Baby Thongs?

About a week ago I was visiting one of my best friends when she told me I had to see something because I would "appreciate it". Immediately I knew I was going to angry very soon. First thing to understand is that Dez is a mother of two, a 2 year old girl and a 5 month old boy(my Godson). The little girl was recently potty trained and as is prone to happen occasionally has accidents.

The one day Dez was in the mall with her kids and the little girl had an accident. Not having any spare undies for her, Dez ran into Krazy 8 and bought some underwear. The ones for a 2 year old looked a little small so Dez bought the next size up. It is important to note that these little girl underwear were in a 4 pack so Dez couldn't see the exact size and since she was just trying to get her daughter into dry clothes she didn't put too much thought into it. Once she took the underwear out and placed them on her daughter, she realized these weren't normal little girls' underwear. 

The underwear that she had unknowingly bought for her 2 year old is designed to look like adult women's panties. What does this mean? Her little butt cheeks hangout. Why on earth would someone think this was a good idea? Did a pedophile design these? Because that is the only reason why someone would be in favor of having a 2 year old's butt cheeks hanging out of their underwear. 

Here is the sexualized underwear placed on top of the regular little girls underwear. You can clearly see the size difference in the photo although in person it is a more stark difference. 

Needless to say, my niece will not be wearing "underwear" from this store ever again. Her mother was pretty disgusted and rightfully so. I mean, I have seen a lot of crazy things for little girls to wear, including high heels for little girls just trying to learn to walk. Don't get me started on that one. But this underwear fiasco is not even trying to hide it's agenda. What's next toddler thongs? How about corsets for infants? That one has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

 Actually Abecrombie and Fitch has already made little girl thongs. And oh wait! Someone already thought that it was a great idea to make something along the lines of baby corsets. I actually googled toddler thongs and infant corsets after jokingly writing the above paragraph because I had the disturbing realization that some creepo probably already invited that shit. Sometimes I hate being right. I truly hope that no parent would ever buy this crap for their kids. Also I worry because the extreme sexualization of children and infants makes things that sexualize them on a smaller scale seem not as bad because we become desensitized. That butt cheek underwear starts to seem not so bad next to the child thong. But it is still horrible and should not exist. I find it extremely disconcerting that at a time when everyone is focusing on the sexualization of women in the media we are sexualizing little girls and infants. So how do we combat this? Unfortunately the only thing that can be done is simply not buying these products. By standing up and saying "No! Children are children and not sex objects." *Adults aren't either but that's another topic*  

Surviving Father's Day

My father died when I was 18 during my first semester of college. Like anyone who has ever lost a parent, I wonder what my Dad would think of me now. I wonder especially because I was not a self-proclaimed feminist, nor was my concentration on violence against women and children. My father always encouraged me to be a strong woman. He always told me that he knew I would go to college and graduate. He never worried about me succeeding. So with that aspect of my life I know he would be proud. But it became clear to me in Graduate school that if my father were still alive I would have a lot of hard-hitting questions for him. The biggest being, he not have accepted any man abusing his daughters, so why did he abuse other people's daughters? 

My Dad had a long history of domestic violence and with a combination of PTSD from two voluntary tours of Vietnam, alcoholism, and growing up with violence in the household my Dad was a prime candidate to repeat the cycle. My Dad gave up drinking before I was born; he just stopped one day. No rehab. No nothing. Cigarettes were something he was never able to give up no matter how many times he tried and it ultimately contributed to his death. But the violence seemed to have stopped when he stopped drinking, with the exception of my mother. Now my parents were divorced by the time I was 2.5 years old so I don't remember any violence consciously. Although I do exhibit signs, quieter ones, of someone who saw abuse or was abused. Fun fact: When someone is abused their brain chemistry is altered. You want to know if someone has been abused? Do a brain scan, it'll all be right there. Children who witness abuse but who are never physically abused themselves have the same brain chemistry of a child who is physically abused. My parents divorced because my father was beating my mother and cheating on her. Somewhere there is a file lurking around that also has toddler Sabrina with hand marks on her little arms; the man had a firm grip. My mother said that when my father was abusing her, he wasn't mentally there. He simply snapped. He didn't recall anything and nothing she did to inflict pain on him worked. But once my parents divorced the violence stopped. 

As a feminist, I HATE abusers. I cannot stand to look at them. However, I love my father. The memories I have of him are not of a man of who beat me and my mother. My parents had a dysfunctional friendship when I was growing up. Far more functional than most people after a divorce. My dad was generally very nice to his ex-wives, most likely for his children's sake and because he didn't have custody of most of us. So I have always had a difficult dealing with my Dad, the man I love, and the abuser that I don't know. I have so many questions I wish I would have had the chance to ask him and believe me I would have asked. Once I get a question into my head it does not leave until I blurt it out. So I am stuck with this. 

Dad why was it okay for you to abuse women? Didn't you think about your own daughters and the kind of relationships you were setting us up for? How did you feel when your daughters were in abusive relationships? Do you feel you shoulder at least some of that blame? How do you feel about men that abuse women and children? Are you sorry? And how do you feel about where I stand on these issues?

