I’m sure most of you are familiar with Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, in which the soap company used women with natural body types instead of heavily airbrushed stick-thin models. The ads were lauded across the mommy blogosphere for helping promote realistic images of women’s bodies instead of an unrealistic ideal. Now, according to a profile on digital retouching master Pascal Dangin in The New Yorker, it turns out that these “real” women may not have been so real after all:

[R]etouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

Unilever, the company that owns the Dove brand, is denying doing anything above and beyond normal photo processing and color correction:

“The ‘real women’ ad referenced in recent media coverage was created and produced entirely by Ogilvy, the Dove brand’s advertising agency, from start to finish, and the women’s bodies were not digitally altered,” Unilever Senior Communications Marketing Manager Stacie Bright said in the statement, referring to the 2005 ad, which showed younger women in their underwear.

Ms. Bright and Mr. Dangin’s company, Box Studios, did not immediately respond to e-mail queries about precisely what the “color correction” entailed. But the [2007 Dove Pro-Age ads worked on by Dangin] were a later incarnation of the “Campaign for Real Beauty” than those apparently referenced in The New Yorker.

Whatever the truth is, it’s certain that Dove’s PR people are going to be working through the weekend.

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My younger daughter, Ella, is seven years old. A few weeks ago she spent the night at a friend’s house and stayed up late and ate junk food and did all that stuff that usually happens at a sleep-over that makes you sigh and shake your head and tuck her into bed a little earlier the next night. But she also got to watch a movie that was rated suitable for mature audiences, and I have to tell you that’s the bit that worried me the most.

The mother of the friend is a good friend of mine, which complicates things a little. I like that we are all friends, and that our daughters play happily together in the backyard while we gossip on the back porch (sometimes, shhh, we have a glass of wine). On the one hand, we’re good enough friends that I could tell her that I don’t want Ella watching M-rated movies and she’ll be fine with that. But on the other, I don’t want her thinking that I’m questioning her judgment and that this somehow means I’m questioning everything about her. I know how much I worry when someone gives me some slightly negative feedback - I immediately start making a mental list of the zillion other things they must hate about me too.

Perhaps I would not have worried so much about the movie if Ella hadn’t had a nightmare. She told me that she was having a bad dream about the movie she saw, and we (her Dad and I) told her not to be silly, it wasn’t a scary movie, you’re just making excuses to stay up late. In the end she was so over-tired and overwrought that we banished her from the room she shares with her sister and made her sleep in the spare room.  But just to reassure ourselves, we checked parentsinmind.com to see what the classification police had to say about the movie. Oh, dear. References to humans having sex with animals. A man kicks a young woman’s head off. A man whips himself on the back and we see bloody slashes.

Yes, we punished her for having a nightmare after she watched an M-rated movie.  That has to count as one of our least proud, most imperfect, parenting moments.
In the end I decided not to say anything to my friend about it  - what’s done is done - but if Ella is invited to stay over again I’m going to put on my Serious Concerned Mother face and just ask that she limit the viewing choices to the bottom shelf - the one with all the Disney cartoons.

The movie classifications are there for a reason, telling us very clearly that some smart people in a government office somewhere have given the whole matter a great deal of thought and no, this film shouldn’t be seen by seven year olds.  Why question it?  Why take the chance that our kids might find references to humans having sex with animals a little upsetting instead of hilariously funny?

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I consider myself pretty liberal, but this is too much.

I’m perusing the web, checking out People.com and the like, and stop dead in my tracks – Jamie Lynn Spears is allegedly engaged to the child that impregnated her. But the shocking part is how people (including celebs) are celebrating her choices. I’ve seen countless sites that praise her for “taking responsibility” for her actions. WTF?!?!?! Strapping on a condom or popping a birth control pill would have been taking responsibility. Or how about not having sex at 16?

It is my understanding that her hit Nickolodeon show, Zoey 101 (which is a show for CHILDREN), is coming back on the air for another season. AND Spears is appearing in an episode of Miss Guided – which airs at 8pm.

Again, WTF! Are you kidding me? This is insane – she is 16 years old. If I had gotten knocked-up at 16 my mother would have beat me, not phoned OK Magazine for an exclusive interview. And I highly doubt anyone would be applauding my choice for “taking responsibility.”

It has become too easy for babies to have babies – young people who put themselves in these situations are offered free or drastically reduced college education, food stamps, welfare, daycare assistance, cheap health insurance and housing assistance (at least in NY state). Where are my freebies? I didn’t get pregnant as a teen – and now I’m saddled with more than $40k in school loans, a mortgage payment, insane grocery bills, and costly health care coverage. My older sister, who is expecting her first child this summer, will have to pay out the nose for daycare while she is teaching second graders. Where did we go wrong?

