Less than 24 hours before the big Mother’s! Day! Celebration! I successfully added at least three more sessions to my six-year-old’s future therapy bill.

I made my daughter cry. Not the regular, no-you-can’t-have-a-second-donut tears but the gut-wrenching sobs of a truly frightened child.

It had already been a trying day. In the morning she was gazing at her Scholastic book order form and wishing for the Care Bear book/stuffed toy combo pack, just like so-and-so has at school.

I’ve gotten pretty good at talking my kids down from these requests, but today she would have none of it.

But mommy, you let me have a Care Bear before . . . .
I know, honey, why don’t you play with that one?
Because the dog took it outside and now it’s ruined!
Oh, well, that’s too bad, honey, but Mommy does not like Care Bears.
But — but — but, the blue one is EVERYWHERE. I see it EVERYWHERE!

Of course she does, I gripe to myself, that’s part of the 17 BILLION DOLLARS spent to make sure she sees it everywhere. So I launch into my usual talk about the toy companies and how they want her to want their toys so that can make money, etc. etc. and we move on.

Later in the day she finds a pair of old sunglasses and brings them to me. She has just learned to read and is proud of it.

Look, mommy, Hello Kitty is everywhere, too! she says, pointing to the words on the side of the sunglasses.

So now I’m annoyed.

Finally, we are getting ready to walk out the door to a birthday party when I hear a crash in the bathroom. She has pulled out a drawer too far and all its contents are spread on the floor. As I help her pick it up, she grabs a small mirror compact, a trade-show giveaway, and says she wants to put it in her pocket.
Why? I ask.

Because then I can take it out and go like this (she flips the cover up): Hmm, how do I look now?

Cue: blood boiling.

No, honey, six-year-old girls do not need to look in the mirror at themselves!
But I want to!
Where have you ever even seen someone do that?
I don’t know, I just have.
But where?
I don’t know!

I realize that my anger at this point is entirely misdirected, so I decide to lighten up the situation by using my best joking voice:

I demand to know where you’ve seen someone use a mirror like that!

However, it didn’t come out quite so joking. And it was still angry. And still grossly misdirected.

She looked at me as if I had just slapped her across the face.

Oh, mommy! she cried, and began the sobbing which would last for ten minutes.

When she was finally able to talk, she said:

I’ve . . . never heard (sob) . . . you . . . talk that way . . . before (sob)!

Well, I thought, it’s been a long day.

There’s so much confusion about the difference between sexualization and developing a healthy sexuality. Sexualization is not about sex, about “playing doctor,” or about expressing normal, healthy curiosities about your body — sexualization occurs when sexuality is inappropriately imposed on another.

So where did this fall? Is it normal and healthy for a six-year-old to check yourself out in the mirror? Or is it an imitation of the images and messages that have gotten to her, through her own eyes or through her friends or even through adults?

Was she imitating me?

I apologized to her, told her that I had made a big mistake and that I would never talk to her like that again.

Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, she lost her first tooth. No fan of blood, she was scared. Very scared. And then excited. And then the Happiest Girl on the Planet. I told her she was getting to be a big girl, that she was growing up, and how proud I was of her.

And this morning I let her take the mirror with her to school so she could look at the new hole in her beautiful smile.

~~~

Read Beyonce’s House of Dereon: Sexualizing Children and Packaging Girlhood.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 9:27 am and is filed under Books, Child Sexualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.