Posts Tagged ‘media literacy’

*the formatting on the blog is acting up today, please just ignore and enjoy the content!*

Lily and Noah’s mom emailed the following correspondence to me. The kids had asked her if she was going to write a letter to Lego regarding the new Friends line that their family was unhappy with. She suggested they do it. And so they did.

 I would like the girls going to the moon and making friends with aliens, or crawling through creepy underground tunnels, or exploring ancient Mayan temples, or traveling the world.

 Thanks,

Noah H.  (Brother of Lily H.)

9 Year Old Lego Builder

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Dear,

Thanks for your interest in our products.

We’re really sorry to hear that you’re disappointed with your new LEGO Friends line. We try really hard to give LEGO fans what they want an we are glad you let us know when you feel we are not getting it right.

We have a team of experts in Denmark whose job it is to invent and test new LEGO sets, themes and toys. They tell me it takes years to check everything. They need to test all the new ideas, talk to the factory about how to make them, work out what sort of box it needs to go in and then deliver the new sets to all the shops in 130 countries!

As you can see, a lot of thought goes into your toys and although LEGO toys aren’t the cheapest in the shop, I hope you understand we invent and make LEGO sets to last a lifetime, or even longer!

We’re really sorry but since you’re under 13 years of age we’re going to have to delete your email address and comments from our LEGO database after we’ve sent you this email.

We’re not being mean, there’s a law called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and it’s been set up to keep you safe when you’re on the Internet. One of COPPA’s rules is that it’s against the law for us to save your emails.

Remember you can still find out all about our cool events and new LEGO products at www.LEGO.com

Thank you again for contacting us.  If you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this email or call one of our friendly Customer Care Advisors at 1-800-835-4386 (from within the US or Canada) or 1-860-749-0706 (from outside the US or Canada). We are available Monday through Friday from 8AM – 10PM EST and Saturday through Sunday from 10AM to 6PM EST.  Please have your reference number handy if you need to get in touch with us: 030232427A

Shawn
LEGO Direct Consumer Services

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 I am again left with several questions for Lego:

A letter from Callie, age 10, to Lego Company. Dated January 5, 2012:

Dear Lego Company,

Rosalind Elsie Franklin, Lise Meitner, and Grace Murray Hopper. Do you think those great women scientists spent time playing with vintage style dressing rooms when they were girls? Do you think they decided to sit and look at a girl brushing her hair? No. They would be walking in museums, reading, conducting experiments, researching, and doing creative thinking. Legos are a great way to do the latter and I congratulate you on that. Legos are amazing and a great idea. They’re fun, brain building and easy to use. But when you turn them into a stereotypical toy, that’s just destroying the individuality so many people have been working for. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for blacks and whites to be equal. Today people are fighting for the equality of gay people. Susan B. Anthony and Gloria Steinem were fighting for women’s equality. And when I walk into a toy store and an attendant leads me to an aisle plastered with putrid pink I think you just swept all those people fighting for equality out of the way and ignored what they said.

Generalizing is saying any group of people is all one way, or likes one thing. Even if it’s complimentary, saying a group of people is all the same is just not true. Every person is unique and has a spark, different likes and dislikes, and faults of their own. You must respect that.   

There are plenty of smart and creative girls out there eager to play with Legos. Do you want that to be ruined, by giving them only a beauty salon to create? Please don’t. But I’m not proclaiming you should stop making those products, because they make generalizations about girls. But why just give us one option? There are plenty of girls ready to play with your ‘girl’s’ Legos. Plenty eager to pretend to comb hair and such. But then the girls who want superhero toys or adventure toys or dinosaurs or space toys or Harry Potter toys or Egyptian toys are forced to go to the boy’s aisle. They shouldn’t have to do that. Are you saying toys they want are for boys only? It’s not right to make a girl feel like she’s not acting like a girl should or is different. Are boys the only people who can do constructive things? No! But forcing a girl to go to the boy’s aisle, making her feel like she shouldn’t use Legos that aren’t pink and girly is just plain stupid. Why don’t you even have a boy’s category on your website? Are you saying boys can play with everything they want, unlike girls who have pink beauty salons? You have a girl science lab Lego set, yet it’s still pink and calls the things included “accessories”. The other themes, such as Ninjago call them staffs, or weapons. So even girl science lab appliances are called the same girly thing as jewelry. Why do that? To make money? That really makes me feel so much better about the world I live in.

