I’ve been thinking a lot about default settings lately.

This is probably because of  the most recent Microsoft Word upgrade at my office, which has has been painful. The formatting defaults to a funky extra before- and after-paragraph spacing that makes every document look like a freshman term paper padded to reach the required length. I alter this formatting on the documents I edit. But I wonder, why don’t people change the default settings in the first place?

Perhaps it’s too hard? Or maybe people don’t notice? Or even care?

This is how I view the Disney Corporation in our lives: It’s become a default setting.

The easiest thing to do is to go Disney. At the grocery store, in the drive-through, buying back-to-school supplies, birthday presents, and board games. Watching television. And on the computer. The Disney marketing machine has made it virtually impossible for families to live without them.

Of course, I’ve had a lot of complaints about Disney and its marketing to kids. Then last winter, Disney saw to it that the three-person Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) lost the home and support it had with the Judge Baker Children’s Center after CCFC had exposed Disney’s false marketing claims about Baby Einstein videos.

I’d had it with Disney. So, we’ve decided to switch our default settings. We’re going to live Disney-free for year. No Disney. No ABC. No ESPN. No Hulu (ouch). No Club Penguin. No Toy Story 3. Nothing that Disney owns. For one year.

Join us at A Magical Year Without Disney. Who knows what we’ll find when we don’t default to Disney.

PEM friend Anne Elizabeth Moore puts together a Q and A on our Year Without Disney at Democracy Guest List.

Today begins a little background on my relationship with Disney. This post was originally published in November, 2007.

Footnoted’s post on Disney sprawl (among other things) unfortunately brought back some painful memories of an ill-fated trip to Disney World.

I was working for a for-profit university and our task was to fly to Disney World to investigate the possibility of hosting a student event there. Even though I’m pretty anti-Disney, I’m not, say, a Miss Trunchbull, so I used the free ticket there as an excuse to take my then-seven-year-old daughter.

She was thrilled, of course, but had to endure a day and a half of meetings with grown-ups.

I cannot even begin to describe the idiocracy of those meetings.

And the sales guys.

Since we would be bringing quite a large group of attendees, they were willing to bend over backwards for us: Shrink-wrapping the Disney buses with our logo, adding desks to about 300 of their guest rooms, and concealing the life-sized fake-town backdrop at the “extreme stunt show” on a backlot of Disney-MGM Studios.

When they took us to lunch, it was “on the mouse.” If I heard Well, that’s the Disney difference! one more time, I was going to throw up.

Anyway, my favorite moment was when one of the sales guys leaned down to my daughter:

Sales guy: So, who’s your favorite Disney Princess, honey?
Daughter: Umm . . . (looks frantically at her mother) . . . I don’t know.
Sales guy: Oh, it’s so hard to choose just one, isn’t it?
Me: No, that’s not it. She doesn’t know who you are talking about.
Sales guy:

Today Disney spends four billion dollars marketing Disney princesses to girls. And babies. And brides. And everyone else. Amazon.com lists no fewer than 7,806 Disney Princess “products.”

My daughter and I stayed an extra day at Disney World (it rained). Disney did not get that event contract with us. And I can guarantee that I’ll never set foot in Disney World again.

Update 3/13: Bowing to corporate America, Judge Baker center loses face (Opinion, Boston Globe)

By now you may have heard (or read, in the New York Times) how the multi-billion dollar Disney Corp. saw to it that the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, their $250,000 budget and two, count ‘em, two staff members were booted from their home at the Judge Baker Children’s Center.

Disney sicked their lawyers on CCFC’s Harvard-based sponsor when they realized that the organization could actually affect their magical brand identity: CCFC had called Disney on their Baby Einstein marketing claims.

It’s a shame. Disney could have taken this opportunity to engage instead of fight.

Although I thought it impossible, my disdain for Disney has reached a new low high.* What to do? There’s a difficulty in taking my business elsewhere, since Disney owns everything. Almost literally. (My 12-year-old has suggested a Year Without Disney. Book deal and Colbert appearance? Hmm.)

Looks like the Judge Baker Center is suffering over its decision. And CCFC lives to advocate another day.

Can you help? Support CCFC.

Read more:

Critics of Baby Einstein DVDs say Disney pressed landlord to evict them (LA Times)
“Mouse Inc?” Disney Bullies Small & Mighty CCFC From Home? (Amy Jussel, Shaping Youth)
Did Disney Threaten a Children’s Mental Health Center? Read Between the Lines (Newsweek)
and All I think about is princesses . . .

Image courtesy bixentro

*3/13 Note to self: Get an editor.

Seems that Ooh, La La! Couture, the clothing designers for Miley Cyrus’s nine-year-old sister Noah and her friend, eight-year-old actress Emily Grace Reaves, is not really designing children’s lingerie, just tutus attached to tank tops. As of this writing the Ooh, La La website was down and all the online videos showing the girls modeling some designs had been designated private. If you haven’t seen them yet, here are some of the images of these girls and their outfits.

Seeing young girls dressing like stereotypical streetwalkers has been disturbing people all over the internet the last few days, which is good. This problem is real. And big. And it goes beyond wondering what these girls’ parents are thinking.

