Homeless dolls?

Recently, the American Girl company (owned by Mattel, the makers of Barbie) came out with a new doll named "Gwen Thompson".  Gwen looks like all the other American Girl dolls, and also comes with books about her "life".  But this Gwen did not grow up in an interesting time period--she's the limited edition doll for 2010. And she's homeless.

New York Post has an  article that bashes this idea, saying that this tells young girls that "men are bad. Fathers abandon women without cause. She's also telling me that women are helpless. And that children in this great country, where dolls sell for nearly 100 bucks a pop, are allowed to sleep in motor vehicles. But mothers don't lose custody over this injustice. Because, you see, they are victims, too"

So is this a bad sign, that middle-class America is willing to pay $95 for a homeless doll?

CBS news thinks not. In their article, they cite many mothers shopping for their daughters who are glad that some awareness is being raised.

Shockingly, though, profits from this doll will not be going to help homeless people. However, the company has given half a million dollars to HomeAid, a non profit group that helps the homeless find housing.

So who are these dolls being sold to? Both articles discussed this, saying that the dolls are directed at young girls, around the age of 8. But Gwen is undoubtedly too expensive for a homeless child, so she would be sold to children whose parents can afford Gwen, most likely those in the middle-class.

Is it right to have a homeless doll? The American Girl company has multi-racial dolls, and previously, only one who truly suffered financially (the one from the Great Depression). What do you think?

S******* and the power of words

We have already discussed in depth the n-word in class, and whether or not Huck is aware of the implications of the word, as a child. This very much reminded me of a point I remember reading in Inherit the Wind, where they discuss how one of the lawyers managed to convince a jury that swears on a written page only have as much power as you give them.

Of course, Huck knows that the n-word has negative connotations, but Huck Finn aside-- is swearing, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing?

For instance, if you were learning another language and you came across a "bad word," let's say, for instance, "merde" in French, and you didn't know what it meant, does the word have any "power"?

If you are swearing, written or spoken, one would assume you knew of its consequences.But when I was little, and was the youngest of the family, I would often accidentally swear as a result of watching the Simpsons or even just listening to my mom sewing (she pricked her finger a lot), because I learned these words and something in the way my family reacted to them told me they were "bad". I was immediately attracted to them, so in kindergarten I happened to quote the word "s**t" to a fellow classmate, who ran off and told the teacher. I was embarrassed, but I had no notion of how bad of a word this one was, or why I shouldn't use it.

So how do we resolve kids not swearing? Should we teach them that some words are "bad"? What are the implications of having bad words and good words?


Also, an interesting quote from Inherit the Wind Henry Drummond: "I don't swear just for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. I think we should all the words we've got. Besides, there are damn few words that anybody understands."

Onslaught of a Different Nature

My camp sends out newsletters, and I remembered (while doing my previous post, Onslaught) about one statistic concerning children/advertising.
No Child Left Inside, an organization that promotes and lobbys for additions of outside-of-the-classroom curriculum such as sciences and social studies, reports that "a study found that young people could identify 1000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 plants or animals native to their backyards.” I couldn't find the exact details on the study, other than a short video from the NCLI coalition, but here's a chance to think for yourself.

Can you name 10 plants or animals native to the North Shore? This excludes all the plants your mom or dad might have put in the garden. I myself can only name a couple, and they are pretty lame at that (black squirrels, and all the streets in Winnetka named after trees).

Next, try taking these two quizzes ( 1 and 2 ) on sporcle.com
What did you score? Granted, there are not 1000 corporate logos-- in fact, there are only 72.

If you scored in any way similar to me, you would have done pretty well on the corporate logos part and pretty bad on the 10 plants and animals part. Huck Finn, however, would excel in the opposite way, of course.

So does this say anything about America today, versus what it was in Huck's time? Of course, there were no "corporate logos" in Huck's time, in fact, corporations were hardly in existance. But what is more important-- knowing logos, or knowing things about nature? Which are you going to use more?

Onslaught

Ellie (Pearls) posted a blog with an embedded video from a Dove commercial, as her blog was about advertising. I knew of another video from Dove, called "Onslaught" that argues that girls (note the usage of young children/innocence in the video) are exposed to too much advertising that will make them lower their self-esteem; advertisements that have beautiful, skinny, tanned, etc. women.  Check out the video, its just over a minute long.

Do you think that the advertisements shown in the video are a realistic represenation of advertisements that young girls/children would see on a daily basis?

Dove is clearly arguing that this is a problem. But if you worked for one of the ad agencies that produced such advertisements, do you think you would see this as a good or bad thing that there is so much exposure, regardless of how old the audience is that sees your advertisements?

