Why are we teaching children to be fascist?

I had a conversation with my three year old recently that went something like this:

Her: Let's build a castle.

Me: OK

Her: you build it and I do this

She starts to pretend to preen herself in an imaginary mirror. I pile up six pillows 

Her: Do I look pretty mummy?

Me: I think you are pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. You going to climb up?

She eagerly clambers atop the pile

Her: You need to climb my hair cause I can't get down 

Me: Why can't you climb down? 

Her: You need to climb up my hair though.

Me: But that would hurt you, don't you think. I reckon you are clever enough to climb down on your own. 

She climbs down looking pleased with herself

Me: Well done. See you can do it.

Her: Now you be stuck in the tower and I climb up your hair.

Me: But that would hurt if you climbed up my hair.

Her (Stroking my hair) : But it's ok now it's yellow.

Me: Come on let's both climb up

Silliness ensued.

I moved on from the yellow comment because it threw me so much. I would love to know where my daughter picked up in so much detail the story of Rapunzel. I was very glad to have the opportunity to present an alternative reading of the story and as she get's older I'll continue to offer a critique.

But it saddened my soul that we are clearly teaching fascism to three year olds. My three year old thinks it is preferable to have blond hair. Just reflect upon that. Can we please stop telling children these horrific tales of violence and prejudice.

Not a Princess

My daughter (2&1/2) announced yesterday that she was a princess. This was inevitable, but I had not thought it would come so soon. I informed her that she was not and reminded her of her name. She then started singing the wheels on the bus, life moves on fast at 2. But it did make me think I need to pre think some strategies for tackling this one as it continually raises its head over the next few years. 

The timing of this comment was interesting since there is also another child born recently who will not be a princess but will most probably, though finally getting a republic is always a possibility, become a prince. I have to say that along with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett I also feel a slight sense of relief that the royal baby is male and will not have to suffer being a princess.

Anyway in search of advice I went to twitter, and while I received some excellent suggestions much was about how to re-define or reshape what a princess is. I'm not sure I want to. I think I'd rather make being a princess an unattractive option. Also I don't want to lie to my daughter. I am not royal so she will never be a princess. I could say that princess can run around, climb trees, wear trousers, but they can't. Kate cannot wear what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, yesterdays revolting issue of OK proves that. 

Also there is the danger of simply replacing one stereotype with another. I don't know if my daughter will enjoy climbing trees yet and I don't want her confronted with the options of pink princess or 'tom boy' princess. I'd rather she could just be her in any combination of interests and abilities she enjoys. 

It is not just the gender stereotyping of princess that I find so difficult but also the inherent hierarchy we cannot all be princess. As much as I love Brave and watch it with my little one repeatedly I'd much rather it ended with the king abdicating and setting up a democratic co-operative community. 

There is too much, competition, I'm the best, look at me, in children's media and for girls princess seems to be the ultimate expression of that. Princess also teaches our daughters to place the highest value in their appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. And not their appearance for their own enjoyment creativity or self expression, their appearance as measured by how sexually attractive they are to adult men. Which is why I would rather expose princess for what they really are (slowly and in an age appropriate way) than redefine princess as something a little more diverse. 

It's going to be hard work.

The pornification of childhood

My small daughter’s life is extremely edited.  She is likely to grow up thinking the only program on TV is Abney and Teal. She will have a surprise when she gets to school and discovers that the bedtime stories she’s come to love actually don’t have an equal representation of men and women and that the world is not a fair and egalitarian place.  And she will at some point encounter that horrifying narrative of the princess.

What has any of this got to do with porn? Well what I would like to argue is that:

1.) We use story and narrative to understand and explain the world and this is especially important to children.

2.) There is a particular narrative that Porn tells

3.) This narrative has been present in childhood for a very long time, but is now becoming more insidious and endemic and it primes children to accept and expect a porn narrative.

So what is the porn narrative? Essentially it is that women exist for the sexual pleasure of men and their worth is connected to how sexually attractive they are to men. Masculinity is defined by sexual violence and predatory conquest within the porn narrative. 

