Monday, September 29, 2008

Another Reason I'm Glad To Be a M.O.B.

What toddler needs a padded bra?
A mother wanders into the children's section of a store and is surprised to find sexy lingerie
REBECCA ECKLER September 24, 2008
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/lifestyle/article.jsp?content=20080924_32935_32935

At the Nordstrom department store in Scottsdale, Ariz., I'm standing in front of a rack of bras and nighties. The bras are made with padding and underwire. The nightgowns are lacy, see-through and sexy, something I'd buy to wear for someone else, if you know what I mean. The bras and nighties don't come in my size. I am, after all, in the toddler section of the store.

What toddler needs a bra? Or sexy lingerie? Is this just an American thing, I wonder? "Alas, selling bras to little girls is becoming normal in America," says M. Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. "The bras are padded and in push-up varieties, and there are matching thong panties too. These come in preschoolers' size. I've been told that moms go wild for them," she says. Moms? Durham herself has two young daughters, ages seven and 10. She believes manufacturers market what she calls "hypersexual" kids' garments in order to create "cradle-to-grave" consumers for these kinds of products. "There's no consideration of what kind of an impact this is having on girls' lives," she says.

Children's bras, it turns out, have been creating controversy outside North America. Tesco, a British retail chain, came under attack earlier this year for marketing a padded bra to seven- and eight-year-olds. Tesco released the following statement in its defence. "It is a product designed for girls at that self-conscious age when they are just developing. It is designed to cover up, not flatter, and was developed after speaking to parents."

Apparently not all parents. The handful of mommy bloggers who write about toddler bras all seem to have the same reaction: "Yuck!" Canadian Erica Ehm, founder of the online magazine Yummymummyclub.ca, and who has a five-year-old daughter, says bras for toddlers and children are "obscene" and "disgusting." They should wear bras "when they start to get breasts. It's bad enough that my daughter got a makeup kit and high heels for her last birthday."

I decide to go on a Canadian shopping trip to Old Navy, after calling to ask if they sell children's bras. They do, for six- to 12-year-olds. "We're going bra shopping," I tell my almost-five-year-old daughter. "For me?" she asks, excitedly.

At Old Navy, sure enough, I see the bras in the children's section. My daughter picks out a pink-and-white striped one, with lace around the shoulders. It's padded. The size is 30 A. I pick out another one — for research purposes — also a 30 A, with underwire. They are $12.50 each. The bras could fit on one of my daughter's large stuffed animals. "Let's go home," my daughter says. "And play bra!"

Mommy blogger Vanessa Johnson lives outside San Francisco and works in advertising. Her daughters are six and seven. She tells me she was shocked when she was with her daughters at one of the discount American stores, TJ Maxx, and saw the children's bras. "My daughter really wanted one. But I was appalled because of the padding." Johnson said no to her daughter. At first. "I said no and tried to change the subject, but she kept talking about them. I mentioned it to a cousin who has an older daughter who said that her daughter went through a wanting-a-bra phase, and she bought her a sports bra. So I compromised and got my daughters each a sports bra."

Johnson says that at first it was non-stop bra talk in her home. Her daughters would wear them and say, "I love my bra." And they'd ask questions like, "Can you wear a bra to the movies? Can you wear a bra to go out and eat?" "I thought, 'Oh no, what have I done?' " says Johnson. "My eldest wore it under her uniform to school one Monday, but by Tuesday she was over it. Now she only pulls it out once in a blue moon. But last week we were at another store and my daughter saw some bras and said, 'They're so pretty.' They are obviously aware of them."

My own daughter forgot about the Old Navy bras by the time we got home. Two days later she found them and put on the pink-and-white-striped padded one. It fit her. She wouldn't take it off. She wore it to sleep. I told her she couldn't wear her bra out of the house. Thanks to the padding, she looked creepy — like a four-year-old who was going through puberty with budding breasts. We argued and argued. I figure I asked for it. Introduce a bra to a five-year-old and you'll soon be fighting with a teenager.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Psycho Killer - Qu'est-ce que c'est?

So ... is anyone else out there worried that their son might be the next big serial killer to hit Canada? Or perhaps a potential school shooter?

J., at the ripe old age of three years and 10 months, has developed a fascination, nay, an obsession, with guns and killing. He talks about it ... a lot. Thankfully, it's more often than not in a protective way towards me or his brother, M. as in "If someone tried to take M., I'd shoot them and kill them." So while the sentiment is strangely loving, it's still a bit worrisome.

There's also talk about when he's a big boy and can get a real gun. I'm hoping this is a completely normal developmental phase. Someone please reassure me of this. Growing up with only sisters, I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to deal with this. We were all about vicious name calling and the like. Not violence.

