Dr. Frank's What's-it

I don't see why people shelter their children so much. Don't they understand they're doing more harm than good?

Geez, just get the kid this, they're leading him down that path anyway.

http://www.the-homo-depot.com/catalog/TOlimiteded.htm

Feminine = Peaceful? These people need to watch some reality television.

Wait till the kid realizes that he can fashion weapons out of "non-violent" toys like Lego and K'nex. Sticks, even. That's what the boys I babysitted when I was a teenager did. They will find a way to be GI Joe if they want to.

You know how people always say "Kids are alot smarter than you think they are"? The description of this kids response makes me think maybe that's right.

"He [the writer's 5 year old son] recently got a squirt gun as a gift--we called it a ''squirt toy'' and he looked at us with pity, as it is a squirt ''gun'' as far as he is concerned. "

Pity.

From: http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/playing/weapons.html

Josh, I remember it well - one of my favorites.

My parents let me play with guns when I was small, but they told me they were hammers. It sounds like a Polish joke, but before I learned the truth I still used them as weapons, of course, even if they were the wrong way round.

"Sometimes he'll want you to be the bad guy so he can kill you. Let him. I don't mean you should allow yourself to be physically hurt, but when he shoots you, make dramatic sounds and die, or better yet plead for mercy and promise to be good if he spares you. He probably won't, then die anyway. "

oh, whew. i was actually going to let my 5 year old son literally kill me. that's one true way for them to learn the horror of guns. "i killed mommy! ahhh!"

"If you really hate Barbies and are dead-set against it, you could always push the Madeline Doll series... My daughter LOVES these dolls, and they don't have breasts or high heels"

Damn those breasts and high heels!

"Can people offer alternatives for this product (or alterations that people have performed on GI JOE to make him more PC?)."

Wow. They'd find Shipwreck pretty non-threatening, like every kid did fifteen years ago — if only he weren't "holding a parrot against its will."

Maybe the uber-estrogenics of Lady Jaye and Scarlett would appeal, especially if it were (erroneously) hinted that Scarlett's Marxist.

Are you kidding Mike!! Shipwreck was a drunken, tatooed Navyman who liked to spend his shore leave in Taiiwan. Lady Jay had huge knockers and the first three buttons on her shirt undone! Scarlet was pretty safe, except she had boobs. The Barroness was pretty sexy too. Anyway, those were the little 3 3/4 inch plastic guys not the big 12 inch dolls. I shudder to think about a 12 inch Shipwreck.....

You're killing me, r a e d y. (Not literally!)

bang! bang! *shooting everyone with bread crusts*

seriously though, barbie is more than a little disturbing. I can understand not wanting your children to have barbie as a hero, considering the prevalence of eating disorders and low self-esteem and the such. that shit can work its way into your unconscious mind.

but then again, i had lots of barbies, and all i did was cut their hair, drive them around in their barbie vette, and make them do it. and i ended up normal-sized and feminist. so hey who knows. but i do know as soon as you tell a kid they can't have something, they're gonna want it really really badly.

oh yeah, maybe i'm dating myself here, but all of these problems could be solved by having these people purchase jem and the hologram or misfits (not those misfits...) dolls for their kids.

http://www. geocities. com/Hollywood/Academy/7028/dollframe.html

i loved my jem doll so much because she had earrings that lit up and she was huge and could kick all of the barbie's asses. and then i became a punkrocker. and it's all because of my jem doll.

whenever i was lining my barbies up to do it, jem always got first pick.

jesus. i played with gi joe as a kid, and ive only killed a few people. and its not like they were important people, just hobos and fat kids.

wait a minute? gi joe with no gun? but he already has aken doll? well, then he already has a gi joe with no gun. fucking barbie. this kid is going to end up a gay womanizer.

i'm having trouble following the logic of that argument.......

Hey Frank, this kind of thing can actually work like the "closed-group consensus extremism" we were discussing last week, though I did notice a fair number of comments on that parents' message list that basically amounted to, "Chill, it's a doll." I have a 5-year old girl and a 15-month old boy -- the boy will play with almost anything (especially if he can climb it), and our daughter has been through major, major, Barbie-pink-why-can't-I-paint-my-fingernails-I'm-four-years-old-you- guys-are-the-meanest-parents-ever phases. Whatever. Who knows how she'll turn out? She may get sick of dolls tomorrow; she may become a collector. I mostly dislike the massive marketing angle of it -- Barbie and Disney really get their hooks into our little consumers -- but you can have fun with it, too. One time I took a Barbie knock-off someone gave our daughter, bent her long, willowy legs and preternaturally thin arms behind her, and told our girl she was an alien from outer space exploring our planet. Plus, whenever she gets obsessed with a new doll on t.v., I always think about Waylon Smithers saying, "But she's got a new hat!"

