Skechers Zevo-3: How far is too far for marketing to kids?
11 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Family Dynamics, Politics and Parenting Tags: childhood, children, Commercialization of childhood, conscious parenting, Consumerism, cradle-to-grave consumerism, Family dynamics, parenting, politics
One of my very favorite organizations (headed by the remarkable Dr. Susan Linn), Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) filed a petition with the FCC to declare that Skechers new television program violates the very few rules we have in the United States about marketing to kids.
The FCC has given the public a chance to comment on the petition. Of course, I couldn’t help myself. This is my comment. If you’d like to comment too, see how to file a PDF here:
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db0922/DA-10-1762A1.pdf
October 11, 2010
Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th St., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20554
RE: MB Docket No. 10-190.
Dear Ms Dortch:
This provides my comment on the Petition for Declaratory Judgment filed by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood for your consideration.
I am a mother, an attorney, and a former advertising executive. I worked in the advertising industry for about nine years before I retired to raise a family. My clients included Carl’s Jr. Restaurants, the LA Dodgers, Unocal, and Acura Automobiles among others. As a strategist and a manager, I have effectively leveraged communication for the benefit of my clients. This work I enjoyed. Over time, however, it became all too clear to me that the advertising and marketing industry is not one rooted in a sense of fair play or honor but in profit. The ad industry uses information, a key element to a free market economy, to its exclusive advantage. This information includes the emotional and psychological makeup of a target audience, not simply economic, demographic, and factual information. Feeling that I was compromising my integrity was also a part of the reason I retired from the industry.
During my years in advertising, which were quite exhilarating, I learned that ad campaigns are built primarily around creating and filling psychological needs in the target audience. For instance, in the automotive business, our strategies were based on people’s aspirations for more. “I want to look more [prestigious, smarter, cooler, etc.] than I feel inside.” Our campaigns were intended to make people feel better about who they were when they bought the right automobile.
Internally, though I didn’t much like the thought of making people feel less than they were, then “helping” them to feel better by buying a certain automobile, I was able to justify it because we were speaking to adults with some education.
Kids, Schools, and Shots! Oh My!
04 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Culture, Politics and Parenting Tags: conscious parenting, mandatory, Mothering, parenting, parenting off the grid, politics, vaccinations, vaccines
In my inbox recently:
Dear Parent or Guardian of (Name),
If your child will be entering 6th or 10th grade this fall, please listen to the following message: All 6th and 10th graders must have received one dose of the Tdap vaccine before they begin school in August. The Tdap vaccine protects against Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis (whooping cough). To avoid any missed school, contact your health care provider today to schedule an appointment before school begins. If your child has already received one dose of this vaccine, please disregard this message. Thank you for helping to keep your child’s school healthy.
You’ve probably gotten this or something like it. Many parents read it and rush off to the pediatrician to make sure their kids have been vaccinated because they think someone will meet them at the schoolhouse door and block their germy unvaccinated kids from getting in. The message to moms and dads is that they have no choice in the matter. But do they?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
When the Government Has a Say
There are two main areas where the government gets actively involved in meddling with an otherwise functioning and health family—education and vaccination. Federal, state and local governments all have laws and regulations about these two aspects of every child’s life. At the local level, these are affirmative laws, meaning that something is required of the family to satisfy a state’s interest in those children.
In the case of education, all children must receive a basic education through 12th grade. The reason for this is to reduce the burden on the country’s budget in having to care for the kids who are unable to fend for themselves as adults. I’ll save the debate of rightness or wrongness for another post as I’ve plenty to say on that too.
The other is vaccination.
The Story of Mandatory Vaccination
In 1905, when vaccines first became widely used, the Supreme Court ruled that the state could force parents to make their children submit to small pox vaccine[i].
But that ruling hasn’t been challenged since and for good reason. No one wants a ruling on whether that’s still good law because the rationale for the Jacobson decision has begun to fade due to the growing understanding that vaccines themselves pose a risk to children and that parents have a right to refuse treatment on behalf of their children.[ii]
Because the safety and efficacy of vaccinations are far from conclusive, a ruling overturning the Jacobson decision could endanger the CDC’s “mandatory” vaccine schedule. More and more parents might then opt out of vaccines if they knew more of the potential dangers and if it weren’t such a social stigma to be unvaccinated.