And there’s another thing that makes me more secure about today’s lifestyle. If the girl  does go to the boy’s aisle what meets her eyes is the sight of war. Legos you can use that create a war scene, or spies shooting at each other or a spaceship with guns to shoot aliens. Does this seem right? Do we need more war in our bloodstained world? It gives kids the idea that war is funny or nothing to be worried about. Movies surround us with people fighting each other with powers and guns. Little boys like my cousin see people getting blown up, but then just singed or bouncing. Getting hit with lasers and just looking wounded but then reviving quickly or pretending to be dead than sneaking up on the bad guy because they missed. This isn’t real life. Many people have died in war, families torn apart, torturings of innocent people and betrayal driven by fear. This is war. Children need to understand that.

You say, ‘I’m just making a living. The kids like it, it’s not your fault the world isn’t perfect and they don’t understand it. Or that some girls feel like they’re weird or that they should be making beauty salons instead of whatever they feel like.’ But it is in a way. You’re just a piece of the fault. You are a part of that thought growing in a kid’s mind about how they should be and what to think. Make it be the right idea. Please. Make a kid’s world a little less narrow-minded and stereotypical. Make some of it right.

Callie W., age 10

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Lego’s response, about two weeks following Callie’s Letter:

Dear Callie,

Thank you for writing to us with your concerns about the design of our LEGO (R) Friends product line.

We listened very carefully to what girls around the world told us in four years of concept development for LEGO Friends: and we’ve used their input to create a theme that invites girl who appreciate these qualities to the LEGO building experience.

Many girls told us they had trouble identifying with the LEGO minifigure’s unrealistic appearance. As role play is central to the LEGO Friends experience we designed a figure with a more realistic appearance. While we understand that this theme is out of the norm for LEGO as, like you said, we are a gender neutral company. We feel it’s a step in the right direction to get girls more involved with LEGO products. Sadly, over the year, many of our girl fans have diminished and moved onto toys that appeal to them. For this reason, we decided to conduct studies with children in this age group. We found that little girls really enjoyed having male and female minifigures in their sets, while the little boys would take the girl minifigure out before playing. Boys tend to like to create “good guy versus bay guy” types of scenes, while girls enjoy role play, such as going shopping with their minifigures.

If you would like, Callie, you can take a look at our recent official press release in regards to our new Friends line. It may be something that you’re interested in. If you visit Aboutus.LEGO.com and click on Press Room and then Corporate News, you will be able to view our recent press release. I hope that this is of interest to you.

We appreciate you taking the time to share you thoughts and concerns with us. Listening to what our fans have to say helps us improve our current and future products, so I’ve passed your comments on to our design team.

Thank you again for contacting us………

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Lego – Girls left your company because you stopped making gender neutral toys, and focused on boys and movies licenses. You pushed girls out. Girls didn’t lost an interest in building, they lost in interest in a boy-centric company. You gendered your toy, not little girls.

Lego – Little girls don’t go shopping with their friends. They are little girls with wild imaginations and a sense of adventure. You gave them beauty shops and cupcake bakeries. Science laboratories do not come with accessories, they come with science equipment and tools.

Lego – You are correct, Friends is out of the norm for Lego. Why do girls need out of the norm Lego? Why do girls need a different version?

Me, holding my daughter and my baby nieces. What messages are these girls growing up with?

Media is a diet, and these days, we consume a lot of media. Screen time, advertisements, print, billboards, products….it is everywhere. Media is a part of our children’s lives like no other generation before them. What is it telling them?

When I wrote these two questions on Facebook yesterday, I was just wasting time while my attention span was getting increasingly short as I finished up a chapter for my editor. I wasn’t expecting to turn either into a blog post, until I finished a 90 minute interview with a newspaper reporter. A lot of what I was telling her about gender stereotypes, sexualization, and girls in the media was new to her and I could tell that a couple of facts blew her mind. Later in the afternoon I came back to the page and the difference in answers to these two questions was staggering. It was the perfect side-by-side comparison to what I had just been speaking to the reporter about.

Question 1: “When I was eight years old, I wanted to be _____________________ when I grew up.”

The 179 answers given by our community were fun to read. It seems the general age range of people who answered was 18-55(ish).

Answers: Lots of teachers, nurses, veternarians, astronauts, marine biologists, performers (dance, stage, singing), forensic scientists, paleontologists, and archaeologists. Photographers, National Geographic explorers/writers, artists, lawyers, and doctors rounded out the top answers. “A mom” was another common answer.

There were a few fighter pilots, politicians, librarians, journalists, nuns, police officers, animal trainers, fashion designers, a judge and a computer programmer.