A friend of mine who grew up as a Quaker always says that if you play with guns as a kid, you associated guns with little kids' games and don't think of them as a way to prove your manhood. That sounds a lot like your observation, raedy.

Sorry, kid, can't just be a carefree child. Mommy's got issues and concerns to weigh ya down with!

I can't avoid the impression that for at least some of these parents, the obsessing over the exigency of the Barbie-Free Household and the like has a lot to do with anxiety about their own self-image. They seem to be working through their own personal traumas using their kids as vehicles. Or they simply wish to enlist their kids' help in demonstrating their own superior sense of taste and decorum to other like-minded parents. I suppose parents have always done this. It's particularly funny in this context because (a) the crisis of the insufficiently Barbie-Free Household seems a relatively frivolous and rarefied problem compared to those facing many less privileged families; and (b) because they devoted a whole message board to it, and many of the entries include inadvertently hilarious turns of phrase; and (c) mostly because the most likely result of banning x under any given regime is to produce unhealthily x-obsessed subjects.

Some of the more recent messages from this forum that have been forwarded to me (and which are not yet up on the website as far as I know) have been a bit less droll, a bit more creepy. Any mother who uses the term "testosterone poisoning" when talking about the behavior of her own three-year-old son - well, she's got some "issues," as they say, to say the least.

i just wanna say here that parents like that are totally ridiculous and probably gonna mess that kid up soooooooooo bad.

a doll is a TOY. other toys include stuffed animals, blocks, and many many many fictional characters... such as g.i. joe or barbie. and yes, they do take the form of human beings, but they are of no danger to parents or their children.

i don't think that giving your son barbies will in anyway make him a fruit or anything like that because i totally loved g.i. joe when i was younger, and refused to play with barbies (which i sort of collect now)and the ones i did have ended up with hair like joe haha, and in no way am i overly masculine because of it. nor am i a gun loving pyschopath either. i'm anti all that shit. and am actually pretty well rounded... girlie in the sense that i'm really tiny (5'1" 100lbs)i love doing hair and makeup. i love clothes and at the same time i lift weights/workout, rock in a band (haha), and am covered in tattoos.

i think when it comes to parents like this it is more of them and their own personal self-esteem issues and their uncomfortability then that of the child and in no way do i believe that nonsense about barbie fucking with little girls making them think they have to be that skinny and/or that pretty and "perfect" or they won't be excepted. because little kids don't really care about any of that... grown-ups do and teenagers do eventually ... but even if barbie didn't exist there will always be that really thin really beautiful girl in school growing up that will make you wish you were better somehow. that's how we are as a society. there's always someone better and we always what to be or beat that person out. that's just how it goes. but it's not about what dolls we played with as kids. it's about the morals and values instilled in us as we grew. and the images of self worth and esteem we saw projected by our parents and the company they kept.

bottom line is ... a doll is a doll. if the kid wants it... there's really no harm in it. g.i. joe is an army man, he's not a serial killer ... or a rapist. just a man fighting for his country :) barbie is a woman... yeah, she's the stereotypical "what a guy wants" woman, but they do have doctor barbie ... or barbie's friend becky who is in a wheelchair ... she's not a hooker or stripper.. or nympho. JUST LET THE KID PLAY. if you raise him right with enough self confidence he will form his own views an opinions on these things. and my guess is he won't end up gay (not that that's wrong) or running around with a gun. he'll be normal and inbetween. not wanting to look like barbie hahaha or shoot people like joe.

kids really are smarter than most people give them credit for. make believe isn't reality.

otherwise, they'd be trying to pull their eyes and noses off like mr. potatohead ... or magically transform into cars or wild animals.

I once was one of these mothers. No guns, no weapons in the house. And then my son made a gun out of a pop tart and I gave up. And, go figure, our best times these days are when we play violent, bloody video games together.

My daughter hated Barbies on her own, I didn't teach her that one. When someone bought her a couple of the dolls for her birthday, she and my son took off the heads and played Bobbing for Barbie Heads in the bathroom sink.