 I will never have my answers. And I doubt I am the only person out there who is in this position. The only thing that I do know is, it's not my fault, my siblings’, nor any of the women who were abused; we did not make my Dad the way he was. To my brother's credit, he broke the cycle. He did not become an abuser. Being abused does not mean that you yourself will grow up to be a victim or an abuser. But it does mean we can grow up to be survivors.

A Hairy Situation

Being 26, I grew up during the kick off of "the Brazilian" and the "anti female body hair" trend. Even in high school, before my feminist awakening, I always found it strange that the focus of this war on hair was solely focused on the female body. Especially since I find hairy men repulsive, looking at some men it is clear that we evolved from apes. I really found the obsession odd since women are the ones we already associate with being clean and having the better grooming habits. Shouldn't the focus have been on male grooming?

Now I will not be going over my own grooming habits because it's no one else's business, no woman's pubic hair is anyone else's business with maybe the exception of her partner. I honestly don't care about the pubic grooming of other women with few exceptions. Exception 1) Women/girls who go bare without the knowledge that the chances of ingrown hairs, infections(usually fungal) and STDs increase dramatically. With this information if you are having multiple sexual partners you should really consider putting down the razer/wax.

My second exception are women who shave because the man in their lives demand it. Now I'm not talking about both partners having to spice things up. I'm talking about men shaming  women for not being completely hairless like a child. I use the child reference because according to scholars and social scientists such as Gail Dines, the kick off of the female pubic hair witch hunt started with the rise of pornos. Porns started featuring women bare down there right before the Brazilian trickled into the average American woman's life. These porns feature women without pubic hair in hopes to make them appear younger, Barely Legal one might say. Shaming women for not looking like little girls is twisted.

Now if hair makes you itch or whatever and you want to get rid of it, have at it. Shave Batman into it, dye it green, have a blast. But do not let anyone, society included, shame you into hating your hair. And if someone loves you they are not going to care about your pubic hair(unless it smells). Also I have never encountered anyone that demanded I do anything to my lady bits, probably because they fear I would murder them.  

Competitive Book Club

Back at the end of last year, some of my really good friends and I came up with the idea for competitive book club. Here is how it works. We all came up with a list of books we wanted to read this year and we are not reading the same books at the same time. There is a point system based on how many pages you read and you can earn points by reading books others have read and recommended at the monthly meetings. Also if someone reads a book you reviewed you get points for that as well. Now all the books that we are reading have to be first time reads. The person who reads the most per season gets to pick a book that the rest of us have to read by the next season. At the end of the year we are all getting t-shirts with a list of our books that we read on them. The winner does not have to pay for theirs. Obviously this works a lot on the honor system.

For the first two months I was reading like crazy. Now however, I am barely reading. This is due to my schedule change(working 230-11pm) will mess up your schedule. And if I am being honest, most of my reading was done at night before bed and I no longer do that. I am sure to keep reading, usually at work in between calls at night when I'm not working on school work. I have to say that through this book club I have read books that I never would have. And it has pushed me to keep reading even when I really would prefer to watch youtube videos that would drain my brain. I believe firmly that the brain is like any other muscle and if you do not exercise it, you will lose it. That is actually how working on this blog came about. One of the same friends who started C.B.C. also has a blog Does the Poet Choose to Be a Boat?, which I enjoy reading weekly. And through talking with Laurel I decided that it would be to my benefit to start a blog, because lord knows I have enough opinions and a frequent need to share them.  

ACTION!!!!

Growing up as a little girl I played with Barbie and little dolls. I almost never had action figures with the exception of ones from Aladdin or mermaids that I would play with when I took a bath. Now this was not because my mother had anything against action figures, I just wasn't interested in playing with G.I. Joe. There have always been very few female action heroes or action figures. As a child(and as an adult) I loved Xena so I was certainly open to the idea of strong women, I just didn't have the option toy wise, although I certainly had all of the little kitchen stuff and all that bullshit that was supposed to help train me to be a good little housewife. I am only enraged at toy companies and the propaganda they shove down the throats of American parents and their children, a wee bit.

Anyway, I was delighted to find that a line of toys seem to be coming out of female action heroes that have a positive message about females for both girls and boys. Girls are not the only ones who need to know that women and girls are capable of saving the day just as their male counterparts can. Having toys that allow both girls and boys to see female characters in a nonsexual, powerful role exposes them to a broader sphere of thinking, allowing women and girls to occupy roles that in the past (and in some cases presently) have been taboo.