There were some original answers, like: “Once I gave up on becoming Chinese” and a pool digger. A James Bond villain and a mafia hit man.  Jedi, Indiana Jones, and Solid Gold dancer – holla to the 80′s kids!

Several of the women said they desperately wanted to be a boy. A couple of people wanted to morph into a dog, a tiger, a horse. I get that, as when I was eight years old I wanted to be a unicorn.

What I loved was the huge diversity in answers. Some people became their childhood dream, others found new dreams along the way. I wonder how different the answers would be if we polled a large group of 8 year olds today. Specifically, what answers would the girls give? What are girls encouraged to explore and become these days? 

Question 2: ”What the market bears is a litmus test of our society, and right now the message for girls is that _______________?” 

• “…being an airhead-concerned about weight, beauty, clothes, and themselves; is more important than enforcing they BE some one-scientist, Dr, RN, Firefighter, Manicurist, coach, whatever their little hearts desire!” –Alicia
• “…they can only aspire to look pretty and dress in sexualized clothing. That they aren’t capable of having careers that have anything to do with science or math and they should focus instead on sexy, frilly, pink things to make themselves look good for others (particularly boys/men).” –Sandy
• “being a girl is essentially different from just being a child; it is an ethereal thing which must be constantly sustained with copious amounts of pink and sparkles lest, like Tinker Bell, it perishes because we did not believe hard enough, and we become no longer a girl, but something lost and invisible.” –Kylie
• “…That style is more than substance. And that achieving that style is an endless, uphill battle that will never be won.” –Monica
• “…the shorter the skirt, the heavier the makeup, the more flagrant the flaunting of low self worth through various means, the more ‘normal’ you are.” –Susan
• “…girl power means you can do or be anything, as long as you do it society’s way.” –Alice
• “…be cute, be sexy, be pretty but don’t be yourself.” -Jennifer
• “…sex sells.” –Chris
• “…Outward appearance and their ability to flaunt it is what will get them ahead in life.” –Jodi
• “…your options are limited. your dreams are not your own.” – Jill
• “…Don’t expect to get ahead in life without being pretty, even if you are smart and talented.” –Megan
• “….you should be seen, but not heard.” – Jennifer
• “…Beauty is worth” – Alison
• “…there is some recognition that they can achieve much, but that it is farcical or a waste or contemptible if they don’t look cute doing it, or that they achieve only because they fail at being attractive.” –Tara
• “…pink glitter makes you a woman.” –Sarah
• “…They are objects.” –Jayne
• “…We have no worth outside of Hollywood’s version of beauty and nothing to contribute if we cannot measure up to the impossible standard.” –Cheri
• “…the only option is boy OR girl; they cannot simply be a child.” -Elizabeth

Doesn’t that just take your breath away?? What messages to girls from media are missing? What COULD media be telling our girls? That their dreams, ideas, talents, visions, goals, and voice are what make them such valuable members of our families and our society.

Read over the answers again. They are all the same. From Disney’s new Princess Sophia to Barbie to Monster High to reality tv and music videos watched by tweens and teens, or almost any other kind of children’s entertainment, the message to girls is their beauty is their worth, and if they don’t have a certain version of beauty, they have no worth.

Now go back up and read the answers to the first question again. Are girls today getting the message they can be all those things? Or are we doing an incredible job of selling short 50% of children?

Media is a powerful force that not even the best parenting can avoid. We can help deter it, but we sure have our work cut out for us. What kind of things are you doing in your home to give your girls more meaningful, healthy messages?

Newest Miss Representation Trailer (2011 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection) from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

A Guest Post by: Lori Day

Sarah and Poppy Burge, infamous beauty-obsessed mother/daugther duo.

Was this a fluky experience? I think so. The lunch area being comprised of all moms and daughters was unusual. The fact that all eight girls were wearing all pink was unusual—I mean, girls wear a lot of pink these days and it definitely is “the uniform,” but there are usually some girls wearing purple at the very least, or even some other colors. (Although, if you’ve never noticed this degree of little-girl pink- ubiquity, start paying attention in public places like malls, airports and food co-ops!)

The fact that two of the eight girls were wearing Disney costumes out to Costco and it was not Halloween or a dress-up birthday party seemed a tad above the usual ratio.

Taken all together, the amount of pink in the form of tulle, satin, glitter, make-up, kitten heels, and little girl bling was highly concentrated in space and time. But you know what? That’s what made me realize that culturally, we now have somewhat of an alliance between princess culture and mommy culture. Executive summary: For a lot of our daughters, the real world of girls and the Disney World marketed to girls have become the same thing.

