Have you noticed how many new things there are to feel bad about these days? Eyelashes, for example. The idea that your eyes might benefit from a fresh coat of paint around the edges was easy enough for me to swallow. I never saw mascara as a judgment about the quality of my lashes. For me, it was more about whether I wanted to look “done” or not. It  wasn’t until the media campaign for Latisse that I looked at my eyelashes and realized how pathetically sparse they were. And here I was thinking my eyes weren’t one of my “problem areas”. Ha.

Well, girls, there’s a new flaw in town.

It’s in a place you might not have worried much about aesthetically before: your armpit. Continue reading »

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These days, Ronald McDonald is probably the best-known clown amongst the Happy Meal crowd.  Kids today may not know Bozo, Clarabell, or Arlecchino from I Pagliacci, but even children who have never eaten there are almost certainly familiar with the spokesclown for McDonald’s restaurants, Ronald McDonald.  And that is just what makes the murderous buffoon so dangerous.

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When did you stop playing with dolls? Back in the day, my friends and I played with our Barbie dolls well into what is now called the tween years. When we were five, we had Barbie playing mom and schoolteacher in our make-believe worlds. But was we got older, Barbie got younger and started going to parties and on romantic dates with Ken. Barbie was versatile that way and therefore the prefect plaything for a maturing girl.

But these days, with so many other forms of entertainment vying for the attention of young girls, Barbie and other dolls are getting left behind at a much earlier age.  Continue reading »

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If you’ve got kids, and those kids eat anything you can purchase in a grocery store, you are well-versed in the amount of food marketing that gets aimed at children. Whether it’s natural-crunchy-organic stuff emblazoned with pretty pastoral scenes or the screaming neon corn-based junk at your more traditional stores, companies spend big bucks marketing to children. Food companies spent $1.6 billion on marketing to kids in 2006, while fast food restaurants sold more than 1.2 billion kids’ meals with toys. People form their brand loyalties and food preferences very early in childhood, so getting them as customers as children is key. Continue reading »

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If you’ve been through the grocery store gauntlet with kids, you understand how powerfully foods — usually pretty unhealthy ones –are marketed to children. The yogurt composed mostly of artificial color and HFCS is right there on the bottom of the dairy case, while the healthier, all natural stuff is up at grownup eye level. The Disney princesses are on “fruit snacks” which bear only the vaguest resemblance to actual fruit, and unprocessed, healthier foods sit there in their comparatively boring packaging.

Of course, the responsibility lies on us, as parents, to say “No” to our children’s entreaties and make healthier food choices. My personal shield against all the “fun food” is to say “Yes, that looks fun, but it isn’t very good for you and we don’t buy food like that.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, aka the “Food Police” in some circles, has issued a report card grading the policies of 128 different food and entertainment companies on marketing to kids. Continue reading »

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You might have heard that Hasbro recently came up with a Ouija board “just for girls.” What, you ask, makes a game that consists of a piece of a cardboard and a plastic triangle “just for girls?” Why, the color pink, of course!

But the sleepover staple may not be all fun and games. Continue reading »

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Girl Scout cookies sales dipped about 1 percent last year. (I don’t know who these people with financial and dietary willpower are, but they’re certainly not me.)

Since the cookies are the keystone of the organization’s fundraising–bringing in $700 million a year–the Girl Scouts will not let Thin Mints go gently into that dark night. Continue reading »

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