One of the tips we gave was to image proof your home. Marci suggested clearing out the negative messages and replacing them with positive ones. It’s a pretty simple exercise actually, just look around your house for magazines, books, posters or anything that promotes the unrealistic images of beauty that surround us today. Even though, kids this young aren’t reading yet, they are soaking in everything they see around them and we need to make sure that what they see is helpful and not harmful.

I went around my house last week and snapped photos of all of the images of women that Amelia (and Benny) would see around our home. With the exception of a couple of wedding photos and some baby photos, these are all of the images of women in our home. 

Study the images of women that my children are growing up with. *We do not have fashion magazines or catalogs or celebrity gossip magazines in our home.*

What messages do you think they are getting?
What are they seeing about body size, different types of skin color, different types of beauty, different version of femininity? What messages are they getting about the things in life that you can do with your body?

Is the focus of these photos looking beautiful, or feeling beautiful?

Fearless.

We had about an inch of fresh snow this morning, which was exciting considering our non-winter has been full of days with non-snow.

The kids marched across the field that leads into the school yard, Amelia calling out to her girlfriend wearing the cupcake hat bouncing a few paces in front of us. Benny was smashing his boots into the snow, delighted at the footprints he was leaving.

We came to the big oak tree we pass under to round the corner onto the back side of the playground that leads up to the door where the kindergartners line up. Every day of this school year Benny and I have walked Amelia to her line, kissed her nose, and told her to have a great day with her friends at school. Most mornings I stand and chat with the other moms, many of us holding mugs of warm coffee as we try to prepare for another day of mommyhood. But most mornings I’m just watching to make sure my baby gets into school safely, and quietly smile as her head of dark, messy hair turns the corner to go down the kindergarten hallway and have the privilege of another day of learning.  

But not this morning.

“Mom! You don’t have to go any further. Just wait here.” -Amelia

“You don’t want us to walk with you to the doors?” -Me.

“No, just give me a hug quick. I can go by myself.” -Amelia

And I wanted to burst into tears. Wasn’t it just yesterday she was still in my belly, my office mate and I laughing over the hiccups she seemed to get every morning at 10am? Wasn’t it just yesterday she wrapped her tiny arms around my neck, and balanced herself in a standing position for the first time as I got her dressed? Wasn’t it just yesterday she had taken her first steps, wildly clapping for herself? How had she gotten so big, so quickly?

“Are you sure? Benny and I can walk…..” -Me

“Yep. Gimme a hug. I’m outta here.” -Amelia, turning to go before I even hugged her.

“Wait!! Wait, I need to give you a hug. And a big kiss. A big kiss for my Smoochy Moochy.” -Me, smothering her face in kisses as I tried to fight back tears. I guess this day was here.

“Okay, see ya. No monkey business from you two. Listen for the bell and then line up. I’ll see you after school.” -Me

It was surreal to see my big girl, my kindergartner, walking across the wide schoolyard on her own in her bright raspberry coat with her girlfriend, their faces turned to each other, having the kind of conversation that girls do in their own spaces. Amelia never looked back over her shoulder. She was confident in where she was going, and how to get there.

 Then the corner of my mouth turned up in a wicked little smile, as I realized the girl that Amelia was walking with was the notorious Runner, the first girl in their class to get her card flipped to a Red Warning because during the first week of school during milk break the girl had decided to run to her home not far from school to play pirates.

I have no idea what the conversation was about between Amelia and her little friend on that first morning she finished walking to school by herself. I just hope it was some sort of grand adventure being plotted by two minds who seem to be fearless about the world they are growing up in.

When I was in my 20’s, I assumed that once I became a parent, I would have it easier than other mothers. I was an educational psychologist who had spent years working in schools, counseling parents and directly serving kids. Having my own child one day would surely be a piece of cake. I could not have been more wrong! No parent “has it easy.” We all work very hard to teach and nurture our children and raise them to be empathetic, successful, happy human beings in this world, and we all face challenges along the way. Three degrees in psychology did not make me immune to the struggles presented by my own unique child or by the society and era in which I was raising her.

There are times in life when you see something differently, more clearly, or with greater nuance than before. It can happen gradually as the result of accumulated experiences and observations, or suddenly, as the result of a defining event that crystallizes for you what all those vague, nagging, tickling thoughts at the back of your mind could not articulate.