Yesterday’s post about the invisible girl with the book came about from a question Melissa Wardy asked during a discussion on the Pigtail Pals’ Facebook page about why parents stopped questioning all of the tremendous changes in what is marketed to girls over the last ten years and how it is marketed:  

I believe that many parents have stopped questioning because they, too, are desensitized by our 24/7 media-saturated culture in which the value of females lies less in what they do than in how they look while doing it. Perhaps in these hard economic times, the fantasy that your child is the fairest in the land—or could be with the right focus on her appearance—seems normal, and even beneficial, in the eyes of those parents who do not spend much time intellectually contemplating the commodification of female beauty.

Perhaps parents also stopped questioning because there can be tremendous enjoyment and camaraderie in shared beauty play for females, young and old. Moms usually have the best of intentions. They are supporting each other, acknowledging each other’s children, expressing femininity, and having a great time together being girly. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this, and it has always been this way to some degree…just not to this degree.

My concern is with the amount of focus our society now places on female appearance, the enormous multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around it, and the necessary insecurities these corporations must instill in females, from a very young age, in order to turn them into lifetime consumers. Personally, I advocate for a deeper consideration of these issues by all parents, but I also recognize that a whole lot of parents really like things the way they are, and believe that good parenting will take care of it all, despite the research that has emerged on the tremendous number of hours of powerful marketing and media messages kids consume every single day.

I think it’s like rolling dice. Remember when it was legal to advertise smoking? Strong parents sometimes managed to raise children who did not smoke. But the millions of dollars spent on the seductive advertising campaigns for cigarettes was a Siren call to many kids who did all, eventually, leave the close supervision of their parents and wander out into the big world where they consumed this advertising, and joined a peer group of kids who thought smoking was cool. What was needed was strong parenting and laws that forced the tobacco companies to recognize the harm to children (and adults) inherent in their marketing and profiteering.

So I think it all depends on how one views the world. If you are the kind of parent of who is inclined to look below the shiny surface of pop culture to understand the unhealthy role being played by money and corporations in the lives of girls and women, and are prepared to raise your daughter in ways that might occasionally make you look either out of touch or antagonistic to mainstream girl culture, then you will naturally question, question, question. If not, not.

While I hope more and more parents will go back to questioning, I equally hope that the vigilance and activism of advocacy groups like Pigtail Pals – Redefine Girly  and so many others (see the blog roll on my website for other recommended individuals and groups to follow who are working on making the world a better place for all children) will eventually change the ground rules for the marketers as did happen decades ago regarding the cigarette companies. Social change takes a long time and a lot of hard work by a lot of individuals, but it can happen, and I am proud to be a small part of this massive grassroots effort. What is at stake is nothing less than our girls’ future, and that is not something to gamble.

Poppy Burge, 7yo, received several vouchers for cosmetic surgeries for her 7th birthday.

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Lori Day

Barbie Fashionista. Box says for ages 3+.

My youngest brother is home for the holidays, and while at Target toy shopping for my kids, he decided to go into the Barbie aisle because over Thanksgiving he had watched the 20/20 piece featuring SPARK Summit dynamo Dana Edell and was stunned at what was going on in girlhood. He couldn’t believe some of what he saw during the interview with Dana wasn’t illegal. He has heard me talk about it for several years, but he wanted to see it for himself. He lives in Costa Rica and doesn’t have kids, so a lot of what Pigtail Pals talks about isn’t on his radar.

He was shopping for Legos for Amelia and Benny, but walked into the Barbie aisle to see what the fuss was about. Over Christmas he asked me, “Why are all of the Barbies dressed like whores?”.  Valid question, pejorative aside. The Barbie to our left has a face loaded with make-up, a skin-tight shirt that reads Miss Sassy, a chain link belt, and a hot pink thong clearly visible under the metallic hot pink micro-miniskirt that barely covers her Barbie bum.

For the record, he got his niece a four foot long stuffed dolphin. Good uncle.

Why do almost all of the plastic dolls we see in the toy aisles look like what we would stereotype as a sex worker? I have yet to understand how companies are passing these off as children’s toys. But parents are accepting it, and buying them, and the cycle continues.