Vaccine manufacturers “immunized” against lawsuits
Vaccines had such a high rate of reactivity that Congress “immunized” vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits even for their own negligence in developing, testing, and making vaccines. Before this immunity, the pharmaceutical industry had begun to shy away from developing new vaccines because it’s impossible to make one that doesn’t cause injury. Their exposure to suit slowed research and development for new vaccines to a crawl.
Attempting to rescue the industry because of fears our population would be at grave risk without mass vaccination, Congress prohibited lawsuits for vaccine injuries. Forever.
No other industry in the world enjoys this kind of immunity. None. And with it, manufacturers have come flooding through the CDC’s doors insisting that must be vaccinated against all kinds of childhood illnesses that are both mild and catastrophic.
Consequently, through the miracle of modern “agency capture,” the CDC and FDA have become strongholds of the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, the people who stand to profit by mandatory vaccination are often those that set the policy behind it.
To Spank or Not to Spank?
07 Jul 2010 7 Comments
in Culture, Family Dynamics, Politics and Parenting Tags: childhood, children, conscious parenting, corporal punishment, kids, mindful parenting, mindfulness, spanking
The debate goes like this:
Pro: Spanking works. It deters children from doing things that will hurt himself or herself or someone else. If a kid sticks his finger in a socket, slap his hand and he won’t do it again. If she runs across the street into traffic, swat her bottom and she won’t do it again. A parent has the right and duty to use corporal punishment to civilize a child and to make them safe.
Con: Spanking hurts both child and parent. Spanking is a violation of the child’s bodily integrity and shuts down emotional development. Children learn to obey not because they know the difference between right and wrong but because they fear getting hit. Spanking is really a parent’s own temper tantrum and there’s no excuse for a parent acting like a baby. Parents can find other ways of training and controlling the behavior of a young one. A child has a right to be free from the fear of battery and abuse.
My son, on his way to the pillaging.
Massachusetts lawmakers took up the question back in 2007 and even that liberal, pro-child state refused to disallow parents to spank. But 19 countries, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, have banned spanking outright.
The United States, however, is generally pro-corporal punishment as a tool of discipline. One would be hard pressed to find a parent who says they would absolutely never spank their child. Even die-hard pacifists like me can imagine situations where it would happen.
Still, the number of parents deciding consciously to not spank has grown to 50% from 25% just a few years ago.
Parents who do not spank say that the biggest issue is the possibility of escalation. Parents do get frustrated, regularly. And having a hard and fast rule of never spanking helps parents monitor themselves, take care of their internal emotional life, and excuse themselves from the conflict before they lash out at their child.
How could anyone spank a kid with that face?
Parents who believe in spanking say that it’s okay for kids to see their parents lose their cool because that’s reality and kids need to learn to deal with other people’s reactions. More
A Short(track) Story
18 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
I got some new information this last Wednesday about myself that I’d like to share.
Apparently, I suck monkey balls.
I overheard this insightful observation at the CU Short Track race in Boulder by a young whippersnapper in a bright yellow and black CU skinsuit who was none too happy that I had the nerve to take a digger right in front of her when I tried to give her space to pass me on a super steep, rutted hairpin turn on the track. Poor girl had to get off her bike and walk it up the final five feet of hill, thereby ruining her overall time. Never mind that she still came in first in the Women’s B race.
After I heard this remark, and having actually wiped out twice, unsure if my kneecap was still intact, I felt a big lump in my throat and slipped away to the car to catch my breath and my composure. My head was retorting and snapping back at her in defense of my 43-year-old ego that was unsure of itself going into this race which is akin to roller derby on 26-inch wheels and a track that changes every week.
I almost cried. My lower lip quivering.
But I was still a little proud that I could get my butt out on that track and try it. At my age. I was not phased by the fact that the junior boys caught up to me, those kids are on steroids, they’re so fast. At least I didn’t get passed by the junior girls. Phew. But a few of the other women lapped me in the last two laps.
Toward the end of the race, one young boy was having a bit harder time than I. When I caught up to him, he looked at me as he dragged his bike up a hill, “This sucks,” he said. “First time?” I asked. “Yep,” he swung his leg up over and got back on. “Let’s go,” I said and we took off for the final lap together. We both finished. Way in the back. But we finished dammit.
