Empowered by Play » advertising

Peggy Orenstein’s CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER

Geralyn — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:52:01 +0000

Peggy Orenstein’s book CINDERELLA ATE MY DAUGHTER wasn’t the book I hoped it would be – it was better.

I was hoping she’d knock the marketing giant flat on its exploitative keister and that her book would make a strong and irrefutable case against Disney’s shameless and relentless marketing to young girls – opening parents’ eyes to all harmful stereotypes that Disney foists on our young girls and boys. I was hoping for a lambasting.

Instead, Orenstein offers the reader a deeply nuanced, thoughtful and honest look into her personal journey of parenting her young daughter through the princess years. As a mother of only boys, I appreciated the chance to enter into the complicated world of raising a happy and confident daughter in our current “girlie-girl culture”. Orenstein looks at American Girl dolls, Bratz dolls, Hannah Montana, Britney Spears, Internet chat rooms, Greek myths and more, taking the time to see what is behind the headlines and what the research is telling us. She talks to other parents about the choices they are making for their daughters. Orenstein helps illustrate that as your child moves from preschooler to tween, teen and beyond, the choices you make and why you make them will help shape how your daughter sees the world – and sees herself in the world. The book is sort of a wake-up call to wake-up and be present in your daughter’s media life.

For a terrific interview with Orenstein, check out the podcast and transcript of her hour with Healthy Media Choices’ Mary Rothschild. Here is a powerful excerpt from the interview where Rothschild hits the nail on the head and helps crystalize the message that Orenstein is sending us:

Mary Rothschild: This is one of the keys, I think – intentionality. Being intentional, even if you decide to let all the Princess stuff in. Whatever you decide for your family, being intentional makes all the difference in the world. The child (senses it).

Peggy Orenstein: That’s actually a great way for me to put it, so I appreciate your telling me that. When I talk about it, I’m going to say that, if you don’t mind. I can’t tell you what decisions to make for your child but, whatever you do, to provide context. I wanted to start a conversation and I wanted to provide some context and information so that parents could make their choices more wisely, but I guess what that does mean is make them intentionally. If you’re going to let your daughter get the twenty-one-piece Disney Princess makeup kit, know what you’re doing. That’s fine. That’s your choice. That’s your right, but know what you’re doing.

Be intentional about your choices. Good advice for parents of boys, too. For the full podcast and interview please check out Healthy Media Choices.

“I feel so stupid.”

Geralyn — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:59:47 +0000

Ever since I discovered Catalog Choice, we’ve really cut down on the number of catalogs that arrive in the mail every day. This has REALLY helped this holiday season – since the boys aren’t being tempted and taunted by pages and pages of enticing (yet junky) toys. When we get the Sunday paper (recycled from my dad on Mondays) we get it without the circulars. We also don’t have television, so that helps immensely, too. Even with all of these stop gates, the occasional tempting ad does reach my six-year-old sons.

The other day, one came in the mail. It was a tempting shiny-red tri-fold with a groovy Christmas tree and the word “imagine” on the cover. I didn’t even see the ad first – my son did. Even though my sons are identical twins, one of them is way-more sucked in by flashy things (be they video games, commercials, cartoons or toy trends). He was the one who came up to me in the kitchen. His eyes were huge and he was jumping a bit – clearly excited. “Look mom! We can save 20 or 30 or 50 dollars!” He showed me the big green coupons on the center page.

“Yes,” I replied, “but look how much money we’d have to spend in order to save,” and I pointed to the small print that said, “Spend $200 or more and receive $50 off your order”.

He was crushed. He hung his head and his whole body slumped. “I feel so stupid,” he said softly. “Don’t feel stupid,” I explained. “It was a trick. Look how big the words are that you saw. Now, look how small the words are down here. The marketers didn’t want you to notice how much you have to spend. They wanted you to focus on how much you can save. They did that on purpose to trick you into spending money.”

“Ohhhhh!” he said as he stood a little taller. He didn’t feel so bad anymore. He felt a little smarter because he knew the trick that the marketers were playing. This conversation led to more conversations about the mail that comes into our house. Now, when we open the mail, I ask him first to decide if it is an ad or not. If it is an ad, we look for some of the tricks that the marketers are using to make us want to spend money.

Very empowering for a six-year-old boy (and his 44-year-old mom!).

Thanks, EYI!

Geralyn — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:47:20 +0000

A big thank you to The Early Years Institute for the wonderful conference on Friday. The conference, “We Interrupt This Program: Playing and Learning in the Age of Hyper-Media”, brought together many folks fighting the good fight on behalf of children. The Early Years Institute is a young non-profit organization aimed at “helping communities value children”, and if they are new to you, they are definitely worth learning more about.