But for parents who aren’t buying it, and who are working hard to keep their young daughters from being sexualized, how in the world does one explain Monster High to a five year old? The thing with Monster High et al is that they are so highly inappropriate, it is kind of inappropriate to discuss with a child why they are inappropriate. Since we can’t really use words like “skid row hooker” with our kindergartners and all…

Last night on our Facebook page I was asked the following:
“How do you explain why the Monster High dolls, and the like, aren’t good to a 5 year old? How do you explain what is wrong with them? I told her once that ‘they’re just not very nice.’ I honestly didn’t know what to tell her!” -Danielle

Mattel's Monster High character Clawdeen Wolf, for ages 6+.

This was my reply when the situation arose for Amelia and I:

What I said to my 5yo was that Monster High dolls were dressed in a way that I felt was inappropriate for children, that their faces looked mean not nice, and that their bodies sent our hearts unhealthy messages. We talked about different colors of hair and skin being really cool, but that these dolls made little girls focus too much on being pretty for other people and being too grown-up and that is not what kids need to do.

A few months down the road when she asked for more info, I told her that Monster High dolls have the kind of bodies that can make girls sick, because a real person could never have a body like that, and that I loved my little girl’s healthy body so much I would never want her to have something that would make her think her body wasn’t amazing.

And when she kept pushing about the clothing, I told her that girls who dress like that often don’t have full and happy hearts, and they use clothing like that to get attention and make themselves feel full. Then I took it a step further, and had her come upstairs to her dress up drawer, and picked out clothing I knew was way too small and tight for her. She put it on, and I told her to go play. Amelia said she couldn’t move because of her clothes. I then asked if she thought Monster High was silly, because how could those girls move and be teenagers who do fun things and play sports. She said she thought maybe they just stood around and looked pretty.

I told her she was absolutely right. And then we talked about other toys she had, how different they looked, and what kinds of things those dolls could do instead. I hope to grow the idea of full and happy hearts as Amelia (and Benny) age, to help her make good and healthy decisions about all kinds of things: healthy eating and exercise, drugs and alcohol, sex and relationships, good behavior in school, etc. If that is our baseline, I think the things that fall so far outside of that, whether it is Monster High or music lyrics or friends who are a bad influence, my kids will see it for what it is and be that much more equipped to make good choices for themselves.

I want to teach them to use their intuition and common sense when it comes to hard decisions. It is what I do when I tell myself there is no way in hell that dolls like Monster High or Bratz or hooker Barbies will end up in my home. I respect my children far too much to feed them a diet of garbage like that.

Then another mom added this:

“My 4 year old asked the same thing. I pointed out the clothing and said that girls her age don’t wear clothes that look like that. She seemed ok with that answer at this point, but I am certain we will need to go more in depth with it soon! We had the same convo over the Bratz dolls and some Barbies too.” -Christi

Mattel says Monster High is for tweens and teens. Which would be true, if teens played with dolls and shopped in the toy aisle and stood three feet tall.

I love my job and the conversations that I get to have with parents every day and the emails or Facebook comments I receive thanking me for changing the way they see their girls and the marketplace. That’s what media literacy is all about — getting people to see the previously unseen. Once your eyes are open to it, you can’t unsee it.

We don’t need to agree with each other all of the time, and I think it is better when we don’t, because our discussions make everybody stretch and think a little bit harder. I learn from you guys every day, and I hope that you are learning from me. A group this large….there is no way all of us will see one thing the same way all of the time.  And that’s okay, as long as we treat each other with respect.

Of course, there are those that aren’t learning or seeing the Big Picture, and maybe never will. And that’s when we play Media Literacy Bingo! I realize that a lot of times, my blog or Facebook posts are preaching to the choir. We are a smart group already in tune to the dangers of childhood sexualization, objectification and sexualization in the media, and the limitations of gender stereotypes in childhood.

We are the front line of an army working for social justice for our children. Right now it is an uphill batte, but a fight worth taking to the streets. Am I overreacting? The vast majority of our daughters do not like their bodies, depression and Eating Disorders are sky rocketing, sexualized women’s bodies can be seen everywhere (including G-rated kids media and toys) in our culture, our sons have their own host of issues, 1/5 of kids are having sex before fourteen years of age, and 1 in 4 teens will suffer from dating violence (and maybe fall into the 1 in 6 women who will survive rape or attempted rape).

Crying yet? Ready to fight? I sure am. As Megan Mascorro-Jackson said so eloquently: Large injustices are allowed because small injustices have become commonplace.

Though it was suggested to me yesterday by some commenters, I’m not sure I can cure malaria, fix job inequality, or single-handedly stop sex traffiking…although those are all important issues. I think I can do what I do best, and that is awaken a consciousness among parents, continue to be a resource to those that need it, and walk the walk by putting better products on the marketplace.

This I know for sure: When we know better, we can do better.

