don't get me started on Barbie

Why do we evoke princesses when we want our daughters to have heroines and ideals? When we want to compare a sense of specialty, we say ‘he treated her like she was a princess.’ What is a princess?
“Non-reigning female member of a royal family.”
“The consort of a prince.”
“A woman member of a royal family other than the monarch, especially a daughter of a monarch.”
A princess is nothing more than importance by association. She is either married to a royal (glorified trophy wife) or the daughter of a royal (heiress). Really? Because when I hear the title ‘heiress’ I think of Paris Hilton and the likes of her ilk. And trophy wife? At the end of the day do you REALLY want your daughter to aspire to be like Melania Trump? Princesses have no value outside their statuses, which are not earned. They are born or married into privilege and did not work or demonstrate any talent to achieve that privilege. Phooey. Furthermore, idealization of princesses promotes inter-female hostility and general bitchery. Observe:

SNOW WHITE
Valued for her hair color, skin tone, royal parentage, soprano vibrato.
Your daughter learns: to be pretty, inherit something, and to win American Idol

Stepmother/Queen is jealous of SW’s hair so she makes plan to assassinate her.
Your daughter learns: that ugly girls are mean and jealous and will kill her for her beauty

SW escapes and lives in community with working class social pariahs: the 7 dwarves. They all get along famously and she contributes to the household.
Your daughter learns: to run away from her problems, move in with strange men and sleep in their beds

(not sure why the story can't end here since our heroine is safe, happy and still pretty, but i digress) The Dwarves warn her not to talk to strangers, something every 7 year old can grasp, but she totally flunks and not only talks to strangers, but eats whatever they put in her hand.
Your daughter learns: to accept that Pretty and Stupid go hand in hand, best not to fight it.

SW goes comatose and the equally-dim dwarves deem her dead and put her in a glass coffin. I guess they’re betting on her prettiness decomposing prettily.
Your daughter learns: pretty, even in death. Pretty is highest priority. Always be pretty and people will worship you. Pretty.

A prince happens upon this twisted scene, and goes all necro and insists on kissing the dead girl. It must have been some funky kiss because it functions as the heimlech maneuver and the poisoned fruit/choking hazard is dislodged. SW gets to marry this sexual deviant and go back to a castle and be a princess/queen for the rest of her life.
Your daughter learns: to accept marriage proposals from any handsome pervert with a good bank account, to abandon all skills learned in hard work, pursue lifestyle of leisure and beauty-worship.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (alias Ariel)
Valued for her appearance, miraculous seashell bra, singing voice
Your daughter learns: be pretty, have breasts that defy gravity, win American Idol

Ariel has a secret cave full of trinkets from the non-ocean world
Your daughter learns: to be a kleptomaniac archaeologist, but keep it secret lest anyone find out you have any hobby or interest besides singing and being a princess

Ariel spies on a ship, rescues the handsome prince from drowning, falls in love and sings about it.
Your daughter learns: hot guys are dumb and can’t swim, and we, the women, must swim for them.

Her father, King Triton, finds her secret treasure trove and smashes it all to pieces.
Your daughter learns: parents are the enemy and won’t understand your hobby or secret desire. Best to disobey them posthaste!

She has a meeting with the sea witch, a robust woman, who trades Ariel’s voice for a pair of legs and oxygen-breathing lungs.
Your daughter learns: fat girls are evil and always jealously seeking to destroy you, but dealing with evil is necessary to trade what God gave you for what you think you might want based on a cute boy you've never actually spoken to who may not even be single or interested in you.

She meets up with the prince and his dog, grins dopily the whole time because she can’t talk. They have an incredibly awkward date that she resolves by kissing him.
Your daughter learns: when the conversational chemistry isn’t there, just put out and the date will go much better. Also, giving up your voice, literally and figuratively, for the rest of your life is worth it if you have a guy who will worship you for your beauty and your dopey-girl charm.

The evil witch double-crosses her and uses her singing voice to steal her prince's affections.
Your daughter learns: jealous bitches will stop at nothing, and your boyfriend is a fickle, fickle beast who will instantly leave you for someone who can sing better.

Ariel and her pals crash the wedding, the evil witch and King Triton have a battle royale, and Ariel somehow ends up with legs, lungs AND voice. Thus, since she is the complete physical package, the prince likes her again and they marry and Ariel can never return to her family or her species.
Your daughter learns: completely change yourself to suit your man and all will be well.