For me, one of the best aspects of the conference was meeting other members of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. It was like meeting old friends – even though we’d never met before. We spoke the same language and felt invigorated talking with each other – wonderful! For my workshops, I presented with Kimberly Mullaney, who is the director of Education Services at WNET/Thirteen (PBS on Long Island). Kimberly and I spoke the same language on a number of issues – especially the importance of co-viewing and how to talk with your children before and after watching a show or movie together. We also agreed that the screen should not be a babysitter and that screen time should not replace healthy creative play times, outdoor play or take place of quality family time.

We did disagree about the use of television in the classroom. Kimberly trains teachers on how to use television clips appropriately, and her tips were good ones. But for me the value of watching a Clifford episode (or even a clip from it) is just not worth the time away from active learning or the implied endorsement of PBS, their sponsors and preschool screen time – even when the program is shared in a thoughtful way. When I know that preschoolers are already spending 32 hours a week engaged with screens, I don’t want them watching TV in school. Period. (Not to mention the Chuck E Cheese’s promo that came on right before the Clifford show began – yikes! As a parent, I definitely don’t want preschoolers seeing that at school.)

One thing we agreed totally about were the harmful effects commercials can have on children and family life. We both talked about the recent Toyota Highlander commercial, where the cool kid is plugged into earbuds and doesn’t have to listen to his parents as they drive in their Toyota Highlander. At the stoplight he sees the nerdy kid in the car with the lame parents who are singing as they drive in their (apparently) uncool car. The way I understood the ad, it is uncool to have parents who sing joyfully and it is way better to have a Toyota Highlander so you can tune out your parents. I would put the YouTube link in here, so you could view the ad, but the commercial is no longer available on YouTube. Hmmm. Interesting. Last week I called and registered a complaint with Toyota. I know other members of CCFC did also. If you’ve seen this commercial, and you find it offensive, I encourage you to call. It only takes a couple of minutes and the number is 1-800-331-4331. There is no doubt that raising children today is hard enough without being seriously undermined by big corporations such as Toyota. Calling them to task could make a difference. I have to say, it was great that we agreed this commercial is offensive, and we also agreed that smart phones and texting are taking away precious time which parents used to spend talking with their infants, toddlers and preschoolers. (Why, then is Sesame Street…a company parents trust… making apps for iphones – and furthering the distance between little ones and their caregivers?)

On an up beat…the day ended with a greatly appreciated hour of laughter as we listened to Lenore Skenazy share her journey from New York columnist and average mom to becoming known as “America’s Worst Mom” and her subsequent blog and then a book Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry). Lenore uses her hilarious blend of storytelling and reality-checking to help paint a picture of today’s world – (and here I paraphrase) a world where we are so worried about our children being kidnapped, that we have, in fact, kidnapped our children. I finally bought myself a copy (early birthday present!) and can not wait to dig in.

Find us at NAEYC’s Annual Conference!

Geralyn — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 20:17:38 +0000

Today I am packing for Anaheim, CA, where I will be joining friends and colleagues at the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s (NAEYC) Annual Conference. I’ll be there with other members of TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment) and we will be sharing our resources Media and Young Children Action Guide and Toy, Play & Young Children Action Guide, as well as our recently released Infant-Toddler Play, Toys & Media Action Guide. These fantastic guides help parents and teachers find ways to foster quality play, healthy development and positive relationships- all of which are threatened by companies who are more concerned about making money than about what is best for our children and families. This year, although I am looking forward to re-connecting with advocates for young children, I am not thrilled about the “Disneyfication” of the event. In the pre-conference mailing, I spy a session focused on Walt Disney’s contributions to early childhood education and an evening event to celebrate imagination at Disney’s California Adventure Park. What else will we encounter upon arrival? I am bracing myself.

As a young child I visited Disneyland and watched the Mickey Mouse Club on TV. These were fun times, no doubt. However, Disney has taken advantage of the trust that parents have in the Disney name. As an adult, I now worry about the vast influence that Disney has on our children and on us. Disney encourages young children to play online with websites such as Club Penguin and World of Cars. Disney confuses parents about how babies learn by selling Baby Einstein videos. Check out this list of companies owned by Disney, complied by Lisa Ray. (Her family is documenting their Year Without Disney!) Disney controls so much information – that just cannot be good. They also market heavily and directly to children – including the brilliant move to market all the Disney Princesses together in a way that has appealed to girls the world over. But what messages do the Disney Princesses send our girls? Check out this short video about the Princess Effect from the Empowering Girls to Fly High.

And check out what the updated TRUCE Action Guide says:

If you are one of the tens of thousands who will be attending the conference, please stop by and visit us in the exhibit hall. We will have copies of our free guides on hand and we’d love to talk to you. We’ll be sharing booth 1044 with TRUCE steering committee member Hugh Hanley and his Circle of Song!