Now – let’s play some Media Literacy Bingo!!

Everyone please take a card, and let’s play with just the comments I received yesterday…..I want you to see this, not to make fun of people, but to see the kind of push back we get when we talk about these issues so that when you are discussing them with friends and family, you don’t take things personally or get discouraged. I have received comments identical to the ones below on a dozen other posts. They are repetitive on this blog and others that tackle these issues. I want you to see it as a pattern of comments made to those of us that ask people to see things differently, to see the Big Picture of what is happening to childhood and to women in the media.  

1. “If you want your daughter to be a stuck up, lazy, unfashionable, feminist, you’re on the right track sweetie.”

2. “I think you need to find something to do Melissa. I’m glad I dont sit around trying to run the world and tell people what they should and shouln’t do.”

3. “What you are apparently disturbed by is called fetishism, or sexualization of something not normally associated with sex…That’s your dirty mind, not mine.”

4. “I think you’re looking a bit too hard for something to offend you.”

5. “Women are facing any number of difficult struggles for equality that get marginalized because folks like you get their dander up over minutia such as this.”

6. “I stand by the terming of this as “minutia,” not worthy of the attention of an intelligent, educated woman. Tempest in a teapot.”

7. “Sorry Melissa, but I’m more offended by your offense to this ad than anything else.” 

8. “My advice, either crawl back under your 1950′s circa rock or try and deal with the changing times and media.”

9. “Melissa has every right to express her outrage. And to damage the efficacy of the women’s rights movement and  decrease attention for the REAL issues, such as income and job inequality.”

10. “You’re the one with the dirty mind and the free times.”

11. “Women like you make all of us look bad at some point.”

12. “Dear Melissa, I’m sorry that you are a bored housewife who can’t take a little fun.”

13. “Please start reading into our current issues of America like the Wall Street protests, the national debt, the potential candidates for president, or even the funding needed for a malaria vaccine.”

14. “To call it sexulized or even mildly pornographic is taking things to an extreme of feminazi’ism that is just rediculous.”

15. “Find something real to be upset about.”

16. “You’re what we call a “pre-angry”. Always prepared to get into a fight about any little thing.

17. “You need a hobby.”

18. Can you fill in the blank for a Free Space from something said you?

Anybody get a Bingo?

A huge thank you to Lisa Ray of Parents for Ethical Marketing for creating and sharing with us this Bingo card.

Pfizer Consumer Healthcare

Attention – ChapStick Consumer Relations

To Whom It May Concern:

I have used your brand for 25years, ever since my mom put my very first tube of ChapStick in the bib pocket of my snowpants before heading out for an afternoon of sledding. I can remember feeling very grown up, and ever since I have had a tube or six of Cherry ChapStick in a pocket or arm’s reach. I have used your brand on my own children, and they know to swipe their lips before heading out to play during our chilly Wisconsin winters. That’s all over now.

ChapStick, we’re through. My family will not be using your brand again. I tried to tell you why on Facebook, but you deleted my comment. You deleted the comments of many, many women who spoke out against your objectifying ad ”Where Do Lost ChapSticks Go?” prominently featuring the back end of a woman bent over a couch. In fact, before you deleted it, the photo file uploaded to your page by some intern was labeled “Ass”. I do not support companies that use the objectified body parts of women to sell their product. I do not support a company that deletes the voices of its female customers, but allow sexist and sexual comments from men to remain. I refuse support a company that disrespects its female customers, both in its advertising and social media outreach. As a woman, a mother, and a small business owner those actions offend me. 

Why you paid an advertising agency big dollars to use a woman’s “Ass” to sell me a product I put on my lips seems a bit off. Why you chose to go with the ad that sexualizes a woman and gives off that low budget, basement porny-feeling right at the beginning of the winter season when every parent across America is in need a good balm to put on her kid’s lips seems to me as though you don’t understand that women control 86% of consumer spending. There isn’t much in question about your ad – the odd pose, butt in the air, the skin tight jeans, the sexy blowing hair – it is all a mind-numbingly sophomoric use of implied sex to sell a product. The thing is, for everyone who uses (used) ChapStick, we know that those little tubes go missing all of the time, and there were dozens of other very clever ways for you to depict this. But you didn’t. You chose to go with “Ass”.

So I no longer go with ChapStick. This weekend I spent $16.00 on four tubes of Burt’s Bees and I love my new balm. I’ll be a Burt’s customer now, because I don’t have to worry about them sexualizing and degrading me or my daughter, nor reinforcing to my husband and son that women are nothing more than sex objects. That is simply not good enough for my family, and I do not accept it.