Stupid anecdotes aside, I was much more comfortable as a parent when I just let my kids be themselves instead of trying to stifle everything they do with a bout of political correctness. And my kids were much happier in the long run.

generally speaking, the more you keep something from someone, the more appealing it becomes to them. id bet 80% of the reason this kid wants a gi joe is because his mom wont let him have one.

which is probably why america has more druggies, alcoholics, sex offenders etc, than any other country. granted its harder to be a sex offender in a country where its legal to bang your brothers wife, rape your daughter, and cut off your wifes clit... but you know...

Zaphod: maybe that was how ol' Shipwreck was intended, but it wasn't the way he came out in the cartoon. ;-)

I had a Barbie (back then you had *a* Barbie, not Suburban Mom Barbie and Trailer Trash Barbie and President Barbie, etc, although I think you could get could get a suntanned [Malibu] Barbie), but my favorite toys were my herd of plastic horses. Sometimes, though, I pretended that my Barbie lived alone in the woods, with only these intelligent wild horses for company. Sometimes hunters or something would try to catch the horses, and Barbie would help outwit them and chase them away.

Occasionally Barbie needed to go into town for supplies, so she'd ride one of the horses bareback and bridleless, and the whole herd would come galloping in, terrorizing the boutiques and cafes where my sister and her friends' Barbies were shopping. Yeee-haaa!

As for Barbie. Why must the society's vision of ideal beauty be unrealistic for most to achieve? I don't know, maybe because it's a freaking ideal vision.

What about when the kid discovers that barbie and GI Joe can have sex? What are the parents going to do then? It seems like this particular family might think that sex is just as bad as guns. Guns are so phallic.

I always thought (confirmed by removing their pants) that GI Joe and Ken couldn't have sex (with Barbie or eachother). Perhaps this is why GI Joe feels the need to make up for it by having so many guns, damn this testosterone poisoned society.

An apropos joke:

A mom asks a little girl what she wants for her birthday. The little girl says "I want a Barbie and a GI Joe." The mom is a bit perplexed and tells her "Honey you're confused, Barbie comes with Ken not GI Joe". The little girl replies "No mommie, you're confused, Barbie comes with GI Joe, she just fakes it with Ken".

Perhaps the ladies on the Berkeley parenting board might find this funny.

Seems to me like there's a little closed group consensus about Barbies right here -- "ha ha dumb Berkeley." Maybe people have a point about not letting marketers and companies have more influence on their kids' choices than they do? I mean, probably all of you would say "just change the channel!" if these folks complained about TV programming. So they're doing it about toy programming too; good for them.

I didn't play with Barbies that much, but when I did I got bored with thinking of make-belive stuff they could do with each other (like go to the mall or hang out at the Barbie dreamhouse). It's inevitable that the dreamhouse would become orgy central. The more the merrier, right? AND GI Joe is so much hotter than Ken or even Rio.

Oooooh, R a e d y, I LOVED those Misfits dolls, in fact I have a couple of pictures here.... ;)

http://www.misfits.com/toyad.html

Yeah, Thomas, but what about the poor kid who doesn't get to play with the GI Joe just because his parents want to express their dissatisfaction with popular culture? As I used to tell my own parents: can't you, like, save the world on your own time?

Frank,you crack me up,that's definately going into my collection of stolden phrases.

Too bad,I can't use it on my parents,they were actually surprisingly cynical about most things
and just tried not to spoil us too much. I do think its a bad thing to give kids EVERYTHING they
want in life. But yep, makes me glad I was raised in the good ol' South instead of Berkeley. ;)

no not *those* misfits dolls....sigh.

A message board user asked if employers were required to provide a place to pump breast milk. Another poster replied using saying that acording to the "Lactation Accommodation law" yes they were, etc. etc.

I have nothing against breast feeding or laws requiring employers to allow places for mothers to pump breast milk, I think the phrase is funny though, maybe because it rhymes and is fun to say outloud.

A google search shows that "Lactation Accommodation law" is widely used. I learn something new everyday.

Frank, really, I can't thank you enough. This website really is the best thing I've seen in along time.

"Laser Tag - Too Violent? "

Too bad their home address isn't listed. I'd send that kid a BB gun and tell him to "Go Joe!".

It's impossible to suppress a child's urge to play-fight. A couple of minutes of Animal Planet will show you that it's one of the first things a cub of any species learns to do.