A Real Toy Story

Geralyn — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:40:22 +0000

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the best toys are not toys at all. Fuzzy blankets and empty boxes rule when you are inside; wild flowers, sticks and rocks for when you are outside. A blanket becomes a cape or a tent and a box becomes just about anything. This is the stuff that makes for rich imaginative play. It is the season of garage sales where I live, and I’ve been checking them out lately. Holy cow, there is a whole lot of plastic junk out there. At least folks who have a garage sale (or who shop there) are trying to reuse these toys and extend their use a bit still… yikes!

I’ve also been reading the Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health – and a Vision For Change by Annie Leonard. It is a real wake-up call. I try to be environmentally conscious – but by reading this book I’ve realized there is so much more we as a country can – and should – be doing. Leonard reveals, “We have a problem with Stuff. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, we’re consuming 30 percent of the world’s resources and creating 30 percent of the world’s waste. If everyone consumed at U.S. rates, we would need three to five planets!” My only hope is that this horrifying oil disaster will be the rude awakening our country needs.

(It’s not a spill, by the way. A spill is what my son does with his glass of orange juice. It’s a pain to clean up the spill, but we can do it in a few minutes. What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is a man-made disaster. Definitely not a spill.)

Do the world a favor and forgo all the thousands of Toy Story 3 plastic junk, and all the other aggressively marketed single-purpose toys, and opt for good old fashioned imagination-inducing fabric scraps, empty containers of any type, art supplies, pebbles and the like. Its not easy to break the habit of consumption – believe me, the LEGO situation in my own house is admittedly out of control. We are working on it, though, and my husband has finally agreed that there is such a thing as “too many LEGOs”. Check out this fantastic article Children, Commercialism, and Environmental Sustainability by Tim Kasser, Tom Crompton, and Susan Linn.

Reduce, Reuse and Re-imagine!

Empowered by Play’s Toy of the Year Award: Nature!

When Did Sesame Street Become $esame $treet?

Way Too Many Toys

Announcing TRUCE’s Infant-Toddler Toys, Play & Media Action Guide!

Scholastic, once again, finds a way to get to our school children

Geralyn — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:44:04 +0000

This week the New York Times ran an article about Admongo.gov, a media literacy campaign aimed at 4th through 6th graders (In a World of Ads, Teaching the Young How to Read Them, April 27th). After reading the article, and checking out the website, I was moved to write the following letter to the editor of the NY Times:

To the Editor,
As a parent and former classroom teacher, I am not impressed with the new media literacy program aimed at 4th – 6th graders (In a World of Ads, Teaching the Young How to Read Them, April 27th). I am all for children learning about advertising and becoming critical consumers, however, Scholastic isn’t the right company to be co-sponsoring such a curriculum. Scholastic has already taken advantage of the trust of parents and schools by marketing more and more “junk” to our children. Take a look at current Scholastic book clubs and book fairs, and you will see they are filled with media-linked books, lipsticks, jewelry and toy tie-ins that add to our consuming culture and seduce children away from good literature. Only under pressure from the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood did Scholastic take the highly-sexualized Bratz doll products out of their book clubs and book fairs. Now, Scholastic has managed another way to get to our children – under the dangerous ruse of being part of the solution.

—

Meanwhile, there are other problems as well. For example, the fake advertisements are pretty tame. The curriculum does not dive into issues such as violence and over-sexualization, which are a huge part of marketing towards children. There are some useful tools, such as materials aimed at helping families deconstruct ads and have conversations at home, but whatever might be good, comes at the cost of giving Scholastic more space to advertise in our schools. I feel strongly that schools should be free of advertisements, so for me, the poster above – which will be popping up in schools all over – is actually just a big promotion for Scholastic – a for profit company.

More on Milk Media

Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin M.Ed. — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:51:00 +0000

This weekend I spent time thinking about Milk Media and the Milk Rocks! campaign in schools. (See previous posts “The Brawl Begins” when Milk Media meets my son and Troublemakers and Peacemakers for background information.) According to the representative I talked with, the video games and movie previews available on the Milk Rocks! website are posted through automatic feed. That is why the violent content gets through (such as the shoot-em-up Commando game I found). The company is responsive to parents, they say, which is why the violent content I found has been taken down.

But whose responsibility is it to monitor the content of a website marketed to K-12 children in schools across the country? Contests such as the Bakugan/Nintendo Wii give-away grab a lot of kids’ attention. That is what MilkMedia wants – kids’ attention. But when you have that attention – especially when you’ve gotten it at school – you have a deep responsibility to make sure your message is appropriate. Young children can not fully grasp the marketing techniques at hand. If the message is received at school, in their young eyes the school is endorsing the message. So when they get home and go to the website, the messages they see are, in effect, endorsed by the school.

At this point, Milk Media is committed to making milk cool for kids, as a way to combat the obesity epidemic in our country. Lowfat milk is healthier than the sugary drinks that are out there. I get that. But what price do we have to pay?

