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Strollerderby
Austin, we have a problem. TWLOHA Conf. in Austin, March 11-12.
As an article title, “The Scope of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury on YouTube” sounds like the kind of satire you’d hope to read in The Onion. In actuality, it’s the title of a recent study published by the medical journal Pediatrics. While most of us have known that cutting among teens (especially girls) has been a problem for some time now, I had no idea self-mutilation videos were going viral on the web.
CBS recapped the Pediatrics study, noting that the top 100 self-mutilation videos “had been viewed more than 2.3 million times and often got favorable ratings from viewers.” 64% of the videos showed cutting, the rest showed other types of self-mutilation such as burning. The intent of these videos is to glamorize self-injury, not discourage it. CBS reports, “They also feature haunting music and rich imagery that may attract young self-injurers and trigger the behavior, especially in those who have just started to self-injure.” (Think about the relationship pro-ana websites have to anorexia.)
It’s strange to me that I came across this study about cutting in the same week that I happened to watch Pink’s video for her latest release, “F**kin’ Perfect.” The explicit version of the song is accompanied by explicit imagery of self-mutilation, in which a troubled teen scrawls the word PERFECT into her arm with a razor blade. In defense of what some will surely dismiss as an attempt to shock, Pink says: Continue reading »
Awesome!
Cheryl Kilodavis’s 5-year-old son, Dyson, has always preferred to wear dresses. And pink sparkly stuff. And bright, bright colors. This distressed the mother of two boys until her then 8-year-old son, Dkobe, told her to back off Dyson.
At which point Cheryl Kilodavis realized her son’s flamboyant dress-code was her issue and no one else’s. She not only backed off, but she wrote about boys who like dressing as princesses — for kids. Her book, My Princess Boy, was released in December.
The author and her subject went on the Today Show this morning to promote the book and talk about her son’s experiences as well as her own.
I think it’s great that the mother is letting her son express who he is. But I wonder if she couldn’t have gone on the show alone to get her point across. Kilodavis is walking the fine line that all of us who write about our children walk — what’s their story to tell and what is ours? How much of our children do we give away in order to reach out to others? How hard should we fight for their privacy or do we simply relent to a world that doesn’t want us to have any. Continue reading »
My kids, their colors, their ponchos.
If you were to see my daughter walking down the street any day of the week, you might see her in a very dark hot pink hat, hot pink leggings, and a poncho hand-knitted from yarn of every shade of, yes, pink! Underneath that poncho she might have on her hot pink vest and a pink velour sweatshirt and finally, a turquoise t-shirt, a hand-me-down from her turquoise loving cousin. She loves turquoise, too, but she’s pretty in pink. (I had to say it!)
Turns out, my daughter with her pink dress code and niece are in the color vanguard. Pantone, the color company responsible for so many paint chips and so much heart ache (Which shade of white is exactly right for the hall? Do I want more grey or more blue or do I want sand?) has announced it’s annual new color and it’s — you guessed it — Pink! Only they call it “Honeysuckle.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, the color won’t actually have all a huge impact on products in 2011, because those products are already being produced, but watch out for 2012! Last year’s color, btw? Uh, huh, you guessed it: Turquoise.
As I alluded to the other day, prior to the 1940s the color pink was considered a color for boys, not girls. Somehow, that perception flip-flopped so that now pink is seen exclusively as feminine. We see it in toy stores, in clothing choices, even in the ribbons we wear to ward off breast cancer. Quite simply, in today’s society, pink is for girls. So what do you do if your daughter was born first?
Since the 1940′s, the color pink has been associated with girls and femininity. I’m not big on gender stereotypes, but I’ll admit that it can be handy to have a standard way of telling boy babies from girl babies without undoing their diaper. But once you get past the they-all-look-like-lizards stage, it’s not so important. Especially, I think, girls don’t need to have a pink version of something just to be able to play with it. Apparently, Toys R Us disagrees.
Underwear. A potty seat with or without the splash guard. There are some things that are made to be marketed to separate genders.
And then there’s bubblegum pink tape made “just for girls.” Because nothing says girl’s best friend like her school supplies? Continue reading »
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