Do I think that this new toy line of female action figures is going to save us all from ourselves? No. Do I think it is the step in the right direction? Yes. Do I think this is a genius way of making money? Yes. But all toys are designed to make money so I really don't care about that. I would rather toys that broaden a child's horizons than ones that reinforce gender norms and antiquated ideas that only serve to stunt a child's imagination. The more options we give children with play the easier it will be for them to develop into who they are. With that however, it is important not to completely throw things that are considered "girly" under the bus because that reinforces the message that the feminine and things associated with the feminine aren't as good as more masculine traits/toys. Little girls can certainly play with dolls (although Bratz dolls should all be burned. There is no redeeming those things) as well as action figures, trucks or whatever else they want. And the same goes for little boys. I hate the color coding and separate isles in toy stores. THEY ARE TOYS! They shouldn't be gendered. And the gendering of toys is the clearest case of money grubbing capitalism I have seen in a while. For an example, if you have a brother and sister this could easily happen "I can't have pink bat! I need a boy bat!" No. There is no such thing as boy and girl bats. This is as stupid as those pens for women that were purple but parents buy into the pink baseball bats because they're "cute". Sexism isn't cute. Gendering toys and other items is moronic. Besides if you want a baseball bat you should buy a Hannon Bat.  Everyone knows that. *Yes, I just plugged my cousin's baseball business.*

History in my State

Today my home state PA became the 19th state to strike down the ban against marriage equality. I am so excited for my friends and family who can now marry the people they love in their home state. It is a shame that it has taken until 2014 for this to happen. The gross injustice that still goes on in this country that infringes on basic human rights is something I have never understood. Love between two consenting adults is no one else's business. And I for one have sat through enough straight weddings where I knew that the two people saying "I Do" were going to be getting divorced for whatever reason. If people who obviously are headed for divorced  can get married because their genitalia happens to be an innie and an outtie then why can't two outties or two innies enjoy the same freedom if they love each other? Marriage is a legal binding contract with the state not just a religious ceremony. They are different. And quite a few religions allow for marriages that do not fit the narrow Judeo-Christian definition. And Christians are not being forced to allow gay marriage in their churches that is a battle I don't particularly care to engage in. Today is a day of celebration for human rights.

Sleep well tonight PA. You did right kid.

Passing

My skin is so white, it's amazing I don't glow in the dark. Looking at me there is no surprise that I have am of Irish, German and English descent. My skin has afforded me a certain amount of privilege, privilege that my father enjoyed but that mother was never allotted. Looking at my mother, you can tell that she isn't quite white and she is very proud of this fact. My mother's face betrays her Native American heritage. So much so that when she was growing up in the 1960's the kids in her school called her "breed". My mother has always embraced her Native culture and I was raised to do the same.  Unfortunately, I went to an elementary school that wasn't just predominately white, it was completely white.

I was in the third grade and very excited because my Mom let me wear one of her Native American chokers that she had bought at an event earlier that year. I felt very special because this necklace was particularly intricate. I proudly wore the necklace because it was so beautiful and because it showed I had earned a degree of trust from my Mom. Or perhaps I had just hounded her enough that she was decided to give in. I was set up to have a great day, until my one classmate, Jamie, pointed out my necklace in a less than positive way. When asked I simply said "It's my Mom's Native American necklace. She let me wear it." and then he asked "Why would you wear that necklace if you're not an Indian?" I explained that I was, in fact, "Indian". My classmate then continued to taunt me based on this saying "I'm Irish and I don't have a giant shamrock on my chest." If I had been as outspoken as a child as I am as an adult I would have fired back at him "Yeah except for St. Patrick's Day and the Fighting Irish jacket and hat combo you have!". Instead I just told him that I was Irish too, which by both my last name and my fair skin is obvious. It occurred to me that the problem wasn't that I had pride in my heritage. It was the pride I placed in the wrong skin color.

After that day, unless I had a class assignment, I did not tell classmates and sometimes friends about my heritage. People have asked me if I was adopted all the way up through high school because I do not share the same Native features as my mother. My mother accused me throughout school and well into college of turning my back on my heritage. It added salt to the wound that I embraced my Irish heritage from my father's side because my parents divorced when I was two years old. She thought my shame had more to do with her than with the kids at school shaming me out of identifying. It wasn't until I was in graduate school taking a class on Feminist Theory that I learned of the term "passing". My one classmate, who later became my roommate, was the one who identified my experience as just that. I have spent my life passing as white and enjoying the privileges that go along with that. And please understand, you're an asshole if you're white and living in America and you don't think you're enjoying white privilege because no matter how disadvantage you might be, you are still treated better than people who have more pigment to their skin. Racial slurs have never been thrown at you in a way that bring you back to a point of oppression. My classmate spent her life passing as well. Her parents are both immigrants but from different parts of the globe. She went to a rich all white school and she preferred to have her Mother seen, because she was paler, and her Father to be heard, because he spoke English more clearly.

We both had spent most of our lives playing what other people wanted us to be because it was easier. The Japanese have a saying "The nail that sticks out gets the hammer" and it applies in the States. I have spent much of my life denying that part of who I am and now it feels weird and pretentious to try and claim any sort of affiliation. I certainly have not been negatively affected by the stereotypes that plagued both my Mother and Native Americans. What I can do is simply embrace who and what I am. I think it is time that I put that necklace back on.