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I found out the other day, quite by accident, that a girl my children associate with in one of their extra-curricular activities is giving blow jobs to boys at her school. She’s 15—two years older than my oldest child. I know, taken by itself, this information is not especially shocking—15, boyfriends, blow jobs. The thing that makes this different than other news stories is that I KNOW THIS GIRL!

I consider myself a pretty savvy parent. I feel like I’ve got a good handle on this parenting thing and keep tabs on the problems that may come up in the future. I’ve pondered and debated about my own children and their future sexuality and how I’d handle it if I found out they were engaging in risky behavior. I’ve been outspoken about my personal philosophies on the subject and called wrong by others on many occasions. I’ve been accused of being naïve and I’ve been told I’m in denial about kids today. But I say that kids today aren’t much different than kids yesterday, teen sex has been around since the beginning of time and we can learn from the past to help prepare our own for the future and we’ll just have to agree to disagree about this and move on.

But, what I have been naïve about is that I’d care if my kids’ peers were doing these things. Oh, I guess I had some free-floating notion of them as some nameless, faceless blobs in a distant tomorrow stamped with “KIDS’ FRIENDS.” But, I didn’t envision these future hooligans as being real people, people I like, people who goof around with my toddler and talk to me about a grade she got on a test. It certainly never occurred to me that I’d have to look a sweet little girl in the face and know exactly where her mouth had been earlier that day and feel shame for both of us. It’s been brought home, into my world and I don’t know what to do with it.

I feel shame for the child, because she is a child, but she doesn’t know she’s still a child, she thinks she’s some world-wizened woman now. I know that, because I used to walk around in those shoes, too. She’s ignorant of her ignorance. I feel shame for myself, because these days I am a world-wizened woman and I feel I should be doing something to protect this kid from the cruel world she thinks she’s conquering from down on her knees. I feel shame because I know this thing about this girl and I’ll never look at her the same again. Some of her innocence is lost and so is mine, in a way, since I share in her guilt just by knowing about it. She doesn’t know I know, which makes the dynamic even more unbalanced. It’s weird, I know, and I’m surprised I feel this way.

It’s not that I think less of her because of issues with promiscuity. I’m not thinking: slut, whore, sinful siren. It’s not along that line. I worry about her. I worry since it’s blow-jobs I know about and not full out intercourse, that she is just being subservient because of low self-esteem. I worry she’s letting herself be taken advantage of for someone else’s pleasure, and not just enjoying her own sexuality. I worry that she’s not taking precautions to keep her body safe. I worry that she’ll get diseases, or pregnant or raped if she’s not being careful with her selections. I worry that the next time I see her I won’t be able to stop myself from bursting into tears and pulling her into a protective hug. I want to mommy her. I want someone to mommy her. I want to tell what I know, not to hurt her in any way, but to be sure that there is someone guiding this girl. Keeping her safe while she experiments and reminding her that she’s lovable no matter what. I don’t know where the boundaries of communal responsibility for this sort of thing lie.

But, I’ll keep quiet. I’ll keep my guilt to myself, feeling like a useless, voiceless part in some bigger scheme that’s out of my control, conspiring as it always has to lure us from the nest. I’ll let the world spin as it will, but I’ll also pray that if some other woman ever comes across this same information about one of my daughters that she’ll be a braver, better person than I am being now, and tell me about it.

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I will admit that I cringe whenever I hear someone say, “Guess what? We’re pregnant!” The phrase really rubs me the wrong way. I think it’s because I never romanticized the whole pregnancy process, so to me “we’re pregnant” just feels so corny and cloying. Couple that with my bit of anal insistence on proper language use and disdain of malapropisms, and the eyes tend to roll back into my skull — not exactly following the rules for politeness on hearing such joyous news from a friend (perhaps that’s why I don’t have many of them).

So imagine my reaction reading this piece from the L.A. Times about a Christian group — quelle surprise — that’s trying to “change abortion’s pronoun”:

These days, he channels the grief into activism in a burgeoning movement of “post-abortive men.” Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman’s issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement — both political and deeply personal in nature — contends that the pronoun is all wrong.

“We had abortions,” said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. “I’ve had abortions.”

I don’t doubt that some men may feel a sense of loss, but slapping a label on it and treating it like some sort of syndrome is a bit much, is it not? He goes on:

Morrow, the counselor, described his regret as sneaking up on him in midlife — more than a decade after he impregnated three girlfriends (one of them twice) in quick succession in the late 1980s. All four pregnancies ended in abortion.