Plus it's just fun.

My favorites were always Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, though I never understood why Team GI Joe needed them. But now that I've seen the work our ninjas are doing in Fallujah...

I don't know, Frank, if you aren't throwing the barbie out with the baathists a bit when you say:

"I can't avoid the impression that for at least some of these parents, the obsessing over the exigency of the Barbie-Free Household and the like has a lot to do with anxiety about their own self-image. They seem to be working through their own personal traumas using their kids as vehicles..."

Can't we agree to the frivolity of dolls and also to our deeper critique about the demonization of masculinity among these trite parents without utterly dismissing the idea that there *might* be something to the idea that it does harm and demean girls to be ceaselessly defined by appearance? I mean, maybe you are saying either (1) playing with unnaturally skinny and big breasted dolls does not, in itself, motivate girls to compare themselves to the dolls or (2) even if it does, it doesn't matter? It just seems like you are saying that the Barbie beauty standard is legit, and that the ugly hippy moms are just projecting their own disappointment in how their own breasts turned out onto their daughters. I mean, come on, I have no problems with kids playing with anything they want to - but I do think that smart mothers do have legitimate concerns over how issues of beauty, appearance, and body are communicated to their daughters.

It may be true that we are living in a very troubled time, in which the legacy of feminism is a weird anti-man, pro-woman sentiment, which is destructive to kids, especially boys, but in the larger world, I still do know and believe that women do struggle with the knowledge that our entire worth is wrapped up in appearance, in a way that men really can never know. One woman's opinion over here.

Tris, I guess I managed to leave the wrong impression there. I probably shouldn't have used the word "self-image," which has implications I didn't intend. In fact, I wasn't even thinking of the Beauty Myth via Barbie angle. What I was getting at is that it seems like some of these parents have an aesthetic-social critique they would like to express for their own personal edification, to which their children's role can seem oddly peripheral. It's just an impression, and I could be totally wrong about it. I guess my impulse is to see it as more of class issue than one of "lookism," or "body image" or whatever. The parents are saying, in effect, "Barbie, ugh: how common. We play with the better sort of toys around here." Though in fact, I guess I'd also have to concede that I don't believe girls actually are harmed by playing with Barbies. And the idea of replacing them or GI Joes with politically correct alternatives is every bit as funny as it seems.

My parents used to worry about me playing with my Jesus doll. My self-image was destroyed when I realized I could never measure us in the buoyancy department. It made me feel like a faliure in the healing department.

Then I got a Jim Belushi doll and everything was cool. Man that guy is worthless. I'm way better than him. That makes me happy.

The End.

Thomas,

I understand your thinking and I agree, I just happen to think things are a little over the top on this message board. There also seems to be a good amount of superficiality as well. The most striking example of this is when a mom wrote:

"My soon-to-be 8 year old daughter has selected a birthday theme this year that I'm having a lot of trouble getting behind...She is adamant that she wants a ''Dress-up Party'' with just girls that involves getting dressed in elegant, lacy clothes, make-up, etc and having a sort of tea party. I know part of my problem is that I'm a plain, no makeup, jeans-type feminist. And I admit I am a little bothered by my daughter's facination with fashion and make-up....I must admit to feeling really kind of embarrassed to have it as a birthday theme. I don't know how it will be received by other parents."

Now this seems a bit much to me, particularly the fact that she's embarassed and is worried what other parents will think of her. The responses to her post that said it was okay for her daughter to have this kind of party all had the qualifier "I'm a jeans-type feminist too, but..."

I AM very greatful that she posted this though, because in a response to her another mother wrote:

"My daughter's best friend--a boy--likes to get dressed up in swirly dresses and makeup too. We figure that's a lot less likely to cause permanent damage in either sex than cops-n-robbers and lots of guns and killing."

Josh, that quote is a good illustration of what I was clumsily getting at in my previous comment: one of the major parental concerns here is to project what is thought as a creditable image to other adults. (There are two rather charming ironies here, as this inverts the maligned behavior of the stereotypical authoritarian "50s parents" even as it replicates it; and because for most everyone outside the rarefied bubble, that is, practically everyone else in the country, the objection to such a dress-up party seems absurd and indeed practically incomprehensible. Which is why it's funny.

