what would you do?
[update - in oct 03 blacktable.com did a piece on this, and now both the site in question and the others linked from the original post are gone. was a law passed? comment if you know?]
i know for most of you this is old news but one angry girl designs pointed me (through the “latest outrage” section) to this bizarre and insidious phenomenon of preteen softcore. it got me wondering. what if your daughter wanted to do this? as a feminist, i think that of course i would stress how fucked up and exploitative it is. but also, as a parent i think i would have to let her find that out herself. most likely - i would hope - she wouldn’t really be exposed to it much or have really an inkling of it, or would know about it but would find it as repulsive as we did.
but i remember a set of parents i knew in the bay area force a kid to come to every demonstration, wear only certain clothes, eat only certain foods, and basically constantly barrage him with propaganda and rhetoric about the latest cause. yes, that kid is now in the army, an arch-conservative activist republican who reviles the flat, ineffective, boring world his folks pushed him toward.
and so it’s a tough call in some ways. what are the those kids’ parents like? i mean beyond the steretypes you no doubt had, as i did, of florida and southern california and small midwestern towns and gobs of disney and letting the grandparents buy too many barbies and abusive men in the family and safeway picnics etc etc. No. statistically at least some of them have to be working and have interesting lives and think critically and had issues with what their daughter wanted to do and grappled with it. some of them read sisterhood is powerful and are still calling out or even fighting sexism in their workplaces and some of them work to help women have a real meaningful role in their churches and synagogues and don’t let their kids drink coke and hate their (p)resident etc etc.
it makes me thankful for the writings and insights of ariel gore and pals. especially now that we’re expecting. most of you who read this know, but maybe some of you don’t. so there ya go. mid-december! whooooooo hooo!