I am sometimes asked how I first became an advocate for girls and when I started writing about it. On September 7, 1999, I had one of those eureka flashes when this sense of purpose became clear to me. I was reading the New York Times and, in a watershed moment, I became acutely aware of my vulnerability as the mother of a daughter in what seemed like a culture going haywire.

"Mean Girls", the 2004 film based in part on Rosalind Wiseman's "Queen Bees and Wannabes"

After reading this article about the ways in which young girls were being turned into consumers of what had previously been considered adult-like clothing fashions, I became so angry I went straight upstairs to my clunky old Dell computer that ran a Windows 95 operating system, opened up WordPerfect, composed my first-ever Letter to the Editor, and emailed it over my dial-up connection via my free Juno account.

Here it is, excavated from the early Internet archives of the NYT by my tech-savvy new husband. It had to be shortened, but it remained essentially authentic to my feelings, conveying my dismay about girls’ fashions, the quickly changing landscape of raising daughters, and my disconnect from other mothers who did not share my concerns or values.

Looking back now on this NYT article that so disillusioned me, it is rather tame compared to what I read these days about girl fashions and what I see out in public. The clothes girls were starting to wear the year of that article were inspired by the new pop sensation Britney Spears, whose hit song and music video “…Baby One More Time,” launched in 1999, forever changed the image in my mind of the Catholic girls’ school uniform.

My sudden inability in 1999 to find a basic t-shirt for my daughter that was not chopped off just below her nonexistent boobies was enough to send me into a silent rage as I walked in—and directly out—of all of the children’s clothing stores at the mall. Jeez! Would I need to hire a seamstress, at great expense, to make appropriate apparel for my seven-year-old daughter so that she would not have to play, run and climb in a ridiculous half-shirt that was no longer just being marketed to teens, but had trickled down into the children’s market?

Before we fast forward to 2012 and the contemporary girls’ clothes that I could not have even imagined in 1999 at the pinnacle of my maternal outrage…the tiny thongs and t-shirts with suggestive slogans and kitten heels and such that you’ve read about here on Pigtail Pals…let’s go back briefly to my own childhood in the late 60’s and the 70’s.  I can see myself clearly in a picture taken when I was in 6^th grade wearing elephant pants (high-octane bellbottoms for those of you too young to remember) and some sort of cropped top. The cut-off top was standard hippie fashion for a while there, and my own mother dressed me like that. So why does this not confuse and concern me?

My parents were very strict in how they raised me. The clothes I wore were not shocking to anyone as far as I can recall. I did not even pick them out. I hated shopping. In those days, my mom came back from Sears and handed me a bag and said, “Here are some new clothes.” Why was there a greater sense of innocence—at least in my mind—about the clothing I wore compared to what girls the same age wear now? I think it’s perhaps because, somehow, and please help me out here…those midriff-bearing tops were considered “cute” rather than “hot.” So when the style came back in 1999, ushered in by a 16-year-old Britney and her gyrating bellybutton, was there something different about how it felt or was perceived?

I know one thing. At 11 or 12, I had no idea what “sexy” or “hot” really meant. I had never heard those words applied to a child, I saw no music videos of girls wearing them in a sexy performance I could emulate, I consumed no other marketing messages that I was or should be “sexy,” and I did not view myself as wearing those clothes to look grown up or to attract the gaze of boys. If anything, I wore them because I idolized Marcia Brady! Maybe the changing context of girl-in-society explains a lot, or maybe it’s a red herring, but I remain fascinated by the question.

The other day I saw this article in the Washington Post, and put it on Facebook because I was overjoyed that the topic of the sexualization of girls’ clothing had crossed over into educational journalism, with discussion about how schools can help parents with this problem. The clothing marketed to girls is coming under increased scrutiny for looking “hookerish” around (or before) puberty, so soon after passing through the very feminine and innocent pink-sparkle phase. Shoes, lingerie and cosmetic usage among teen and preteen girls has also changed dramatically. In England, where uniforms are common, several schools have now banned make-up because girls are acting “obsessed with their appearance” and “vain.” In one American Catholic school I read about recently, the uniform for girls has been changed from the traditional pleated skirt to unisex khaki pants, because the girls were rolling down the waistband of their skirts to make them shorter. So, even when uniforms are used, can they even work? What should we do? I am of so many minds on all of this.

As a former school administrator: The way some girls dress today—at ever-younger ages—is a huge distraction to themselves and boys. It detracts from their learning and the learning of others, and disrupts teaching. For those who assume it has always been this way, I can only say that it is very different now than when I began my career in education 25 years ago. And let me be clear. I do not place blame on the girls themselves for the societal pressures exerted upon them.