In my opinion, a step in the right direction, would be to vary the milk carton “promotions” depending on the school population, so that a K-6 school, such as my son’s school, wouldn’t have the promotions aimed at the 13-18 year-olds. That seems reasonable. And more responsible.

Troublemakers and Peacemakers

Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin M.Ed. — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Today I am thinking about ways to make a little trouble. I am talking about speaking up when you see something that concerns you and making noise to effect small changes.

Yesterday I had a conversation with an executive at MilkMedia, the folks who brought us the Bakugan/Nintendo milk carton for schools. It was an interesting conversation, and we agreed that we will never agree, but at least the violent content that I mentioned has been removed from the website. Also, the Bakugan side panels have been recalled. He promises that no character properties or PG-13 properties will be used in upcoming milk side panels. Small victories – if we can’t fix everything, at least we can make it better. It reminded me of earlier this fall when the Common Sense Media website had posted terrible advice to parents of toddlers – recommending PG-13 costumes. I contacted the co-founder and editor, and within minutes, she had agreed and changed the content of the website. When my husband is in a public place and the television is blaring, he’ll reach up and turn it off or turn down the volume. Usually no one minds. The other day at the gym, the television was showing Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers or something along that line. My 5 year-old sons were fascinated. I was not happy. I quietly signaled a staff member to turn it off. He saw the young boys staring at the screen, and quickly obliged. I tell these stories in the hopes that you will consider being a bit of a troublemaker for peace. Every little bit helps our kids and our world.

Lock and load…with LEGO?

Geralyn — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:25:00 +0000

Check out this picture above and guess what it is. Any ideas? Try “Exclusive LEGO Style Mega Weapons Pack (49 pieces),” sold by Toy Wiz through Amazon for $23.99 (plus shipping and handling). This weapons pack popped up yesterday – as my husband browsed Lego kits – as one of those “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought” suggestions.

These and other LEGO compatible weapon sets are manufactured by BrickArms. This company, which has been around since 2006, raised eyebrows this past winter when they introduced “Bandit – Mr. White” a “bad guy” who resembled an Islamic terrorist. At that point, the LEGO company released a statement denouncing the BrickArms products.

“BrickArms is not licensed by LEGO Group to customize LEGO figures and has no links to the LEGO brand…The LEGO Group is committed to developing toys which enrich childhood by encouraging imaginative and creative play – and does not endorse products that do not fit with this philosophy.”

Oh, yeah? You can’t have it both ways, LEGO Group. You opened the door by marketing your own lines of violent, weapon toting LEGO sets. There is a double standard at work, when you profit from the glorification of violence, but don’t want others to do the same.

As I’ve said before, children (particularly boys) have a need to play out violent scenarios (especially these days when they are trying to make sense of all the violence they are exposed to). But these highly-realistic weapons glorify war, and that’s where the problem lies.

In related news, the violent PG-13 movie “G.I. Joe” has just been released, and it does the same thing. Click here to read a few words on that topic from Iraq war veteran Sergeant Mark Linberg, and to read about CCFC’s petition to the FTC regarding the marketing of PG-13 movies to young children.

Enough bad news! This is a good place to recommend Nancy Carlsson-Paige’s amazing book, Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World. The book is an incredible resource for parents who are trying to navigate this current confusing world and a hopeful note to end this depressing post on.

Liv Girls and Moxie Girlz…move over Bratz

Geralyn — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:40:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the new Moxie Girlz…today it is yet another way-too-cool doll line, Liv Girls. Liv Girls includes an online world that you can enter for only $19.99 (plus $9.99 for shipping and handling). These “four fun-loving teens who love to hang out together” (but, alas, are sold separately) come with a “secret code” that unlocks a virtual world where young girls can “read the Liv Girls’ super secret diaries” and take “snap shots” of the Liv Girls “having all kinds of super adventures and place them in a scrapbook to share with friends.”

Ugh! Here we go again with another “virtual” world where kids are pulled away from actual interactions with friends and family members. Authentic relationships and experiences are pushed aside, as this electronic world seduces vulnerable youngsters who (like anyone) want to belong. The ad is scary when you really look at what they are saying…

“Live in our world”

“Real Girls, Real Lives”

“There is so much to do!”

“This is where all our lives totally come together!”

Gee, thanks, Spin Master, Ltd for making the world a better place for our children. We really needed another way to keep our kids plugged into the internet, living pretend lives – away from books, nature and actual human interactions.

I’m trying to figure out if this new generation of dolls is any less offensive than their predecessor Bratz. It looks like the advertisers are going for a more wholesome look, but the effect is the same for me. Teenagers aren’t playing with these dolls – but very young girls are. And now the young girls can even “live” in an online virtual teenage world. To me, that’s getting worse, not better.