Long-time readers may be surprised that I actually attend my daughter’s softball games even though the girls wear these uniforms:

After all, local businesses have been supporting kids’ sports teams forever, right? What is possibly wrong with that?

The girls lined up for a photo of their backsides to prove to Graco yes, we are wearing the uniforms you provided.

One team member was overheard saying: “I feel so used.”

And no, it wasn’t my brainwashed daughter, either.

Our Disney Princess Watch feature keeps you current with the newest, the most unusual, and the most inexplicable products featuring Disney Princesses and other Disney characters.

For your future Annie Leibovitz, Disney introduces the Disney Pix Jr. digital camera especially designed for the youngest photographers — your three-year-old.

WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, or birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Don’t worry, little girls, there’s a Disney Princess version just for you!

Of course, no family memories are complete without proof that a Disney character was there: With the Disney Pix Jr., kids can place Disney characters into all of their photos. Imagine Mickey joining your family reunion! Or Minnie at your sister’s bat mitzvah!

Some “child advocates” question how a $60 camera contributes to a three-year-old’s learning and development; they obviously did not have the benefit of taking Rationalization 101 in marketing school:

“We saw kids wanting to take pictures with their parents’ $300 Sony cameras,” says Lisa Mancuso, vice president of marketing [at Fisher-Price]. “We filled a gaping need in the marketplace.”

Emphasis mine. The key word here is “gaping.”

Here’s an idea:

Make a camera using a small rectangular box or small animal cracker box. For the lens, glue a piece of felt, fabric, or cardboard on the front center of the box. You can even use a lid from a plastic milk container . . . .

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Read The Princess Problem: There’s More Than One Way of Being Pretty

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.

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Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Pics Could Be Big Phonies: I am willing to give my first-born to the person who proves that this is true. UPDATE: Rats.

After monitoring the music and ads, parents and school officials say Show could be over for Bus Radio on Seminole County school buses

I’d like to take a stab at what Heather Armstrong wanted to twitter after the embarrassing debacle that passed for a mommy-blogger interview on The Today Show. Such a lost opportunity to introduce the blogosphere to the rest of the world.

Like Taking Candy From a Baby: How Young Children Interact with Online Environments (pdf), a study released today from Consumer Reports Webwatch and the Mediatech Foundation, found that childrens’ websites are not doing a good enough job disclosing their advertising and marketing tactics to parents.

Parents involved in the study kept video journals which documented families’ frustrations with game websites and virtual worlds that draw kids into games and require a purchase to continue playing, among other things. Watch a few of the videos. I’d be surprised if some of those scenarios haven’t already been played out in your home.

Many online games and virtual worlds violate at least two of PEM’s standards of ethical marketing:

1. They interfere with the parent-child relationship by enticing young children to hand over an email address (and other personal information) without parental permission.

2. They take advantage of a child’s inability to understand that advertisers want their money by making the ads indistinguishable from the game itself.

Aaron Delwiche identifies one of the major problems with kids’ virtual games:

For the most part, so-called “virtual worlds” aimed at youth are little more than paper-doll worlds in which players are encouraged to spend virtual money on their on-line avatars. In almost all of these spaces, the pattern is mind-numbingly familiar: Create avatar. Play games. Earn money. Shop for your avatar. Earn money. Shop for your avatar’s house. Earn money. Shop for your avatar. Earn money. Shop. Work. Shop. Work. Shop. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The only thing that really differentiates each of these worlds from one another is the quality of the art direction and the intellectual property rights secured by the world’s creators.

The developmental benefits of childhood creative play are lost when the play becomes scripted. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to participate.

Katie L. at the New Media Research Studio at NYU hits on my biggest gripe with virtual worlds:

Although I felt that I had a firm grasp on the way things worked in the WebKinz World, I spent some more time throughout this past week exploring the site in hopes of uncovering more redeeming qualities that could potentially counteract its overwhelming focus on promoting consumer culture. Unfortunately however, all I could find was more evidence that the virtual component of Webkinz functions as a mini-capitalist economy, priming children to think first and foremost about getting more money in order to buy more things.

It feeds into ‘you can never have enough, and the more you have the better it is.’