SLEEPING BEAUTY, alias Aurora
Valued for her beauty, parentage, singing voice.
Your daughter learns: again, nothing worthwhile

At her christening, a jealous witch curses her so that she’ll prick her finger on a needle when she turns 16 and diiiiiiie. A kind fairy edits the curse from ‘diiiiiiie’ to ‘sleeeeeeeep’.
Your daughter learns: again, ugly girls are jealous, mean and violent. And they harness evil powers.

The king orders every needle in the kingdom destroyed and sends Aurora to live in the woods with the 3 benevolent old-lady fairies.
Your daughter learns: hide from danger, run from problems. Little old ladies are not rivals, but every other female is. (At least this one has female friends. All other princess-worthy sidekicks are either male or bizarrely androgynous.(see: Flounder))

16 years later, the princess and Prince Phillip meet in the woods and fall in love after duetting. The evil witch kidnaps Phillip and tricks Aurora into pricking her finger on an evil needle, sending her into an immediate coma.
Your daughter learns: to not use dirty needles, which is a good lesson. Although I can’t see how my cat can manage to remove every stick pin from my pin cushion and roll around in them without injuring himself, but this dummy walks right up to a needle and sticks her hand on it.

The good fairies rescue Phillip, who battles the witch and her evil forestation, and then he kisses Aurora and revives her from her coma. They marry and everyone lives happily ever after.
Your daughter learns: to just take a nap while everyone else does all the work because, after all, she looks so darn pretty when she sleeps and pretty trumps everything else. Also, marrying a relative stranger at 16 is perfectly acceptable if you are both adequately attractive and have royal titles you did nothing to earn.

Princess Jasmine (from Aladdin)
Valued for her midriff, giant eyeballs, and impressive rack. Also her royal family.
Your daughter learns: scantily clad women can be considered ‘exotic’ and it’s ok. Also, Bengal tigers make acceptable pets.

Meets a cute street rat, who then fakes his identity and pretends to be a rich prince come to woo her. She, of course, can only marry a prince.
Your daughter learns: to be blinded by wealth, pomp and circumstance.

They go on a magic carpet ride, he promises to show her a whole new world, which is made possible by a magic lamp that he stole from a tomb.
Your daughter learns: to consort with and drink up the promises of charming graverobbers, who are obviously lying.

Her father’s evil adviser, Jafar, evilly evils in order to get Jasmine to marry him and secure his evil plans.
Your daughter learns: that people with Middle Eastern accents are evil or inconsequential, since the only people in this movie with accents are evil or are extras.

Jasmine is trapped in an hour glass and Aladdin must battle Jafar. I can’t remember exactly but good triumphs and the cuties can marry even though Aladdin lied about everything, abandoned his friends and isn’t even a law-abiding citizen.
Your daughter learns: marry any deadbeat who looks good in hammer pants and a vest.

There are modern day princesses who I’m sure do significant philanthropic work between equestrian shows and parties, but they’re only included the stream of culture when tragedy or scandal touches them, so our daughters and nieces only ever know of the pretty-and-empty princess or the cocaine-and-sex-tape princess. One might say both are equally dangerous role models. I understand the reasoning behind princess-theory: we want our daughters to have self-worth and high standards and to expect excellent treatment from the men they date/love. I agree with those needs. But I don’t think that princess-worship is the best or the only way to instill that. It imposes limits on what she imagines a girl can grow up to be. Show me a 6 year old girl who dreams of becoming a deadly assassin and I’ll applaud that weird, bloodlusty little thing for believing she can break into the boys club. I want to meet a little girl and ask ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ and have her say ‘um a librarian or a commodities trader or a dolphin.’

i do want to extend a 'well done' to Pixar and its peers for the kid-flicks of the past few years: Madagascar, Wall-E, The Incredibles, Kung Fu Panda, etc., none of which include princesses or dopey damsels in distress and are about friendship and hard work and recycling instead of evil crones and dating.

belated

The last several days have been insane at work, which, let's face it, is where i do most of my blogging, so here's some catching up.
<- Matt and Bren had a baby! Congrats to them for another beautiful, genius, little girl. Welcome to the world, Addison- watch out for that sister of yours, she's crazy like a fox.

Josselyn and Deven are having another child too! Their little pumpkin is due in April.

Scott and Katie are having their first baby!

Penny is violently enjoying her chew toy and the Steelers are beating the Bengals! (just wanted to break up the baby talk)

watch. laugh. repeat.

ahh, satire

Secret abortions must be secured
By Russ Neal, published in the Paradise Post

I am going to start collecting signatures for a ballot initiative for our next election. It'll be a constitutional amendment so that no group of justices with common sense can overturn it. I'll call it "The Child Secrecy Initiative."

