Preparing My Daughter to Take on the World

I sat down with my 13-year-old daughter the other day with the intent of revolutionizing her, or, at the very least, stoking embers of the fire which I hope will eventually energize her to take on the world.

We watched the documentary Miss Representation together. I've written about this film before and, even upon my second viewing, found that it remains a powerful indictment of the media of which I am a part. Miss Representation chronicles the long lasting impact of media sexism on our young women -- in coverage of women in politics, the denigration of women as sex objects, the sidelining of women's stories in news, sports and entertainment, and the media's emphasis on pleasing and catering to the male viewer/reader/consumer even though women watch more TV, go to more films and have control over 70+ percent of U.S. consumer spending.

The documentary presents statistic after wearying statistic which, when taken as a whole, paint a dire picture about the paucity of women in politics, the silence of women's voices in the halls of leadership (politics, business, media) and the lack of multi-faceted, intelligent, non-sex object protagonists in films and TV shows.

For every Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi and Condoleezza Rice, there are thousands of media talking heads and bloggers who want to make hay by tearing them down based on how they look and what they wear. You need to search no further for a relevant example of this than to the current internet hubbub over the fact that our Secretary of State dared to go out in public wearing no makeup except for lipstick. I blogged about the insanity here.

For every popular portrayal of an authentic, flawed, realistic woman on the screen (The Good Wife, Grey's Anatomy, Nurse Jackie), the number of shallow depictions of women, particularly those which reduce women to body parts or as subservient to men, vastly outnumber the complex ones, by epic proportions.

But I didn't want watching this documentary to be a downer for my daughter. And it wasn't. It got her angry. It got her motivated to do something about this, to not fall prey to the messages with which she's bombarded about how she should look and dress, what she should want and how she should act.

She was already well on her way to speaking out against this. When assigned to write a persuasive essay recently, she chose to write about how women's sports should receive more attention and coverage in the media after pointing out to me that the women's collegiate basketball tournament games didn't receive a fraction of the coverage the men's hoop tournament received. (She's a hoopster and wanted to read about her role models, just like her brothers could.) Additionally, when she looked up scores and info in the newspapers, she found that the games for female college athletes were listed well inside the papers (if at all) and were designated as being part of the "women's" NCAA hoop tournament versus how the men's scores were presented, as part of the generic "NCAA basketball tournament," you know, the "regular" and only real tournament because it was the male one to which everyone is referring when they ask, "Did you fill out your brackets?" The tournament for women hoop players didn't get that kind of publicity. The women's tournament is an also-ran, insignificant by comparison, and wow, did that tick my daughter off.

We'd both rather see the likes of this -- an online profile of fantastic soccer superstar Abby Wambach who is smart, talented, hardworking and fearless -- than insulting attempts to try to yield web traffic with headlines like, "PHOTOS: Dakota's Very, Very Low-Rise Jeans" (about actress Dakota Fanning's pants) or "Inside Octomom's Adult Film Shoot," both stories which were found on a prominent mainstream news site today.

Image credits: Amazon and espnW. 

Quick Hits: Sexism in Sports, 'Miss Representation' DVD & Dog #2?

Women Athletes Should Get Paid More, So Says The Girl

I'm so proud of my burgeoning feminist gal. She was recently assigned to write a persuasive essay for her Language Arts class. The Girl selected a topic near and dear to her heart: Women's sports.

In particularly, she wants to make the argument that female professional athletes, as well as those who coach them, should get paid more money and get more media attention. She settled on her topic days after we watched the NCAA basketball championship when Baylor beat Notre Dame and she was ticked to find that the following day, there was hardly any media attention paid to the women's championship as compared to the amount of coverage devoted to the men's championship.

After I gave her a recent New York Times article about the appalling, yawning gap between the financial compensation for coaches of men's NCAA hoop teams versus women's teams, she was all fired up to write her essay. Can't wait to read it.

'Miss Representation' DVD

Speaking of feminism . . . remember a while back when I wrote a post about the disturbing documentary Miss Representation about the damaging impact of media sexism on girls? Well it has now been released on DVD.