That night, when I told the story of the CU girl who’d complained to the race organizers that “That bitch sucks monkey balls,” Timothy took offense, “I am not a monkey.”
Love & Limits–A Lifelong Lesson
09 Jun 2010 2 Comments
in Family Dynamics, Living In Community Tags: Addiction, Agreements, Alcoholism, Intentional community, Living In Community, parenting
There’s a fine line between giving someone their space to deal with their own stuff and enabling. When does being supportive become giving someone license to hurt you? And what do you do when someone else’s addiction comes very near to destroying the life you’ve built?
We had a lesson in that recently. One of our tribe reminded us of the need to be watchful of addiction and keeping our eyes open when it comes to pain and suffering. A couple weeks ago, Todd got a DUI.
I’ve known Todd for 10 years. He’s still friends with my ex-husband—one of the few people who can easily flow between us. When I met him, Todd was clean and sober. He went to AA meetings and sponsored other men through the 12 Steps. He struck me as a guy who’d made it through, all the way. But, hah! That’s not how alcoholism works. You never actually stop recovering. You’re always and forever “in recovery” because one must always be vigilant for that single drink, the drop that takes you back over the edge into the abyss.
When his marriage broke up, shortly before my own, he started to lose his grip on sobriety. His wife, my dear friend Alexis, started over and left Todd to deal with the pieces of his own life. Within weeks, he had that first drink. Off he went into his dark place.
Because one of his greatest qualities is his ability to see himself clearly, he gave up custody of his kids knowing alcohol had regained its grip on him.
It Ain’t All Fun & Games
29 Apr 2010 1 Comment
But sometimes, it is.
A boy-child roaming around the neighborhood loaded BB gun in hand. A innocent shove that breaks an elbow; a scuffle and a scratch that leaves little pink tracks of flaked skin; a father leaning over a child’s addition drama, a mother hustling to make dinner for 12, another rushing out the door to work. One boy trying to negotiate for more video game time. Another one cuts the head off a garter snake.
Timothy and I fall into bed, exhausted.
Complexity is our norm now that we are living in community. There are so many people to consider, each with their own view of the world, their own journeys to take, their own expectations met or unmet. Conflict could be the norm. But it’s not. Complexity is.
The other day, one of the boys had been given the okay to use his BB gun, at the request of a neighbor who wanted some help chasing off fuzzy little bunnies nibbling his newly planted lettuces. No one asked me about it. After all, it wasn’t my child. But the boy went farther afield, walking around the cul de sac, yellow sunglasses covering mischief-seeking eyes. I didn’t think much of it. After all, it wasn’t my child.
Todd, dear sweet Todd, had his eye shot out with a BB gun at a young age. By his brother. I’ve known that for a long time. When you meet Todd, you almost have to ask about the small black dot in his clear blue eyes and why it wanders slightly to the outside. Still, it didn’t dawn on me that the child walking around BB gun in hand might present a problem. Not until I saw Todd in his kitchen did I remember—really consider—what he thought of the BB gun. Because guns, any gun, makes Todd shake.
Suddenly, I recognized that I was not happy about the BB gun in a small neighborhood filled with little kids. I had to set a limit, if not for my own very real objection to guns of all kinds, then for Todd. So I talked to the child’s parent about it, which could have gone horribly wrong, or ended in an argument or coldness. But it didn’t. It ended in a loving agreement that children will not walk around unattended with BB guns in the neighborhood.
Because we care about one another.
It ain’t all fun and games, no it isn’t. But it is worthwhile.
Creating Intentional Community
22 Apr 2010 1 Comment
in Culture, Living In Community Tags: consciousness, Culture, Intentional community, Living In Community, Mothering, parenting, parenting off the grid
When this all started about a year ago, I don’t think any one of us had in mind that we would become an intentional community. There are plenty of groups that make it their sole goal to become a community (visit http://www.cohousing.org). Ours came about from inner guidance more than from direct and verbalized intent. So if you’re not yet ready to go move into an established IC, start here. See what happens.
1. Pray/meditate on it. Living with others in an intentional setting is a spiritual as well as practical journey. Unlike the families of our birth, we have a say in how we craft our lives and whom we invite into it and how it operates. Bringing yourself into quiet awareness will help you access what you already know is for your greatest good. If your spirit resonates with the notion of community, you’ll know.