As a child who grew up wearing a school uniform: I can tell you from personal experience that kids need some freedom of self-expression, and they will subvert attempts to make them dress “appropriately” as defined exclusively by adults. I know I did! I also lampooned this behavior when I was the cartoonist for my school newspaper, making sure the administration knew how collectively put upon we all felt.

As a mother: I did not want my child going out of the house dressed as many of her peers were dressing, and fortunately she had her own well-grounded sensibilities. I asked my daughter, who is now 20, for a quote I could use about her observations of girls’ dress in middle school, and this is what she said:

“I feel that there was much more bullying and social pressure within the groups of girls who wore the skanky clothes, because if you were going to hang out together, you all had to have the same look to compete for boys’ attention, so kids trying to fit in were constantly comparing themselves to other girls who were considered popular. They didn’t bother people like my friends and me. They picked on each other more. That’s how the whole mean girls thing played out in my middle school.”

Because I did not experience the clothing wars with my own daughter, I would love to hear from some mothers who have!

One of the worst things that we do as adult women is to shame girls for dressing provocatively. I think we do it out of frustration, fear and embarrassment, and because we are all very conflicted in this society about how women should look and act. We have our own love/hate relationships with sexy clothes and beauty and youth, and it all changes and evolves, often in deeply dissatisfying ways, as we age and watch our daughters flowering. Lashing out at girls with their size zero bodies in micro-mini skirts is not helping them. But we do need to help them…I think…don’t we? Do we need to take any steps as parents to advise our daughters on how to survive in a culture where looks are everything for females, and the sexier the better?

Co-ed schools are a stage upon which some girls perform their sexiness. If schools are to be first and foremost places to learn, how can teachers and parents work together to help create a healthier environment for girls where they can be themselves rather than who the media tells them to be, at least during the academic day? This article does a really good job explaining a way schools could adopt dress codes that have enough structure to mitigate the hooker look, while leaving enough flexibility for girls to dress uniquely and creatively.

But an essential question that is hard to answer is, whose responsibility is it to police how girls dress? Should it be the school, through some sort of uniform or dress code, both of which do fundamentally require a lot of adult time be put into supervision and disciplining infractions? Or should it be parents, who lay down the law at home, and if so, how should they do this and when should they start?  Personally, I’m most invested in advocating for corporate social responsibility, but that does not help parents in the moment. Finally, for the sake of argument, how about the parents who don’t think it’s a problem—should anyone be telling them how their young daughters should dress?

I would love to hear from all of you. Please weigh in with your experiences, thoughts and ideas in the comments. Tell us how old your daughter is and how you view the roles of society, schools, parents, family, community and girls themselves when it comes to the “so sexy so soon” fashions of girlhood today. Let’s do some brainstorming!

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For more information on Rosalind Wiseman’s watershed book ”Queen Bees and Wannabes”, click HERE.

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Lori Day, educational consultant

Lori Day is an educational psychologist and consultant with Lori Day Consulting in Concord, MA, having worked previously in the field of education for over 25 years in public schools, private schools, and at the college level. She writes and blogs about parenting, education, children, gender, media, and pop culture. You can connect with Lori on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Remember my little pal Callie, the young girl who wrote the amazing letter to Lego regarding their sexist Lego Friends line?

I’m hoping when members of SPARK meet with Lego next month, they show the execs the contrast in these images.

Apparently awesome runs in Callie’s family….check out the birthday cake made of Duplo blocks that Callie, her grandma, and her cousin built for their great aunt’s birthday.

The women in Callie's family celebrate a birthday with an amazing Lego Duplo cake.

Not quite the same building experience you’d find, say….. at Lego Friends “Stephanie’s Outdoor Bakery”.

Lego Friends "Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery" marketed to girls.

I think Lego needs to change the way it thinks about our girls. I think Lego needs to Redefine Girly.

JC Penney played the firestorm beautifully, and they needed to, because they needed a PR home run. They got one — as many of the parents and concerned adults this fall who were outraged over the back-to-back mudslide of the ”I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother does it for me” T-Shirt Gate and the objectifying Phoebe Cates/pool tv commercial are now all wild for the JC Penney shop-in taking place this weekend. I won’t be attending.

