’s first language.
• Young children’s toys and media characters need to fit within guidelines that limit the violence and sexual stereotypes and sexual content conveyed to the young consumers who use them.
• Groups, like Pigtail Pals, that serve girls before they reach the ages of school and extracurricular programs like Girls Scouts, need to be funded and supported in order to empower our youngest of girls so that these are messages the girls are raised with, as opposed to introduced to sometime during their elementary years.  

Rep. Baldwin asked excellent questions, and was very receptive to my suggestions. Maybe it helped to have a photograph of my daughter, age three at the time, sitting next to Stripper Barbie. I will continue to serve as an advocate for the bill, and be a source of reference for Rep. Baldwin’s office. The bill, as it stands, is great and will do much good, especially for older girls. As for our littlest girls, Rep. Baldwin said “The bill doesn’t preclude them, but it doesn’t promote them either”. I am here to make sure our tiny girls aren’t forgotten.  

I am here to make sure that our little girls are raised with age appropriate messages and toys so that when they are five or six or seven, becoming a Brownie or Girl Scout is the coolest thing in their world. I am here to make sure that girlhood doesn’t become a twisted training ground for shopping and boy obsessed gradeschoolers, so that Girls Inc can focus less on deprogramming these girls and focus more on the amazing potential each one of them holds. I am here so that when little girls like the two above are sent to Girls Leadership Institute, my friend Rachel Simmons doesn’t have to spend time talking about negative body image because these girls will already love the skin they are in. 

Early childhood is such a magical time, so full of learning and wonder and color and exploration and dreaming and the soaking in of everything that enters a young child’s environment. It is the time during which children come to learn what it means to be human being, and all of the profound graces we enjoy in this world. In a way, those tiniest years can be the most majestic. Let’s work to keep it that way.  

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What YOU can do today: Go to the Girl Scouts page to Take Action – click here – they have made it super easy for you to contact your Congressperson and encourage support for this bill and the protection of our kids. 

I’m not going to talk about the video. We’ve all seen it. Out of respect for the little girls and their right to childhood and privacy, I’m not even going to link it. I’m not going to discuss the ignorance one of the girls’ parents displayed on national tv. I think they made a bad choice, an uninformed choice, but I do not think they are bad people. Most of us have already spoken out about how we feel about girls in elementary school donning sexy costumes to perform provocative dance moves to a questionable song choice.

I’m going to talk about the concept of a child young enough to be visited by the tooth fairy is absolutely too young to be wearing fishnets and lace bra tops performing a highly sexually suggestive dance routine to a cheering and screaming audience.

I’m going to talk about that video making me have such a visceral reaction that I made a beeline for Capitol Hill two days later. Yeah, the one in Washington DC. Parents were angry. People who aren’t parents were angry. I was angry. So I channeled that into activism and took my passion for ending the sexualization of little girls and Friday morning I sat myself down in the office of my Congresswoman. Our lawmakers need to hear our voices.

I get bile in my throat when I see little girls in a manner of dress similar to sex workers. I get tears in my eyes when I see little girls move or use their bodies in sexual ways that they shouldn’t even know about yet. They are, after all, little girls. Little. Girls. Their right to a childhood should be fiercely protected. The viewing or thinking of children in a sexual way SHOULD BE TABOO. And the worse part of it all, is that many times these very children don’t understand what they are doing — that is the beast of sexualization.

Friday morning I scheduled a meeting with Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-WI) office in Washington DC to discuss a bill she co-sponsored and had just introduced in March – HR 4925 Healthy Media for Youth Act. The hope for the bill is to create a competitive grant program for media literacy and youth empowerment programs, facilitate research on how media affects youth, and to establish a National Task Force on Women and Girls in the Media.

“Children are consuming more media than ever, but unfortunately, the images they see often reinforce gender stereotypes, emphasize unrealistic body images or show women in passive roles. The need for more positive images of girls in the media is clear,” said Congresswoman Baldwin. “I’m proud to sponsor legislation that will help girls and young women see themselves in a new and stronger light,” said Baldwin, who co-chairs, with Congresswoman Capito, the Congressional Women’s Caucus Task Force on Young Women.

Encourage the House of Representatives to pass HR 4925

Though I fully support the efforts of this bill, if we have learned anything this past week after the firestorm after the dance video, it is that our very youngest girls are being sexualized and becoming victims of the media and sexualized consumer culture. It doesn’t start as tweens, it starts as toddlers. My purpose during my meeting with Rep. Baldwin was to bring attention to the harm that is coming to preschool aged girls, those too young for most of the programming this bill aims to support. I need the help for my four year old girl. Most programs don’t start until kindergarten or elementary school, and for the girls they serve those programs are wonderful. Wonderful. For the girls who are too young, I am concerned their parents don’t receive the outreach or media literacy training they need.

Girl empowerment cannot be delayed until school age or the tween years. The festering of sexualization, low self-esteem and poor body image starts during the toddler and preschool years when he sexualized toys, apparel, and media enter little girls’ lives. If you wait until our daughters are eight or ten or fourteen to teach them these lessons, then the festering has sat for the most formative years of their life. This is why we teach our children to wash their hands when they potty train – they don’t do it correctly yet, but you don’t wait until they are older and can do it right. You lay the groundwork for a time when they can. Girl empowerment has to be the same.

My suggestions to Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s office were:

• Media Literacy efforts and girl empowerment initiatives need to begin for parents and girls at a preschool level.

• Media Literacy efforts and girl empowerment initiatives should be made available to girls who are preliterate and therefore most vulnerable to sexualized imagery. Images and pictures are a child’s first language.

• Young children’s toys and media characters need to fit within guidelines that limit the violence and sexual stereotypes and sexual content conveyed to the young consumers who use them.

• Groups that serve girls before they reach the ages of school and extracurricular programs need to be funded and supported in order to empower our youngest of girls so that these are messages the girls are raised with, as opposed to introduced to sometime during their elementary years.

My dialog with Rep. Baldwin’s office will continue and I will keep you appraised when updates occur. What you can do until that time is contact your state’s Representatives and encourage them to endorse the bill. A phone call, a letter, an email – heartfelt and concise, asking for protection for our daughters of ALL ages. Turn that disgust and upset and disapproval and concern and anger that you felt into action. Make a change for our girls.

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