I've ordered a copy for The Picket Fence Post house and plan to watch it with The Girl. I'll report back here on her reaction. Given her anger over how women's sports are trivialized in comparison to men's sports, the documentary will likely galvanize her.

Dog #2?

I've submitted an application for the Picket Fence Post family to adopt a rescue dog who's 3-4 months old. Everyone -- even the reluctant Spouse who thinks adding a second dog is lunacy but has nonetheless given his blessing to this endeavor -- fell in love with the little guy after we saw a video of him online.

However we're second in line behind another family who submitted their application before us. We should know this week if The Picket Fence Post family is about to be catapulted into swift action in preparation for a new arrival, or whether the pup will find happiness in a different home. We shall see.

Image credit: Amazon.

Couple of Parent-Centric Columns: Lessons from 2011's TV Parents & Why Moms Should Run for Office

Lessons from 2011's TV Parents

It's been quite the year for parents on the small screen.

We've been entertained by the hijinks of the Modern Family's Claire & Phil Dunphy and their bedroom door that should've had a lock on it before their kids surprised them at inopportune moment.

We've seen Parenthood's Adam and Kristina Braverman try and fail to ban their teen daughter from dating an older man who had his own apartment.

We witnessed The Middle's Frankie and Mike Heck declare themselves to be free from their children's unreasonable demands which reduced them to little more than unpaid, disrespected servants (although the self-declared freedom was short-lived).

We laughed as Up All Night's new parents, Chris and Reagan Brinkley, tried in vain to prove that they're hip and cool and able to party it up on weeknights, even though their baby isn't sleeping through the night yet, they're sleep deprived and Reagan needed to work in the morning.

My recent Pop Culture and Politics column details these child-rearing lessons that I gleaned from watching TV parents during 2011.

Why Moms Should Run for Office

In another recent Pop Culture and Politics column I extended an invitation to women who are raising the next generation to run for public office because, all too often, women's voices are not heard or represented in our elected bodies.

The advocacy group She Should Run offered up this dour data on the state of women in American politics:

• "Women hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress."
• "State legislatures only have 23 percent women."
• "Only 6 out of 50 states have a female governor."
• "The United States trails behind the rest of the world -- ranking 87th in the number of women in our national legislature."
• ". . . [W]omen are 50 percent less likely than men to seriously consider running for office, less likely than men to actually run for office and far less likely to run for higher office."

As one of the founders of The White House Project (whose goals include electing a female commander in chief) said in the powerful documentary Miss Representation, when it comes to our daughters, "You can't be what you can't see."

Image credit: She Should Run.

Altering Our Kids’ Relationship with Media: 'We All Should Be Appalled.'

Ninety-seven percent of what you watch, read and hear comes from the male perspective. . . It’s wrong because media creates culture -- Jennifer Siebel Newsom

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, creator of the documentary Miss Representation, spoke at a conference this week about the importance of parents curtailing the influence of media over their kids so children won't internalize the damaging, sexist messages delivered to them through an onslaught of TV/film, music, advertising and news media.

After her son was born he received gifts calling him the next president and a leader, she said, yet after her daughter was born she got things calling her cute and a princess. Labeling children “a vulnerable class of citizens” whose viewpoints are "formed" by media, Siebel Newsom said parents need to wake up and recognize what messages our children are receiving.

TV is “killing our daughters’ ambition and destroying empathy and emotion in our sons,” Siebel Newsom said. “Let’s demand a media culture that uplifts us all,” she said.

Powerful stuff. It's worth watching both her speech AND the excellent (yet heartbreaking) documentary Miss Representation.

In the meantime, Siebel Newsom is urging parents when they’re out Christmas/holiday shopping and they see “a product or advertisement that misrepresents or degrades women” they should post a description or photo of the offensive item on Twitter and accompany it with the hashtag #notbuyingit.

“If enough of us publicly tell these companies that we won’t buy into their offensive advertising or products, we can get their attention and see real change happen,” she wrote on her blog. “Let’s keep the trend going and send a direct message to the advertisers and media moguls who perpetuate sexist stereotypes: This holiday season, sexism won’t sell.”

Image credit: Miss Representation.org.