The further quote also illustrates another theme I've noticed in reading such messages over the last couple of years. An astonishing number of the parents believe it is necessary to prove their own bona fides and to excuse their sons in advance of any embarrassing culpability by providing examples of a precociously enthusiastic embrace of gender-role subversion. (What they would probably be calling "gender-fuck" in a less polite environment.) "Don't get me wrong," they'll say. "My son is no testosterone-damaged cretin. He likes to wear his sister's underwear and paint his toe-nails, and is very shy and passive. But lately I have noticed a disturbing interest in pirates..." I'm sure there are some who would claim that there's nothing at all wrong with that, but once again, I detect in it a hint of the narcissistic at the very least.

Frank,

As a parent I agree with a good deal of your explanation: there's basically a lot of peer pressure with parenting, in my opnion because (a) your kids matter enormously to you (b) everyone seems to think that your choices as a parent have an impact on your kids, and (c) outside of extremely terrible things, like not feeding them or hitting them or something, no one really knows what affect your choices will have on the kid. Books are no help -- you can find a justification from an "expert" for anything if you pick the book carefully (come to think of it, you can even find justifications for hitting them). There's no training program. So parenting can make you very insecure, because you're making Very Important Choices with no real sense of the outcome. And you're doing this even while you're in charge of these little humans who need you and love you and also need to resist you. Insecurity and authority -- bad combination.

So what are you left with? Basically, your peer group. "I might screw my kids up, but at least all my friends will have screwed theirs up the same way so all the kids can relate to each other and I won't look crazy." At least that's how I see the machismophobia you've pointed out.

You can tie yourself into knots with this stuff, but even if some of these parents' choices seem weird or extreme...well, it can just be very, very hard to see the forest for the trees when dealing with your 5-year-old.

Right, Nick. I can only imagine how confusing and terrifying it must be to have such an all-consuming responsibility with no clear guidelines or criteria on what constitutes success. Just the distant prospect alone terrifies me...

Although I never had a problem with Barbie, my parents were adamant about their cynicism of most things common to my peers - movies, clothes, going to friends' houses without parental supervision. I always resented them for it because it was so isolating.

Although parents may have idealistic fantasies about how they want to raise their kids, their kids are probably better off if they just "go with the flow." Nothing hurts a child's self-esteem so much as not fitting in with his/her peers.

Dr. Frank, I can really identify with "save the world on your own time!" ;)

I have observed that most of this "world saving" is the result of misplaced priorities that don't really have the child's healthful psychological development at heart.

I saw a bit on the news just now,that is somewhat related to this,and I have to admit I find somewhat entertaining. In Sunnyvale(i believe its close to San Jose for non-locals)there was a group of protesters outside a toy store today calling themselves the "Raging Grannies". They were protesting the sale of war and war-related toys,they had the usual signs and chants and all that.

They also dressed up Christmasy and sang these chants to the tune of Christmas carols.

I loved playing with guns and swords as a kid; but I can't fault anyone who stages a protest against the war, even if it's toy-related.

Here's my reasoning: general toy weapons are multi-functional. A kid can play cops and robbers, pirates, vampires, "Lord of the Rings", ritualistic tribe living in the jungle, etc. But if a toy is specifically geared toward replicating the war weapons or soldiers, such as an Iraqi freedom-fighter doll, then it ceases to become general play and starts to become support for the war.

A kid is going to make that Iraqi freedom fighter action figure into a hero - he/she is not going to pretend that his/her action figure is dying for no reason in a meaningless war. So by association, the war must be worth fighting.

I don't know how much of this goes over the average kid's head, but I can see why it would be a cause for concern.

i think i was confusing...i meant it was a war toy protest...not a protest against toys related to the war in Iraq. Just in violent toys in general was what it was about. Also,I think I'm doing a Frank(if i may say so)my point was i had to admit i thought the way they were doing it was
rather comical to say the least.

Ok. I don't spend too much time in the boys' toy department, so I was only going on what you said. Thanks for clarifying.

I would be a hypocrite if I expressed disdain for generic war toys. I love nothing better than to play with a big plastic M-16. And one of my favorite toys as a kid was a big glow-in-the-dark sword.

These hippies sound like sports-obsessed Little League parents. It's like they want to compensate for their own perceived inadequacy as hippies by making their kids into perfect hippie robots. Ugh. They should be slapped. Hey, why not? They're pacifists - they won't slap back!
That site is like a bag of potato chips - once you read one post, you just can't stop!
Thank God I live in New Hampshire - even though we recently turned "Blue," we'll never be that loony.