Archive for February, 2009

One A Day wants to teach your teen daughter what should really be important to her: her skin! Not yucky muscles! Only gross girls have muscles! Ew! How about your teen son? What should be important to him? His muscles of course! He wouldn’t want to be called a wimp! He needn’t worry about his skin; that’s for the gay boys. (Fine, the ad does not imply homophobia, however, it’s still a put-you-in-a-box-sorted-by-gender kind of thing, which, as you know, I hate.)

We usually dvr everything we watch, so we very rarely see commercials these days. Thanks to our pre-dvr days and my distaste of gender- and race-based boxes and limitations and whatnot, Lena and Liberty are very marketing savvy and when they were much younger, they would regularly lament the lack of girls in a Matchbox commercial or lack of boys in a My Little Pony commercial or whatever, which also led to discussions about the lack of people of color in advertising and how sometimes society’s views of what girls and boys should do and be is narrow-minded and makes people sad if they don’t fit with those stereotypes. Promoting these stereotypes also makes people less likely to stand up for people who are “different” by the media’s standards, which is supremely uncool. So a couple of days ago when we accidentally watched some live tv and had to suffer through the pain of 2 whole minutes of commercials, this One-A-Day for teens ad came on, and our household being the way it is, we all gasped and talked about it for the next 2 days. Good times.

I love that Lena, Liberty, and even Maya are sensitive to these things. When Liberty was about 7 she drew a picture of a black ninja. Her name was Saga and Liberty said, “I want to make a tv show about a black girl who is a ninja because there aren’t any and what if they think they can’t be a ninja?” And I think that’s compassionate. Pointing out injustices in the media makes them sensitive to injustice in general, which means they don’t bat an eye when somebody goes against the stereotypes and maybe they even feel like they could stand up for somebody who is being ridiculed for going against “normal.” They don’t shame a little boy for playing with My Little Ponies, they don’t shame a little girl for playing with Matchbox cars. They are more open-minded than most adults and it makes me proud.

Recently, we’ve been having conversations about how blonds are portrayed on tv. They’re either “mean or dumb” according to the girls, with the exception of Maddie on Suite Life of Zack and Cody. They see these portrayals and because they know that those stereotypes are wrong and narrow-minded they don’t internalize the messages, which I think might be the biggest benefit of teaching them about these things. Instead of seeing those images and saying, “That’s how I’m supposed to be; what’s wrong with me that I don’t feel that way?” They say, “Whoever wrote that is closed-minded and I’m going to write something better.” And that’s how the world changes. That’s right, I just said my kids are going to change the world. Who’s  with me?

By the way, Lena, Liberty, and Maya came up with a perfect solution for One-A-Day: Why not have One-A-Day Teen: Skin Care Formula, One-A-Day Teen: Strength Building Formula, One-A-Day Teen: Brain-Boosting Formula, etc. with gender-neutral colors on the packaging? PR people, are you listening? They’re not even 10 and they’re smarter than you.