Three for Thursday: Must-See Documentary, Lessons from the Sox & Travel Ball

Be Sure to Watch (Or DVR) 'Miss Representation' Documentary

I’ve previously written about the powerful documentary, Miss Representation and how movingly and chillingly it lays out statistics and displays images to prove its case that the media treat women horribly and that this treatment has a dire impact on women, our daughters and our democracy. Featuring interviews with a wide range of women of all political stripes -- from the worlds of entertainment, political science and journalism -- Miss Representation is a must-see if you’re raising children who are learning from the media what it means to be female.

One of the saddest statistics in the documentary: The one about how 7-year-old girls and boys, in roughly equal numbers, say they want to be president but once they turn 15, the number of girls who want to be commander-in-chief plunges dramatically. (I reviewed the documentary, and the impact it has on kids here.)
I urge you to watch and/or tape/DVR the documentary which premieres tonight at 9 on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). It is slated to be repeated on OWN at 1 a.m. on Friday Oct. 21 and 10 a.m. on Saturday Oct. 22.

Lessons from the Sox

You know that horror story that’s continuing to unfold on Yawkey Way, the one about our family’s beloved Red Sox players phoning it in at the end of the season, drinking beer in the clubhouse while playing video games and eating buckets of fried chicken during games as the team collapsed in epic style, dropping from the American League East leaders to falling out of the playoffs?

In my house, the ongoing ugly saga has provided a host of heartbreaking lessons, teaching moments if you will:

The Importance of Loyalty: We heard a radio interview with a Picket Fence Post family favorite, Dustin Pedroia, who refused to push his teammates under the bus (even if they deserved it) after the media were filled with stories of ill-behaving ballplayers (which included reports of obnoxious behavior including drinking beer in the dugout, something the team angrily denies). Pedroia was honorable and modest and said he wants to play his entire career in a Red Sox uniform. They don't make many like him anymore.

The Importance of Hard Work/Cost of Not Working Hard: Pedroia, by all reports, gutted it out all season, as did Jacoby Ellsbury who had a good year. They earned and continue to receive our respect Those who seemed to be phoning it in (*cough Lackey*), and who have been described as failing to listen to the team’s trainers to keep fit, are finally being called to account for their slackery.

The Damage Done By Betrayal: When very personal information about now ex-Red Sox manager Terry Francona was divulged, gossip about his marriage and his health, many people were steamed because it appeared as though folks from the Sox organization dimed him out as a way to pin blame on him. Though one of the owners, John Henry, denied that he was behind the personal reveals – the Boston Globe said that “a team source” told them that “Francona was distracted by marital issues and his use of pain medication” – some believe that the organization is culpable for the trashing with ESPN’s Gordon Edes writing, “the slime bucket is never far from reach on Yawkey Way.”

The Olde Towne Team sustained some tarnish over the past few weeks. The luster of those two recent World Series wins has been diminished. The Picket Fence Post kids are learning the hard way that baseball is sometimes harsh business and that, regardless of who’s playing/coaching/running the team now, they won’t be there as long as we fans are. To some players, they’re just wearing a company jersey and they don’t care what jersey it is. And it shows.

Travel Ball: The Good and the Bad

The results are in: Both The Girl and The Eldest Boy made travel basketball teams. This is both good and bad.

Good: It’s good in that neither of them had to suffer the indignity of getting cut (as one of them did last year). They’ll both play at more competitive levels and hopefully improve their play, perhaps learn a few valuable things along the way.

Bad: This means that they will have at least one in-town team practice and game a week AND one travel team practice and game a week. Four separate events, minimum. (You have to play on an in-town team in order to also be on a travel team.)

More Bad: The Spouse is going to coach The Eldest Boy’s travel team and has signed up to coach The Girl’s in-town basketball team. This is good for the kids, who love having The Spouse for a coach, but for me, that means that for two additional weeknights, The Spouse will be unavailable and I’ll be on my own should The Youngest Boy have a hockey game or practice. (The hockey practices are not on one set day or time and we sometimes receive precious little notice when the times are set.)

At least I can remind myself that basketball games are held inside, in climate controlled environments so I won’t freeze like I do when I watch the hockey games. However the downside is that I can’t sip coffee in the gym.