Never Too Young

As a general rule I’m intensely well-insulated against popular culture. Fads and trends come and go and I don’t bat an eye because I’m listening to music made before I was born and I couldn’t tell Lady GaGa from Carrie Underwood if you put them both in front of me. So the majority of stupid things that society does pass by without my commentary. However, the other day I was listening to LBC while they were doing an ever-popular phone-in opinion show. Apparently there was a bit of an uproar going on at the moment because of something called “Junior Jazzles.” After listening to this, I’m disappointed in society.

Until I did a bit of digging on the topic, I wasn’t really sure of the origins here. It seems there’s a product for women called ‘Vajazzles’ that can be used to decorate certain bits of their anatomy. This in itself is distasteful enough and I’m not sure why a woman would wish to put tiny plastic speedbumps onto an already sensitive area of her anatomy but if she wishes to do so I suppose that’s her business. The “Junior Jazzles” product is, it seems, an equivalent product for the younger set. As repulsed as I feel at the adult version of this product the child’s version is an outright travesty. Sadder still is that a company produced and marketed this product in the belief that society would accept it. If you look at some of the things that society does accept as reasonable for small children, it’s not entirely surprising they would come to this conclusion because in most cases Americans are perfectly fine with sexualizing and assigning gender roles to even the smallest of children.

For small boys this gender role assignation doesn’t tend towards the sexual but is clearly intended to put boys in their proper place early in life. They’re given trucks and tools and other various toys to play with that illustrate very clearly their future place in society. Men are meant to do, to work, to make the world better in an outwardly grandiose fashion. They’re to be valued for what they can do with their hands and their minds and except for the occasional dress-up for Easter pictures, outward appearance isn’t so important. Boys are taught at a very young age that when they get older they’re going to get out into the world and make a difference in the world whether it’s building a bridge or driving a truck.

While the boys are playing with trucks, girls get dolls and kitchenware and fancy dress-up clothes to play with because their role will be one of having children and cooking and dressing up, apparently. The contribution of women, based on these gender roles assigned so early in life, seems obnoxiously male-centered. The woman will bear and raise the man’s children and cook the man’s meals and make sure she always looks good for the man. That way the man can do his job of going out into the world and doing the real work. This seems a sadly empty existence for the woman and I’m glad that for the most part it’s evaporating as a lifestyle as time goes on. We still give our girls dolls and kitchenware to play with but increasingly as they grow into women, they ignore these early attempts at enslavement. So I would happily report that at least some small progress has been made since the 50s.

The part of this in which we seem to have slipped backwards horrifyingly in the last several decades is that society still seems to believe that a woman’s role is to be attractive to the man. Women today seem to spend more time than ever trying to dress themselves up to meet some arbitrary and hopeless standard of attractiveness that is assigned to them by men. They primp, powder, push and prod every single part of themselves in an attempt to be sexy and the saddest part of all is that this starts practically the day they’re born.

There are a lot of practices in this society that I find absolutely revolting. You can buy high heels for children. The intent of a high-heeled shoe, as least as I understand it from my outside male perspective, is to increase the apparent length of the leg-line and make the leg more sexually attractive. Why does a small child’s leg need to be made to look more sexually attractive? What kind of perversion is that? Children in dance and gymnastics classes are typically dressed in outfits that leave very little to the imagination. What need is there such tiny outfits? Most horrifying of all, I often see children wearing make-up. I wonder what the parent’s reaction would be if they realized that the origin of female make-up is to simulate the flushed appearance of the woman during sexual arousal. Why do you need your small child to look like she’s sexually aroused?

In most cases I think that as a society we’re just ignorant of the impacts we have on our children when we assign them such stereotypical roles so early in life. When we dress them up, or worse yet, put them in a pageant, we teach them that their appearance is the most important thing about them. Wouldn’t it be better to teach our girls that they too can go out into the world and do something great rather than sit passively and simply be eye-candy or a maid for some man?

Headed to the Bijoux: Juno

Through a very fortuitous series of events Kathy and I got out to see a movie this afternoon. Stylistically I was strongly reminded of Napoleon Dynamite except that this movie had the advantage of being funny, at least in parts. The thoughts that rumble through my head are relatively predictable...

As usual, Hollywood optimizes characters until they're utterly unrecognizable as people. If kids in high school have interests as deep and wide as the ones portrayed in this movie then where are the adults with such interests? Perhaps it's merely a Midwestern trait but most people I know are much more grounded in the simpler things in life. Juno introduces us to teenagers who act more like my father than any teenager I've ever met. I'd love to meet such people if they actually exist or at least swap CDs with them. The soundtrack for this movie, which featured songs I've never heard by an artist I've never heard, was also brilliant; pity I'm too lazy to find out more about the music involved.

I was also amused to see that the movie revealed 'dark man secret #3': Every man who is not the eldest of 12 is scared shitless by the idea of having a baby. Now that is not to say that they will admit it; clearly women have a visceral need to have children and no man wants to step on that, especially in a new marriage. Men will say (as one of the movie's characters did) that they're looking forward to having a child and ready to be a parent but when it comes down to it we don't know beans about babies. Babies are delicate, illogical and the most important thing in a new mother's life so it's a damn scary prospect that as men we might be called upon to take care of one with exactly 0 previous experience. In the end though the wife builds the father she wants for her child in the first year. If your husband isn't the father you expect then it's your job as mother to correct him; in all likelihood he doesn't know crap about taking care of a small child. OK, I've wandered far enough off topic ...

For somewhat ineffable reasons I find the father in this movie very personally relatable. When things are at their worst for the daughter he's cool, calm and collected. His dry sense of humor also seems familiar. Funny, I always seem to see myself in these screen people. My wife says this guy is me forwards, backwards and all directions in between:



I'd call that totally and utterly inaccurate but you make the call on your own.