Sincerely,

Melissa Wardy

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UPDATE: Because ChapStick is deleting voices from Facebook and does not have a Twitter account, should you choice to join you voice and speak out against this, I encourage a mailed letter, or add your signature to the change.org petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/ceo-pfizer-healthcare-chapstick-remove-ads-that-objectify-women-and-sexualize-lip-balm

“Turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person.”- Jean Kilbourne, Wellesley Centers for Women, Miss Representation

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Updated Update: ChapStick has removed the ad and issue a really crappy apology that is both deflective and untruthful.

We see that not everyone likes our new ad, and please know that we certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone! Our fans and their voices are at the heart of our new advertising campaign, but we know we don’t always get it right. We’ve removed the image and will share a newer ad with our fans soon! We apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being deleted and while we never intend to pull anyone’s comments off our wall, we do comply with Facebook guidelines and remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees

Walk with me, now, and see the forest through the trees.

The JC Penney T-shirt Gate is actually not about a t-shirt. Kind of like the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy nor Roman. Confusing, I know.

This entire viral uproar is over parents and other concerned individuals being sick and tired of  the pervasive message marketed everywhere to our daughters that being pretty and obsessed with boys and shopping (maybe cupcakes and puppies as Anderson Cooper points out) is what being a girl is all about. It has come to define girlhood, and nearly every product made for them. Walk through any clothing department or toy aisle — what messages do you see for girls? What messages do you see for boys? It is gender apartheid, and our daugthers ended up with the short end of the stick.

I call bullshit. While JC Penney took one shirt down, as I said on Tuesday night, they’ve got another dozen that continue to sell girls short. A JC Penney juniors buyer purchased these shirts, in dozens of styles, from a manufacturer; another employee wrote the offensive and sexist online product descriptions. This doesn’t seem to be a one-time mistake. This seems to be a pattern of selling girls short. I don’t see the funny.

Pigtail Pals has been here since 2009 fighting to put better products and messages in the marketplace for girls. We’ve been blogging and directing an amazing Parent Community to fight for our kids. And we’re not about to change our message. 

We created a tee in direct response to the garbage at JC Penney. It is selling like wildfire. And it ought to, because pretty’s got nothing to do with it.

I’d like to see the media focus on THIS tee, instead of the one at JC Penney. We need to change the way we think about our girls.

Pigtail Pals new tee, available on eight colors 3T - Ladies.

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I also want to set the the record straight for clothing label Self Esteem, owned by All Access Apparel, who unfortunately was brought into this by media and bloggers who did not check their facts. The LA clothing company Self Esteem is NOT the manufacturer of the tees in question.

Unfortunately, no one at Self Esteem was ever contacted to confirm that they indeed were the manufacturer of the T-shirt. The company was associated with the shirt because they were grouped on the JCPenney website where the ‘Too Pretty’ shirt was displayed.

“This huge oversight on the part of the media and concerned mothers has caused our company’s name to be defamed not only with one of our largest customers, JCPenney, but with our entire customer base,” said President of Self Esteem Richard Clareman. “We have always and will continue to promote positive messages to young girls.”

Tomorrow I send my child to her first day of school. Her first day of kindergarten. Her first day of formal education in a public school with years and years and years of learning to follow.

So I’ll ask you kindly to get out of her way, JC Penney. You too, Orbeez and Skechers. Mattel and your Monster High, we’ve already had words.

My daughter will not be sent to school with the message from her parents that she is inadequate. She will not be taught that she is incapable of learning, and mastering, what is taught to her at school. She will not be treated as though she were delicate. Tea cups are delicate, girls are not. She will not be encouraged, at the tender age of five, to be “flirty” or “sugarlicious”. Over my dead body will I give her the message that her beauty is her worth, or that at the age of five, she should be sexually objectifying herself. I take great issue with that notion, and it burns me to the core.

So this crap? Will NOT be coming into my home. Will NOT be poisoning my daughter’s self-image. Will NOT be teaching my son to sell girls short.  Stop selling shitty messages to my kids.

Exhibit A: JC Penney ‘self-esteem’ tee Too Pretty to do Homework

JC Penny thinks girls are too pretty to do homework.

Despite the direct contradiction to their charity Pennies From Heaven, this shirt teaches girls to expect very little from themselves, that their looks supercede their intellect, and that ‘being pretty’ will get you by. Pretty’s got nothing to do with school. Oh, and that little notion that the academic work should be left to the boys. In 2011, we are teaching the grand daughters of the Women’s Lib movement to forsake their education and have their looks be their main focus.