Years later, when his wife told him she was pregnant, “I suddenly realized that I had four dead children,” said Morrow, 47, who lives near Erie, Pa. “I hadn’t given it a thought. Now it all came crashing down on me — look what you’ve done.”

What have you done? You prevented yourself from lining up “baby mamas” like you were P. Diddy, that’s what. I was prepared to write it off as a guy a bit too much in touch with his feelings until I read that this melodrama was part of a bigger plot — to use the passionate stories to try and influence the Supreme Court:

Therapist Vincent M. Rue, who helped develop the concept of post-abortion trauma, runs an online study that asks men to check off symptoms (such as irritability, insomnia and impotence) that they feel they have suffered as a result of an abortion. When men are widely recognized as victims, Rue said, “that will change society.”

Abortion rights supporters watch this latest mobilization warily: If anecdotes from grieving women can move the Supreme Court, what will testimony about men’s pain accomplish?

“They can potentially shift the entire debate,” said Marjorie Signer of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an interfaith group that supports abortion rights.

I say not to worry — we all know that when a large group of privileged white men feel they are suffering an injustice, nothing is ever done about it, right?

Oh, shit.

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A select group of parents around the country are deciding, in effort to be the trendiest and most creative suburban, mini-van driving, non-descript baby naming artists of the world —  that they’ll just change their child’s name if their child’s name isn’t found to be cool enough.

What a bunch of arseholes. That’s all I have to say.

In her first few years, 6-year-old Sophie Sauber’s parents, Rob Sauber and Suzanne Ramljak, of Connecticut, were overwhelmed by the number of Sophies they encountered daily. Four out of 13 kids in their daughter’s preschool class were named Sophie, and other parents were constantly yelling it at the mall. When Sophie was almost 4, they asked how she’d feel about being called Isadora, a name they’d considered before she was born.

“She understood our reasoning and liked the name. We weren’t going to force her,” says Ramljak. One day, after a trial period of a couple of months, she introduced herself as Isadora. “It was like, ‘That’s her name now!’”

Noting that by 12 months children already recognize the sound of their names, Dr. Karla Umpierre, a Miami psychologist and family counselor, encourages parents to get the child’s input and approval if they decide to change the name after age 2. “It’s best to change the name before then, because by 2 or 3 they have a sense of identity, and it could send mixed messages. The child might ask himself, ‘Do you want to change me?’”

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Although this ruling was made in England, I have to believe U.S. courts would take a similar position. Here’s the question: if a woman gets pregnant, does she have the right to withhold that information from the father and her family and put the baby up for adoption? I know this probably happens every day, but is it right?

The woman then took the case to the Court of Appeal, where the judges ruled that no steps should be taken to identify the father or tell him about the child, now 19 weeks old.

There was also an order barring the authority from introducing the baby to any of the mother’s family to assess them as potential carers.

They had learned about the child only when the local authority made inquiries.

Lady Justice Arden, sitting with Lord Justice Thorpe and Lord Justice Lawrence Collins, said this was not a violation of the father’s rights to family life under the Human Rights Act because he had no rights to be violated.

Woman have spent years and years trying to bridge the social gap between the sexes, disseminating any preconceived differences, yet in this case, the woman clearly has more rights to a child than the biological father. Why? Isn’t the child just as much his as it is hers? Does one sex automatically mean “ownership” of a child? What if that “ownership” isn’t in their best interest? Is it better for a baby to be adopted out, rather than custody be given to the father?

Isn’t making that automatic assumption sexism in reverse??

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A good idea or a case of mind your own business?

A new Illinois state-sponsored program called “Be a Buckle Buddy” — seriously? — provides a hotline for folks to call if they spot a fellow motorist that doesn’t have their kids properly restrained in the vehicle. The owner of the car is then tracked down and sent a warning and pamphlets on child safety:

“The intent is not to be punitive in any manner,” said Chris Franciskovich, regional communications manager for Children’s Hospital of Illinois. The Peoria-based hospital, the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department and Peoria-Area Safe Kids Coalition started the program in 2004.

Franciskovich pulls messages off the hotline once a week and faxes information — ideally, the license plate, kind of vehicle, location of incident, date and time — to the appropriate departments. If a caller gives just a plate number, he gives it to Tazewell, which covers for the entire state.

The police do not tell Franciskovich’s hospital where any offenders live and since the call is routed through the hospital’s switchboard, Franciskovich does not even see the area code from which the reporting person is calling.

The packet contains a brochure about car seat safety; another brochure, about car seat safety for children with special needs; and an IDOT brochure about Illinois’ Child Passenger Protection Act.

