Still from "Fotoshop by Adobé" by Jesse Rosten

Tired of the onslaught of unrealistic images that form the bulk of our children’s media diets? Here’s some new ammo: a video that simply and succinctly distills the entire problem into two minutes. The brilliant video is a satirical TV commercial for an amazing new product, offering everyone the opportunity to achieve the kind of perfection we see in celebrities and models. The miracle product can smooth out blemishes and wrinkles, erase years and pounds, and even change the color of your hair or skin.

What is this magical elixir?

Photoshop. For obvious legal reasons, the video uses an F instead of a Ph. But the message comes through loud and clear. “This commercial isn’t real and neither are society’s standards of beauty.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more useful tool to show children how the images of women they see are figments of the digital imagination. Watch it with your kids and explain the absurdity of comparing yourself to something that doesn’t exist. And while you’re at it, take down the whole damn beauty myth — the faux commercial format provides ample opportunity … especially if you hold out for the last line.  Continue reading »

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It doesn’t surprise me that teens and tweens compare their bodies to the images they see on TV… I mean, adults do it for heaven’s sake.  And naturally, the images are everywhere.  But the idea that the messages of healthy living for our kids — of exercising and making conscious food choices — are being drowned out by quick fixes like plastic surgery is more than a little disturbing.

A new study by the Central YMCA found that nearly one in four kids between the ages of 11 and 16 were willing to undergo cosmetic surgery to achieve the look they wanted.  ONE IN FOUR.

Somehow the messages of ‘don’t like your body, just change it’ are coming across loud and clear, and the options, like laxatives, steroids and plastic surgery, are front and center.  It sounds like we need to be having some different conversations with our kids.

Photo Credit: Ambro, Free DigitalPhotos.net

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In a somewhat extreme move, a British school is enforcing a ban on make-up by removing the mirrors from the girls’ bathrooms. They’ve also issued “make-up removal kits” to teachers to deal with any make-up applied before school hours.

The school is co-ed, but the rule applies only to girls. I guess boys wearing too much eyeliner wasn’t a big problem this year. The school administrators say the issue isn’t just that heavy make-up can be distracting, but that girls were congregating in the bathrooms to stare at themselves and tweak their make-up instead of focusing on school. Some of them were even bringing their lunch into the school bathrooms.

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Looking for a new bedtime story for your preschooler? Keep looking.

And here I was thinking the worst four-letter D-word a 4 year old could utter was Damn. Turns out, I was wrong. (Damn.)

A new book is set to introduce preschoolers to an even more offensive word: Diet.

Maggie Goes On a Diet will be available this fall, and while it’s a book about a 14 year old girl who goes on a diet, Amazon is listing the reading level as appropriate for kids ages 4-8.

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Last month girls in the course participated in a swimsuit/matchmaking event

If it’s just as easy to fall in love with someone rich as someone poor, then not all girls in Beijing, China, have not gotten the message.

Otherwise how do you explain why some of them are paying $3,000 for a 30-hour course at the Moral Education Center for Women that teaches “techniques to make them more attractive, from how to put on make-up in the most flattering way to how to spot a liar by looking at his facial expressions?” Girls also brush up on how to read a man’s character, hone their conversational and traditional skills, and get pointers on pouring tea.

Wealthy, eligible bachelors spend around $4,500 as an introductory fee to meet girls who complete the course. The school boasts that there have been 30 matches that resulted in marriage.

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This is how some girls can boast they spent their summer vacation

It’s not unusual for an aspiring model to be told she needs to lose weight. Or cut her hair (or grow it long). Or tone her arm muscles. Or tweeze her eyebrows. But telling a girl she needs to “work on her height?”

Presumably there’s a pill for that in the back of some magazine, somewhere (“Rub this cream on your legs and get taller in just 10 days!”), but short of a miracle growth spurt, height is one of those things, like parents, that you can’t really do much about once you’re dealt yours in life.

Still, a real live girl — a 15-year-old one — was really, really told that she needs to “work on her height” at a modeling camp in Manhattan that’s run by a former staffer from Vogue, Heather Cole. The camp, $999 for a four-day session, is filled with wannabe runway models and aspiring couturiers.
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Will this kid remember this moment?

What is your earliest memory? How old were you? Do you have a whole event remembered, or just fragments of sensation? Are you sure this memory is real?

Memory is tricky stuff. Especially our earliest memories, which fade over time. As any parent knows, young children have an amazing capacity for memory: they can recall events going back practically to babyhood, with a surprising amount of detail. But then these memories fade. By the time they reach their teens, most children can’t recall anything before about age 3, and as we get older, our childhood memories fade even more.

We don’t have to lose these memories entirely, though. There are tricks parents can deploy to preserve childhood memory. It’s worth doing. A recent study shows that kids with stronger early memories also have better self-esteem and coping skills.

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