That being said, I did babysit for a family of three boys next door when I was a teenager and one of them pulled a butcher knife on his brother one time (the middle child, of course!) and all of them are normal, functioning adults so perhaps I need not worry too much.

He hasn't started torturing bugs or animals yet which I've read is a definite precursor to sociopathic tendencies so that's good news. Wait, he did kill a wood bug today, but it was accidental and he felt bad about it. Good sign. We had a funeral for it and burried it out in the yard after I explained to him what a funeral was.

As for the title of this post, I'm really hoping that most of you get the pop culture reference. I know my favourite husband and a F.O.B., R.H. will get it, but this is a test for the rest of you. I'm finally getting to an age where a lot of my pop culture references are totally going over the heads of younger people I encounter. I think I am offically old.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Great comments!

Ah, I knew fellow M.O.B.'s (and F.O.B.'s) would understand! My community/support group is forming! And so far it's made up of laugh-out-loud funny people so even better! Thank goodness I'm neither crafty nor arty so I won't have to get over not sharing that with J. & M. J. does like to bake though so I'm going to have to ramp up my domestic skills in the kitchen.

I was thinking through my group of friends and there are actually a huge number of all boy families. Not that I'm excluding those with both boys and girls from enjoying this blog, but I think there is a unique dynamic to those families with only boys in the house. I distinctly recally my M.O.B. guru/mentor, K. (the Martha Stewart mentioned in the comments) telling me about how she and R. (aka Mr. Martha Stewart) would fight over whose turn it was to go to the emergency room when one of their boys got hurt because it happened with somewhat regular frequency.

For some reason, even before I had kids, I knew deep down that I was destined to be the mother of boys. I have no idea why I felt this, but I was convinced that it didn't matter how many kids I had, they would all be boys. Thankfully we are stopping at two so I'll never known for sure. But my gut tells me that my womb prefers the Y chromosome. I would be like that crazy family on TLC's "Kids By The Dozen", the Arndt's with 13 boys and 1 girl, except without the girl.

That show is like a car crash. I know I shouldn't be watching, but I can't look away. And why do all those crazy women all home school their children? They all do it! (I suspect it might have something to do with the theory of evolution versus creationism but that's just a hunch ...) If I had 14 or more kids, I'd be dancing a jig each time one of them went off to school! I was at a birthday party recently and was talking with another mom about how J. was about to start pre-school and she told me how she was disappointed because she hadn't been able to get her son into a "parent participation" preschool. Am I one of the only people who believes it's good for kids to have lives beyond their parents and on the flip side, good for parents to have lives beyond their kids? Because sometimes I think I'm in the minority. I think I actually laughed in her face and said that the whole reason J. was going to preschool is so that he would be out of my hair for a couple hours a day! Our conversation ended shortly thereafter. The sleep deprevation really had made me even more of a loose cannon than before. I'm sure I'm really going to p*ss somebody off one of these days.

Well, off to rustle up some semblance of dinner. M. has been waking up at night again for the last little while and so I am getting back to not really being able to handle much each day. I really think I could stay in bed and sleep for a week if given the opportunity. I can't wait for the teen years when we can all sleep until noon. Sigh.

M.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

I've started again...

After a great start and then pathetic fizzling out a couple years ago, I've decided to give blogging a try again.

Welcome to "M.O.B. Mentality", with M.O.B. standing for Mother of Boys. I figure I'll start an online community/support group that can then spill over into informal gatherings of us mothers of boys where we can commiserate and share tips and coping strategies for managing the crazy whirlwind that comes with having boys in the house. (And yes, that includes husbands who really are just little boys trapped in big bodies.)

I figure eventually my witty ramblings will get me noticed by Oprah and then lead to a book and movie deal as well as my own nationally syndicated talk show (US-based, of course, because who watches Canadian television, other than my mother?). From all that, I will become a gazillionaire and can live out my dream of travelling the world, with my unruly mob, and helping those less fortunate. Sounds completely reasonable, right?

I'm sure those delusions might have something to do with my severely sleep-compromised brain, but heck, stranger things have happened, so why not dream big. Not quite sure what I'll be writing about, or how often, but I'm sure J. (soon to turn 4 but going on 14) and M. (three months next week) will provide me with lots of material.

Today, J. wanted to jump on his bed and when I told him no, he informed me that he was going to run away. And when I asked him where he planned to go, he said "on an adventure by myself and then you'll be sad." I really didn't think I was going to have to deal with that kind of drama until the teen years, but then again, my little genius always has been wise beyond his years.

With that, I need to go feed M. The little bugger is not getting on board with my "sleep through the night" program. I suspect it could be a growth spurt because we had been doing okay, but this is the second one in three weeks, so perhaps he's just becoming a snacker. I'm trying to power feed him today so he'll have a full belly and stay asleep for a good chunk of the night. Wish me luck.

M.