Calling all parents of little girls - BABY girls! Did you know that your little girls no longer have to wait until they are adult women - or even young women - to wear high heeled shoes? Isn't that great! Two women have come up with the notion of manufacturing & marketing cushy, squishy high heels for baby girls! Must be legit because I saw them interviewed on CNN yesterday. As to their critics, pointed out by the interviewer, they respond that their inspiration was Sex & The City. I'm NOT kidding.
Let's back up a bit.
Parents raise their children based on the premise that their experiences of their early years will effect their later years. We discipline our children when they are young so that they will learn certain boundaries, parameters of socially accepted behavior. In other words, we teach them how to play nicely with others as children in the hopes that they will play nicely with adults later in life. When our children experience trauma in their young life we worry about how this will effect them when they grow up. Will they always be fearful of such & so? Will there be any lasting emotional scars, etc.? We send them to kindergarten because they need skills that will help them maneuver 1st, & then onto second grade etc.
In other words - we acknowledge the theory of "cause & effect." With respect to all these sorts of things we accept the notion that what our very young children are exposed to will inform how they grow & mature year after year after year and on into adult-hood. This is accepted thought - right?
Well NOT when it comes to gender-coded toys & clothing & books & movies/tv. With respect to these two issues, many parents turn a blind eye. Willfully. Mind-numbingly so. Whenever I voice fears or concerns on the subject I am often met with the attitude that I am making too much of it. And this from people who also believe that what is learned in first grade effects second grade etc. We accept the notion of learned behavior except when it comes to gender coding. It is as if we believe that with respect to this issue somehow our children's senses will be turned off & unaffected. Oh please! That's ridiculous.
It seems to me that this blind eye to gender coding is due to a denial of how we - the adults - have ourselves been so effected. We don't want to acknowledge our own gender-coded-ness or the very real, still pervasive gender coding of our world.
Back to high heels for baby girls - the fact that the one woman interviewed actually thought Sex & The City was a logical source of inspiration for an idea associated with baby girls says it all about willful blindness. I can not help but think - again, using cause & effect reasoning - that parents who would put high heels on their baby girls will then, as these girls continue to grow, not monitor the clothing that their daughters wear, clothing that sends a message not just to boys (& some men, sadly) but also to the girls themselves.
I once saw a little girl wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm expensive."
Oh my. Parenting at its worst.
Let's back up a bit.
Parents raise their children based on the premise that their experiences of their early years will effect their later years. We discipline our children when they are young so that they will learn certain boundaries, parameters of socially accepted behavior. In other words, we teach them how to play nicely with others as children in the hopes that they will play nicely with adults later in life. When our children experience trauma in their young life we worry about how this will effect them when they grow up. Will they always be fearful of such & so? Will there be any lasting emotional scars, etc.? We send them to kindergarten because they need skills that will help them maneuver 1st, & then onto second grade etc.
In other words - we acknowledge the theory of "cause & effect." With respect to all these sorts of things we accept the notion that what our very young children are exposed to will inform how they grow & mature year after year after year and on into adult-hood. This is accepted thought - right?
Well NOT when it comes to gender-coded toys & clothing & books & movies/tv. With respect to these two issues, many parents turn a blind eye. Willfully. Mind-numbingly so. Whenever I voice fears or concerns on the subject I am often met with the attitude that I am making too much of it. And this from people who also believe that what is learned in first grade effects second grade etc. We accept the notion of learned behavior except when it comes to gender coding. It is as if we believe that with respect to this issue somehow our children's senses will be turned off & unaffected. Oh please! That's ridiculous.
It seems to me that this blind eye to gender coding is due to a denial of how we - the adults - have ourselves been so effected. We don't want to acknowledge our own gender-coded-ness or the very real, still pervasive gender coding of our world.
Back to high heels for baby girls - the fact that the one woman interviewed actually thought Sex & The City was a logical source of inspiration for an idea associated with baby girls says it all about willful blindness. I can not help but think - again, using cause & effect reasoning - that parents who would put high heels on their baby girls will then, as these girls continue to grow, not monitor the clothing that their daughters wear, clothing that sends a message not just to boys (& some men, sadly) but also to the girls themselves.
I once saw a little girl wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm expensive."
Oh my. Parenting at its worst.
Maybe I was 4 or 5 years old when I sneaked into my mother’s closet and tried on her high-heel shoes. I remember clunking around gypsy-like until my feet hurt when suddenly I lost my balance and hit my head on the footboard of my parent's bed.
ReplyDeleteHigh-heals for babies, it staggers the imagination. People invent crap like this because they think there is a market for cuteness, i.e., people who would put a tutu on a poodle, or a parent who would turn their precocious little darling into a Dolly Parton doll. A child sneaking into a parent’s closet is considered normal and playful curiosity; an adult perpetrating this upon a child raises the ante of stupidity.
Here are a line of toys called Struts. Echidne describes them as Whorses (3/20/2008 2:00 PM). Would you buy one of these for your kid?
Would you buy one for me? I like the pink one.