You can petition JC Penney and their shitty shirt right HERE. Even if they pull this shirt, they’ve got another dozen just like it.

So don’t buy it, right? It is just one shirt. Right?

Wrong. WRONG.

It is the culture of consumer beauty and self-objectified sex surrounding our girls that drips right off a script page from a Kardashian-esque reality tv show. The message that beauty and sexiness measure a woman’s worth, and that one can never be too young to focus on these things.

Exhibit B: Orbeez Soothing Spa with magic rainbow de-stressing beads, for that stressed-out 11yo in your life. Because, OMG, school is just like soooooo freaking hard! You can watch the commercial HERE.

Orbeez wants you to know that school is hard!

Orbeez wants you to know that foot spas help your hurting brain from all that learning!

Who needs hard things, like learning, when you can relax at the spa and work on your pretty. How I went through my entire girlhood in the absense of spa products and services usually reserved for adult women of a certain income and lifestyle, I’ll never know.

Learning hurts! Pretty is fun!

Exhibit C: Mattel Monster High Monster Mash backpack …because prostitute-chic NEVER goes out of style for the under-10 set, and when sending our daughters to school, who doesn’t want them to aim to be a Hollywood Boulevard hooker?

Now your favorite friendly prostitutes can go with you to school! Whee!

I like the sparkle. Don't like sexual innuendo on my little daughter's feet.

Pre-schoolers and Gradschoolers do NOT need to be 'flirty'.

Anyhoo….let’s change the way we think about our girls. Let’s do better. They deserve it.

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Update: Make sure to check out our NEW TEE created in response to the JC Penney tee. It is selling like wildfire! Let’s all build girls up, not sell them short.

Pigtail Pals created a new tee, availabe in eight colors sizes 3T - Ladies.

The child may be beautiful. The photographs are certainly done with a keen eye for art and fashion.

She is so young, so baby faced and clearly pre-pubescent, that it feels awkward to consider the idea that these photos carry a sexual innuendo because we know we are looking at a very young girl.                                                  

Yet they do. Implied nudityand fetishized props and sultry, “Come hither” stares, arched backs, slightly parted lips or fingers playfully, suggestively around the mouth…..

We’re talking about a 10 year old girl. A child, ten years of age. Not old enough to babysit, but apparently old enough to be posed in photos so ripe with sexual innuedo it drips off of the page with a stank.

Sexual innuendo has no place near a 10 year girl, regardless of if she is wearing high fashion or the photographer is famous or that she is French and was posing for a French fashion magazine.  I’m not sure this can be considered “art”, as I think art loses it’s integrity at the expense of an exploited child.

None of this would come naturally to the little girl, she is being coached by the photographer to pose this way. She is being taught how to project adult sexuality. She is being coached to become an object of sexual fantasy. She is being sexualized. She has been shot this way many times, which tells me neither her parents nor her agent have an issue with the photographs they are signing off on.

She is losing her childhood, and the cultural acceptance of this actually consumes so many little girls and parts of their girlhood it has become a national health crisis. The issue isn’t just about Thylane, the girl you see above, or even her mother who was only upset over the expense of a necklace the child wore and begrudgingly shut down the child’s facebook and tumblr pages. The issue here is ALL girls. There seems to be a rush for our daughters to grow up, to become little women. Sexy little women. Their natural born right to be a child is being interrupted by apathetic adults.

There seems to be something about certain parents, who live vicariously through the youth and vibrant beauty of these little, amazing girl creatures. They find it acceptable to sexualize their little girls, make dozens of excuses for it, but then lash out at the criticism by those who know how very dangerous this is.  Dangerous both for the child’s self-worth directly receiving these age-inappropriate messages, and to girls everywhere who have had one more peg of taboo slide out; a taboo meant to protect them from what should be a universal truth that little girls are not sex objects nor sex partners.

We are losing our girls to sexualization as parents permit toys that look like hookers, magazines that eat up starving young models, celebrities to act as role models, and corporations and media who profit off of the whole mess by making it extremely difficult for parents to afford or find better choices. And those are just the girls lucky enough to be born in America. In other parts of the world they are turned into brides and prostitutes as young as the age of five.

Young Thylane and her mother are just a symptom of the problem. The problem, you see, is that there continues to be a market for sexualized little girls.

I fear there always will be. Until parents start to do better, and demand better for our daughters, our little girls will continue to get lost. I just wonder, can we get them back?