Recently I re-watched Disney’s Snow White. In an early scene Snow White is singing about wishing for the one she loves to find her, she is clearly not talking about someone she knows, she looks like a teenager. Suddenly an adult man appears beside her she is clearly frightened and runs away but then listens at the window flattered by the attention. We all know what happens at the end of the story, that while unconscious, having been drugged, this same man sexually assaults her and then they live happily ever after. (While we are at it Sleeping Beauty is the story of a women out cold, a strange man climbs through her window and sexually assaults her. This is not OK.) But that initial scene struck me as I had just finished Gail Dines’ chapter on the use of pseudo-child images and the narratives were very similar ‘At first she was nervous, but she wanted it really’.

So these storys we tell young girls and boys that normalise sexual violence and male ownership are far from new, but while they used to function to groom young girls into being submissive compliant wives who on getting wed discovered Cinderella had no better time of it in the happily ever, now we are seeing a narrative creep into childhood that has a slightly different angle. Building on the princess, girls are now taught that they must exude sexiness in order to please the men.

So enter beauty pageants (http://www.missminiprincess.co.uk/), Bratz by day Catz by night, (http://www.bratz.com/), pole dancing dolls, cute little playboy bunny’s everywhere, make up and high heels for toddlers, even Lego thinks a girls preoccupation should be beautifying herself (http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3187.aspx), and don’t even let me get started on Hannah Montana. While grooming our girls we equally groom our young men into a sense of privileged and a warped idea of masculinity. How many times have you seen 'naughty' 'trouble' etc written across toddlers just because they happen to be male. Boys watch the princess stories too and learn they are to be characterless thugs. Boys also play with dolls, only theirs come with weapons and biologically impossible muscles and a noticable absence of genitals.  

So the messages of porn are infecting early childhood, grooming and priming children so that as they enter adolescents their space and freedom to explore and discover their own sexuality is severely restricted. And now they are bombarded with normalising attitudes in magazines, television programs and even on occasion what purports to be objective positive information. Girls begin to experience sexual violence and intimidation in school environments and discover adults are ill equipped to respond and protect them, that victims get blamed and perpetrators get kudos. They begin to hate every part of their body because, like the all seeing eye in lord of the rings, the pornofied gaze is everywhere. The only option of validation left for a young woman is as a sexual object and the ultimate expression of masculinity for a young man is to perpetrate sexual violence.

I know some people think my anxiety about my own daughter and other childrens experience of childhood is misplaced, that it is not that dangerous or toxic environment I think it is, that body dismorphia and self loaving are not inevitable.  I agree, they are not, but in our current climate they are probable and I am not kidding myself about the kind of effort we need to make to provide an alternative storyline for young people.  Hugh Hefner himself said ‘I don’t care if a baby holds up a playboy bunny rattle’. So let’s not pretend that a powerful industry is not trying to groom the next generation of product and purchaser. 

Brilliant Brave

(Warning: contains a few spoilers)

Would you believe that I voluntarily went to see Disney's new princess film... and loved it, absolutely loved it. I cried nearly the whole way through. 

Recently I was lent a copy of 'The Women who Run with Wolves' I've hardly started but am immediately  captivated by the idea of the wild woman archetype. I think Brave provides just that. Here's a girl who run's with bears.

I loved the couple of occasions where her bear mother leap's forward to defend her. It was a fantastic picture of the Mother heart of God.

I loved that the relationship between the two women (Merida and Elanor) was the central theme of the film. That it was really real, that they both learnt from each other, that there was reconciliation and that together they managed to challenge and change a patriarchal system. 

I loved that there was no man coming to the rescue.

I loved that even the witch came off well, and the sense that she was really standing in solidarity with Merida.

I loved that the sibling rivalry/collusion between Merida and her brothers seemed normal and healthy and wasn't about gender.

I loved that there was nothing ever at any moment passive about Merida, that she 'went out and made her own fate.' 

But the bit I loved most was the moment when she stood up and claimed her right as a first born to compete (for her own hand). This is what I want for our dear daughters, not passive princess like waiting for some man to come rescue them, but a fearless reckless bravery that stands up and dares to claim its full inheritance in Christ. 

It felt like Disney was almost deliberately having a dialogue with itself. The part of the old princess archetype was played by Elanor, who clashes with the new (though the scenery and setting made it feel that she could also have been the ancient) archetype Merida. And this is not a story about one vanquishing the other, both learn from each other and new possibilities are opened up. Merida is not an archetype that requires us to be like her, but one that open's up new possibilities, new questions. One that will give permission to our daughters to be themselves.

This is a brilliant, brave and welcome statement from Disney. Thankyou.