Of course I completely understand the importance of safely buckling kids into the car, but doesn’t this seem a bit creepy? To get some envelope in the mail out of nowhere that essentially says, “We’re watching you!” seems a bit much to me, and I’m torn on the subject. What do you think? Is this level of busybody-ness warranted?

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An analysis by STATS.org, a non-partisan organization based out of George Mason University, is starting to question the campaign towards spinning statistics in order to guilt mothers into breastfeeding.

Why, you ask?…because it is highly political. Breastfeeding represents certain political, social and moral ideals while formula represents corporate America and women succumbing to the pressures of American society with short maternity leaves, an industry that contributes to environmental pollution and the sexualization of a woman’s breasts.

STATS.org offers some perspective in one of breastfeeding advocacy’s statistical weapons, a scare tactic about childhood cancer:

One notable addition to the list of ills which breast-feeding guards against, notes Orent, comes from a 400-page HHS Agency for Health Care Research and Quality study. It concludes that childhood leukemia is reduced by as much as 19 percent for breastfed babies, as compared to non-breastfed babies.

But given that there are approximately 30 leukemia cases in a million children, a 20 percent reduction due to breastfeeding avoids a risk of 1 in 150,000 that your child will develop leukemia; of these, 50 to 80% survive, depending on the type of leukemia. In other words, insisting that all women breast feed (and for more than six months) would save less than one life in 300,000.

While one could easily argue that saving one child’s life in 300,000 is something that our society should strive for, the actual stats are likely not to be statistically significant.

STATS.org goes on to ask us to consider this:

In other words, driving safely is more than twice as risky for death than not nursing and getting leukemia as a result.

And then, if you are genuinely concerned about risk, there are the approximately 203,000 kids who were injured as passengers in 2005. Yet, it’s hard to imagine any newspaper running an op-ed warning mothers to avoid letting their child inside a car, and chastising the government for being in league with the auto industry to suppress the risk.

If certain women wish to shape PUBLIC POLICY based on statistics, shouldn’t it be presented accurately and with fairness? Honestly, the whole idea of government mandating breastfeeding or creating social and political policies or possible tax breaks to women who breastfeed coupled with using propaganda to “punish” corporations leaves me contemptuous towards those who wish to force their agendas on me (or women on a whole). Women deserve better. Women deserve accurate information and they deserve to have a choice in the matter.

In my opinion, the zeal to empower women and lead them into certain social choices is in actuality, setting them back many years. Present the truth and let women decide. Nobody should be influenced by false representations, especially by their own government.

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This week’s People Magazine features a story of a diagnosed autistic boy, 12, that was killed after being tied down and abused by nursing home aides. Apparently he was put into the nursing home after a series of violent outbursts at home and trying to choke his little brother. Shortly before his death, he was heard talking to his sister about cartoons and telling his mother that he loved her.

People magazine also writes of a 13-year-old boy, also diagnosed autistic and also killed by a nursing home aide. After restraining the boy in a car because of unruly behavior, the aide went about, doing his errands and returned to the boy, who was dead upon discovery. The parents institutionalized”him because they were still unable to potty train him at 13 years old and he was continually throwing temper tantrums, much like a toddler would.

Admittedly, it’s extremely difficult for me to remain neutral on this subject as I am the mother of an extremely high functioning Asperger child, but I have to believe there must be more to these children being warehoused in nursing homes than People Magazine’s explanation.

My fear is that autism has been the soup de jour diagnosis in order to give parents and children social services and is so commonly diagnosed that we may be missing serious mental disorders in children by giving them a non-specific medical diagnosis. Although there are degrees of autism — hence ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) — landing certain behaviors on the spectrum of autistic disorders, the child in the first example was clearly able to communicate in his nightly phone calls home and express emotions, which is uncharacteristic of autism. Autism is not strictly defined by violent outbursts, as is the reason for this child’s “prison sentence” to a nursing home.

The second child, 13, might have been autistic, but I have to ask, is the lack of being able to potty train and acting like a 2-year old, reason enough to be institutionalized? Although it is difficult to put yourself in that situation and I’m sure most parents would like to think that they wouldn’t institutionalize their children for being difficult and unable to potty train, it still leaves me questioning, are nursing homes the new mental institutions?

What are the requirements in putting a child into a nursing home?? Why aren’t we giving parents the tools in order to facilitate treatment with psychotherapy, various behavioral therapy and/or medications? Are nursing homes really the answer to undesirable behaviors?

Has this become America’s dirty little secret? Typically nursing homes only require the ability to pay them in order to accept a resident, but children should be given more consideration, no? In this day and age, why are we warehousing kids in nursing homes, especially homes that are more qualified to take care of ailing elderly people than children. Why are parents allowing this?

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