Kiddie books

I vividly remember my 5th grade class when my teacher, a very open-minded and "awesome teacher" told us to bring in our favorite book from our childhood for reading time the next day. Everyone was shocked, and said that they weren't "real" books. It was at that point, that pivotal point, that we began to realize our childhood wasn't all silly games that unintenionally guided us.

A few years later, while at the Book Stall with my mom, she picked up the Little Prince and announced I had to read it. Skeptical, again in fear that its immaturity would be a nuisance and that it wouldn't have any "value" to me, I didn't read it for another few months. But when I finally picked it up, and started reading, I realized this was no ordinary childrens book.

For those of you who have read the Little Prince, or perhaps the original French version, Le Petit Prince, you would know that the Little Prince has a wild adventure that takes him to Earth, from  his home-asteroid. Along the way, the Little Prince (he remains nameless) encounters a drunkard, a king, a man who spends his life counting stars, and a man who wants to create a map of his asteroid, but who doesn't want to actually explore. I was shocked at how deep the book was, and speculated if children would be able to grasp any of these concepts-- the drunk who drinks to forget he's drunk, or the irony of a map maker who doesn't move from his desk on his lonely asteroid.

Not having the machinery/technology to go back in time and quiz myself, I wonder-- what major social problems can children understand? Many of these problems are complex, especially the realm of politics, but in a child's mind things can be simpler. Maybe children understand that book better than I did.

What will you remember? (another part of the "new year" blog)

Yesterday in class we had a discussion about "herstory." Almost exclusively, history has been written by and about men, because women were not equal and for the most part were not considered to have an important role in history. It is my opinion that in the further past, in almost ancient times, women really did not have a very important role in wars, major political issues, or other events defined by history. However, I think that the woman's view of history is always important, especially if her life is restricted to domesticity. I think that the true effects of a war are not seen on the battlefront, rather they are seen in a home, in civilian life.

America is currently at war, but because it is so far away, its an easy fact to forget if you aren't very close to someone off fighting, or if you don't often read the news on a daily basis. So in the future, when this war has ended, will you remember the battlefronts-- the bombers and terrorists, and things half way across the world, or will you remember what daily life? And which is more important-- something that effects very closely the minority, that is to say, those fighting, or its effects on the majority, safe and sound at home?

What's wrong with Princesses?

It seems as if all popular Disney movies have royalty, and for the female audience, princesses. I for one adored their perfect hair, dresses, and jewelry when I was a little girl. I "grew out of it" eventually, mostly when my older brothers told me they were going to play legos and if I wanted to join them no princesses were allowed. So it seems strange now, when I babysit an adorable 5 year old girl down the block, to read to her stories of princesses locked away in towers, or princesses who stick their noses up at everything and who are spoiled rotten brats. And of course, there are the stories of pretty princesses who land the perfect guy, but those never seem to interest her. So, what's wrong with this?

Technically, nothing, as long as we grow out of the idea that one day someone will show up at our house and declare that they've been looking for us, and that I'm actually a princess. (Princess Diaries). But an article I read in my English class last year discusses whether or not acting as a princess is feminist or not (page 2).

Not every little girl can be a princess, and I think this is where the problem lies. To have a princess means to also have peasantry, or at least classes below her. And do we really want to instill such a class structure on our future generations? Its a wonderful marketing device-- telling girls they are princesses will make them nag their parents even more for the many products out there--dresses, tiaras, jewelry, dolls, doll accessories, you name it.
So what if they don't grow out of this princess mind-set? Girls-- did you think of yourself as a princess when you were little? And guys, was there any equivalent in the boy world? 

Retrospective New Year

It's the new year! For us students, this means we get a vacation, with finals looming almost as soon as school restarts. So we bring in the new year happily, and cheerfully procrastinate studying for another week or two. Because the new year is basically in the middle of our school year, I feel as though its another excuse for vacation, which I don't object to at all, but is hardly anything more than another "holiday" to add to the season. But for us, I feel as if we aren't able to "start over" like most other people out of school. We go back to where we left off in school, and resolutions typically don't last longer than a month or two.
But this year is different. It's twenty-ten-- a new decade. When the last decade started, we were 7 or 8-- old enough to remember the excitement, but too young to really acknowledge such a passage. Looking back, I realize this has been a huge decade for me, and the rest of my classmates. We have witnessed 9/11, new technological advances, the election of Barack Obama, Harry Potter movies, and literally countless other demarkations and milestones. So, what will you remember?

 Sarah Goomar also has a really interesting blog about naming the decade, check it out here
Wikipedia has a few examples of names that are being tossed around (the same link Gooms has)