Or maybe "The Parental Ignorance Act." Oh, well, I'll figure out the name later. Here's the deal. I've noticed in the past several elections that there has been some sort of parental notification proposition on the ballot. Each time it has gone down to defeat.

But we can't be too complacent.

Maybe some day parents will wake up and realize the government and Planned Parenthood are taking their children away to perform secret abortions on them. We must be sure this secrecy is maintained and parents never know what is happening to their offspring.

So, I propose we start circulating a petition to create an irrevocable constitutional amendment that will forever keep parents in the dark concerning the health and welfare of their children. Currently we have laws that forbid giving children aspirin at school without the parents' permission. Soon these parents will want to know about the secret abortions being performed on their minor children and then where we will be as a society?

Some parents are actually cruel and mean to their children. As a result, we must be certain to keep medical information regarding abortions away from all parents. Forget that most parents love and cherish their children. That's irrelevant. Forget that some children, who have already had these clandestine procedures, have come home with serious medical and psychological problems about which the parents know nothing. That's a small price to pay in order to keep from informing parents that their offspring are going under the knife.

Forget the fact that some children have actually died as a result. What's a few deaths weighed against the benefits of maintaining our secrecy and keeping parents in the dark?

Although I have not worked out the final wording here are the salient points of the initiative: Background: Up to this point in time, parents have generally had control over the medical care given to their children. For some reason, this control has not been extended to the various and sundry ways in which the pregnancy of a minor can be terminated.

To ensure - for all time - that parents will be kept out of this decision to terminate a pregnancy, this amendment to the Constitution of the State of California permanently establishes, without recourse to its opponents, the right of the state to perform as many abortions on the minor children of this state as it deems necessary or desirable.

Furthermore, it is expressly forbidden for any abortion provider, school official, or employee of these organizations to make any attempt to notify the parents of the minor child in question. Secrecy concerning this procedure must be maintained. Should any complications arise regarding the minor child undergoing said abortion procedure, the child will be returned to the parents, but no information shall be given to them regarding the procedure or the complications arising therein.

Parents will be held solely responsible for all medical costs that may arise from said complications, and all abortion providers shall be held blameless regardless of circumstances, including failure to inform, negligence and/or incompetence.

My proposition ensures this veil of secrecy regarding medical procedures performed on the children will forever be enshrined in our state constitution. Then, if and when the voting parents ever wake up, we will be certain this practice can and will continue in the shadows - forever.

If any of you have any additional suggestions to keep parents out of their children's medical involvement and history, please send them to Planned Parenthood so that they may be incorporated into the amendment. Both Planned Parenthood and the government know better than any of you parents what's good for your children. So please be sure to write in and request a petition so that you can start gathering signatures. This veil of darkness must be maintained.

PS: This is important so that the 47 percent of Butte County voters who actually voted for parental notification during the last election could be educated in the timeless adage: "Ignorance is bliss."

Bloggedry

Bit different, yeah? My designer (and bedfellow) has contracted a minor multiple personality situation and this one is the result of much late night Zelda, a bit of Halloween, and, if you ask me, a lack of excitement in his desk monkey life. Stay tuned for the personality that loves unicorns and blankets, that one’s my favorite.

The comments work now, so no excuses for not participating in the more participatory participation posts. I would appreciate it if you would let me know who’s actually reading this bananasandwich of a site, because I honestly have no idea if it’s mostly relatives, friends, strangers or aliens studying my species. Due to the long silence, I’d pretty much convinced myself that i had one lone reader, and that her name was Mom, so if you don’t post a comment all my fears will be confirmed and I’ll eat my sadness and get diabetes. Don’t be that guy. Please. I’m craving a kettlechip caramel moosetracks milkshake just thinking about that possibility.

It’s easy. You click on the link that says # comments and put your name in the box where it says leave your comment. Then you fill in the goofy code that blocks smappers (ha! dyslexic typing) and choose an identity. If you don’t have a Google or Blogger account, you just select Name/URL and enter your name, and URL if you have a site you want to share. Or you can be anonymous, but that kind of defeats the purpose of this particular assignment. If you’d like to stay anonymous but want to be counted, pretend to be someone awesome, ie ‘Hey Kalpal, love this site and you’re a GENIUS. Sincerely, Ray Bradbury’ and then I’ll get super excited that Ray Bradbury likes my lamey blog posts. (no I really am that self-delusioning) (and I make up words)

So to help you figure out how to comment, I ask you:

Do you think the new blog layout is…
a. Just the right amount of Zelda
b. Lacking in filigree
c. A Muslim Socialist
d. Actiontastic

How To Mess With Your Own Head

Read TWO novels about dystopian societies with out-of-control governments (Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World) right before election day.