I fully support Gay rights, the LGBT community, and the right to equality. But I also support our daughters, and I’ll be busy giving a keynote address on the role of women and girls in the media, ironically. I try my best not to shop at places that sell my daughter short, and teach my son not to expect much from girls.

I just went through all 8 pages of tops offered online for girls sizes 7-16. With the exception of a few “nerd” references on t-shirts showing Hello Kitty wearing thick black glasses, the vast majority of the shirts referenced shopping, bff’s, high heels, make-up, Peace, cupcakes, and phrases like “Fame, Fashion, and Friends”.

I just want more for my girl, ya know? Fighting stereotypes about one group of people doesn’t quite cross out selling and profiting from selling stereotypes about another group.

The t-shirt that helped Pigtail Pals go on one of our two wild viral events this fall is still selling like crazy — Pretty’s Got Nothing To Do With It. You can get yours here. Because you won’t find anything like it at JC Penney.

Pigtail Pal's best-selling tee that builds girls up.

The back of our Pretty tee, words were collected from our Facebook community as they described their daughters.

Pigtail Pals is not anti-princess. We’re not anti-pink. We’re anti-limitation. We want our children to have all the room in the world to be who they love to be, and the room to define what that is. We need to agree to give them that space.

Playing princesses is fine. But it’s just one slice of the pie. Let’s teach our children that life is a marvelous feast. Let’s give them idea after idea to devour. Imagination is a hungry beast. 

Let’s allow them to be a princess one day, a pirate or explorer the next….whether they are a boy or a girl.

Let’s get out of their way, and allow them to be children.

You can learn more about the camp here, including volunteer opportunities. The overnight camp is held at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

GLI summer camp. This is the place where you can be real. At GLI, you live in a dorm with roommates and spend your days in fun self-discovery workshops, playing wild theatre games, sharing stories in small groups, making films, playing sports, and enjoying evening activities like extreme scavenger hunt or mask making. Every three days, there’s a field trip to a high ropes course, lakeside, or arts event. Girls come away from GLI with the confidence to be themselves and build lasting friendships. GLI helps you gain skills to face the challenges life throws your way.    -Rachel Simmons

What kind of messages and notes to you leave in your little one’s lunch?

(See our Lunchbox Note Cards 20 for $6.50 here.)

“After being there I realized the problem is far bigger than their friends line. The shows we saw have not one respectable female character (they manage to portray even cleopat…ra like a kardashian sister). Their kids meals and collectible cups come in pink or blue. The blue ones have several lego characters (ninjas, pirates, etc) on one side and a huge pirate ship scene on the other. The pink ones have 3 “sassy” looking girls (not lego figures) on both sides. They’re not doing anything, or supposed to be anything. They’re just standing there with big doey eyes being,……I don’t know……..”cool” girls, I guess? And then there’s still this. In fun town (which was pretty fun before I saw this), there are two life size characters built entirely from legos. there’s a male police officer and a female firefighter. Cool, right? Except the man is talking into his walkie talkie, while the woman is………wait for it…….not putting out a fire, but……….putting on lipstick!!! WTH???” -Sarah L.

Next, check out the second installment of this fantastic video series by our colleague Feminist Frequency.

(Skip to 8:30 if you are short on time, but the whole thing is well worth it!)

As I sit here in my family room watching my kids play with their Legos (they are building a house for whales with an art room), I find myself wondering how big Pigtail Pals would have to get where I wouldn’t care about 51,600 people being upset with my product and feeling no sense of responsibility to answer them. Maybe “meet in the middle” is lost in translation on the Danes.

Let’s heat things up. Let Lego hear what you have to say. Give your kids a voice, and let them write a letter or color a picture expressing their feelings. This is far from over, especially as I’m getting numerous reports from parents that they bought the a piece from the Friends line with an open mind, and were discouraged when their daughter lost interest in about 20 minutes. I don’t think that has anything to do with girls and their interest or ability in building as it does more reflect the lameness of these Friends sets.

Lego could have done have hit one out of the park with this line. Instead we have a wall of purple boxes representing what I think are an outsider’s stereotypes of what American girls are like. I think girls worldwide deserve better.

Let Lego hear your voice, and if you would like your letter published here, please send me a copy at info@pigtailpals.com. Children’s letters and pictures are most welcome as well!

michael.mcnally@LEGO.com
Jørgen.VigKnudstorp@LEGO.com
Charlotte.Simonsen@LEGO.com
Mads.Nipper@LEGO.com

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