2. Get clear about how you want your life to look. The best people for your community will start to appear when you visualize how you want your life to be. Yes, this is a little bit of “The Secret” but it goes deeper than setting an intention and expecting it to come true. There is a subtle language to our bodies and spirits when we are clear about what we want. You may want community at a neighborhood or an in-home level. You may want community around your evenings but not your mornings. You may want a big community or a little one. Regardless, the world resonates with your thoughts. People who fit your vision will see themselves in your eyes, and that recognition will draw them to you, and you to them. Enjoy the inquiry, stay open.
3. Become aware of who you attract. You know how some people attract drama while others attract peacefulness? Well, if you know you attract drama, then you will attract it into your community as well. And that could be just fine, as long as you are aware of it and accept it fully. But attracting drama and then bemoaning it doesn’t help anyone. Ask yourself what part of you is served by attracting people who hurt you or prey on you or encourage you to wallow in your own crap. If that’s what’s in your life now, take a deeper look before you set your intention to live in community. Living in community offers us the opportunity to become conscious of our life structures, what serves us, and what no longer serves.
“Love is pull, not push.” Lolita Tademy in Cane River.
4. Follow your intuition. Your inner voice will have a lot to say about how you live and with whom. If you get that nagging feeling about a particular person, listen to it. There may be old baggage between you that needs to be unpacked, or the two of you may have differing communication or lifestyles that will take a lot of work to mesh. Honor your gut. If you can’t find a place of quiet peacefulness about living with this person, move on. But don’t miss an opportunity to dig into a challenging relationship either. Community is a place to learn how to resolve conflicts with dignity, honor, mindfulness, and hope.
5. Commit. Oh yes. Living in community requires commitment. Not marriage-like commitment but a vow to yourself and others to bring your greatest gifts to the whole. If you don’t believe you have any great gift, think again. Everyone has gifts to give. What is yours? Are you good with finances? Are you good with kids? Do you know how to help someone see themselves in a positive light? Are you patient? Do you have healing or sacred knowledge to share? Are you skilled in building bridges between people? Do you work with cars, with wood, with pipes? Are you most creative when cooking, or crafting jewelry, or writing, or photography? The beauty of living in community is that we have access to knowledge and wisdom that is beyond what we can access alone, even with the aid of the internet. No amount of Google searching is going to turn up someone who can show your son how to climb a super-technical spot on the local mountain bike trail. Nor can it offer Reiki on a sore neck. Nor console you when you ding your fiancé’s car. When you bring your gifts to the table, believing with certainty that you have something to share, you’ve invited others to come share themselves with you. You’ve opened the door.
6. Be Willing to Fail. Most of us are terrified of failure. But there is no life without it, certainly no feeling of success or mastery. Living with others means stepping right into our fears, most of which are from childhood. The things we couldn’t or didn’t get as children haunt us as adults and often interfere with our ability to get vulnerable and real with others. In community, having other adults around who know when we’re not at your best can feel scary and can help us learn to make mistakes well, to own them, and to become wiser from them, rather than be ashamed. The trick isn’t to be perfect but to find people who think it’s riotously funny and love you and encourage you even when you’re colossally imperfect.
7. Check your ego at the door. There is very little room for the ego in intentional community. Put on your big girl panties. And learn to take life a little less seriously. Living in an intentional community, we are able to see each others’ silliness in a whole new light. The dumb shit things we do aren’t used as ammo but as fodder for a good laugh.
8. Be Prepared for Change. We just learned this, again, when Corina told us that she’s setting sail for California. At her young age, it’s natural for her to want to go experience the wider world, and yet she’ll be missed by everyone. Feels like losing a limb. But now our job is to keep the light on for her as she goes out into the world and to reassure her that she has loved ones rooting for her. No sooner had Corina driven off into the west but three new folks arrived. Todd’s sister Beth Ellen, her partner Dwayne, and my nephew from California. As my father would smile and say, “How ’bout that?”
I would love to hear what you experience as you begin to think about crafting the life and community that you want. Tell your story, share your wisdom.
Next Up. Living in Community. Part III. Finances and Logistics.