The game creators have no incentive to make the games better — they want to encourage early consumer habits in order to maintain customers for their advertisers — unless we stop playing. And buying.

To help wean away from the virtual world and game habit, try WolfQuest, created by the Minnesota Zoo and eduweb. No ads, no cost. And no mini-capitalist economy.

photo courtesy Spigoo

by Cindy Droog
Reprinted with permission.

A close friend of mine, Tony, who is unmarried, doesn’t have children and lives in an apartment the approximate size of our son’s nursery, came to visit us from New York City a few weeks ago. Our house has changed slightly since his last visit two years ago.

Back then, you could walk through the living room. Today, it’s much more exciting. You can actually skateboard through it by hitting – at just the right angle – an open storybook and sliding to the back door. It’s a quicker trip that way. Not to mention, my balance has improved immensely.

Then, we had a fully stocked bar in the kitchen. Within arm’s reach, we had my favorite Pinot Noir, my husband’s Jack Daniels and ingredients for the perfect 007 martini. And on the bottom shelf, hand-painted cocktail glasses I’d picked up at a market outside Monterrey, Mexico on a business trip.

That cabinet – open shelving and all – now lives in our bathroom, serving as the perfect home for girly and manly shaving creams, living together in harmony. It had no business being in the kitchen anymore, unless we’d planned to stock it with animal crackers. Which by the way, are way too crumbly to use as a substitute for a lime slice in a margarita.

I did have a Sam Adams on hand to offer Tony that day. Of course, I neglected to tell him it had been in the fridge since October.

These changes at my house had been the obvious ones. In fact, my husband and I discuss the pending reopening of our bar – in 18 years – on a regular basis. But Tony made another observation, one that we, frankly, had not noticed.

My son’s coloring book? Handy Manny. His storybooks strewn across the floor? Thomas the Train and Elmo. His current favorite thing to carry around? A Mr. Incredible doll. The crackers he was munching on that day? Scooby snacks.

In completely innocent fashion, Tony said, “Wow! Everything they make for kids today is so commercialized. They must choose the shows they put on TV solely on their marketability as toys.”

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A quick “hello and welcome” to anyone who is visiting from the Nick & Josh Podcast or who found out about us at the May Day Festival in Minneapolis. New readers might want to read this PEM Primer I wrote for a conference I attended last month.

Ariah Fine interviewed me last week for the Nick & Josh Podcast. We met at the Birchwood Cafe and talked about parenting in a consumer-driven world. I also spilled the real, true story of the Target snow-angel ad fiasco. Talking with Ariah and Mindy, his wife, was truly delightful.

Ariah was also kind enough to stop by our information table at the May Day Festival yesterday. We were right be the lake and it was a *tad* windy, so I spent most of the day wearing my winter down parka.

A common reaction from passers-by after reading our sign was “Good luck with that!” Seems people have given up or given in to the idea that marketing and advertising are inherently dishonest and that there’s nothing to be done about it.

On the other hand, I was inspired by the people who stopped to talk:

– A young woman in her mid-twenties who talked about how the manufactured images of thin girls that surrounded her as an adolescent contributed to her eating disorder (she’s now recovering);

– A high school teacher who tries to reach kids through media literacy courses but finds that it’s not enough to combat the marketing machine;

– A woman who works in an adolescent psych ward who signed up saying she sees the associated problems “all the time;”

– A woman who pulled her child out of preschool because she didn’t want to pay someone to introduce her five-year-old to childhood consumerism;

 – A college gymnastics coach, concerned about binge drinking, wondering why radio stations air ads for “all-you-can-drink” nights at bars; and

– A father of four, citing books being sold in schools through Scholastic (not prompted by me), talking about the value of addressing media messages with his kids head-on.

There were many more. The most motivating feedback was from several people who simply said, “Thank you for taking this on. It is needed.”

Thank you for your encouraging words.

I’m excited to have an information table at Sunday’s May Day Festival in Powderhorn Park. The May Day Parade and Festival is my all-time favorite annual event here in Minneapolis. The parade tells a story — this year’s theme is A New Bridge. You can see the cool storyboard here.

If you attend, please stop by and say hello!

May Day Map and Schedule