It is a parenting issue. But it’s also a feminist issue. And a public health issue. And a corporate marketing issue.

Hardy Girls Healthy Women posts about the new American Apparel campaign, which asks women and young girls older than 18 to send in photos of their bottoms for judging on the internet:

The sexualization of women and porn-inspired media have infiltrated the everyday culture of the youngest girls. According to the 2007 APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls in Media, the negative impact on girls and women is indisputable: the sexualization and objectification of girls and women in media wreak havoc on our psychological, emotional, cognitive and relational lives.

[American Apparel's] campaign is a perfect example of the insidious ways marketers and media promote sexualization and body obsession as “girl power.” American Apparel is directly and unconscionably undermining girls’ healthy development by equating confidence with looking sexy, winning with being judged on their appearance, and personal value with 15 seconds of fame. The objectification of girls’ and women’s bodies is a real concern in a country where 1 in 4 women is a victim of violence, and sexual harassment is rampant.

(Sign their petition boycotting American Apparel.)

Or spend some time at Sociological Images and discover sexually suggestive teen brands, baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, and the “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt.

I also wrote a post in 2008 about Disney’s Miley Cyrus and and her leap into sexualization with the photo shoot for Vanity Fair. I’ll leave you with the images (and helpful resources follow):
(more…)

Two recent reads have triggered flashbacks to the world in which corporations will do anything to sell, sell, sell.

From Ph.D. in Parenting, one of my new favorite blogs, comes the Child’s Hierarchy of Needs (and the followup, Intersecting Needs: Maslow, interdependence, parenting, caregiving, relationships).

Sadly, this reminded me of how marketers use Maslow to pinpoint weaknesses in children’s developmental stages to create more effective marketing.

I first ran into this concept when reading The Great Tween Buying Machine: Capturing Your Share of the Multi-Billion-Dollar Tween Market.

No longer children and not quite teenagers, tweens – kids aged 8 to 12 years – are one of the fastest growing market segments for corporate America. With significant influence on household and family purchases, the four key motivating drivers for tweens are fun, freedom, power, and belonging. The Great Tween Buying Machine will demystify the newly discovered tween market using research findings and by discussing product development techniques and the latest marketing strategies in packaging, advertising, and promotions.

As one customer review states,

Siegel demonstrates why it is that this “tween” market has become so interesting for businesses: this particular age group is old enough to make suggestions to their parents about how to spend their money but still young enough to be utterly manipulated.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any creepier, Truthout exposes more about the practice of neuromarketing — using medical technology to determine your brain’s reactions to various commercial marketing techniques. I guess the kid’s version of this would be whatever goes on at the Disney Advertising Research Lab.

I find these standard practices wholly unethical when applied to children. You?

Disney and their now-disastrous Baby Einstein venture are back in the news as parents in California pursue a class-action lawsuit claiming a violation of the the California Consumers Legal Remedies Act.

The lawsuit (pdf) states that the recent Baby Einstein refund is not adequate compensation for the false and misleading claims made by Disney while marketing the Baby Einstein products. Instead, plaintiffs say, Disney should:

1. Cover the real cost of the videos, including tax (current refund is for $15.99 per DVD);
2. Extend the refund to purchases made before 2004;
3. Cover shipping and handling to return the DVDs; and
4. Eliminate the 4-refunds-per-household limit.

Seems quite reasonable. Oh! And, it’s the law.

In other Disney news, they’ve banned cadmium in an Disney-branded products after a recent necklace recall. While they’re at it, they might want to check out a few other products from manufacturers that have benefited from the Disney marketing machine, like play yards that could suffocate baby, shoes with choking parts, toy magic wands excessive lead paint, and jammies with handy burn hazards.

After all, they have their reputation to protect.

Image courtesy ChuckHolton

Somehow I survived my once-a-year trip to a mall and even had the joy of discovering a new Disney Princess product:

Copy reads: Do not apply “ . . . to nails that are thin, damaged or infected. For children ages 5 +.”

Most five-year-olds’ nail are naturally thin. I would not want to be around when those things have to come off, either during normal bath time or by accident, when the little princess tries to actually play (except the sit-on-a-chair-like-a-princess-and-don’t-move-for-hours-game).

Ouch.

The smart parent should take their daughter to this salon in Texas, which recently installed special chairs for children:

For cute! But the French manicure costs extra!

Kudos to all the smart parents who knew that Baby Einstein videos would not make their babies smarter:

If anyone believed Disney had cued into a magic, painless way to create babies guaranteed to test into the Gifted and Talented Education program by third grade, their children’s bigger problem wasn’t in how many videos they watched, it was in their parents’ DNA.

Moms and Dads who fell for Disney’s marketing must be really stupid, boy, because even Disney knows they never claimed Baby Einstein was educational.  I mean, just because something is providing learning opportunities doesn’t mean it’s educational:

Our videos — we call them ‘Video Board Books¨ — combine age-appropriate visual stimulation with developmentally important sounds, such as foreign language, poetry and classical music. Unlike traditional entertainment programming, our Video Board Books are designed to provide both quality learning opportunities based on sound teaching practices and unique viewing enjoyment.

That doesn’t mean they’re educational! Duh!

Or who would possibly believe silly marketing copy that claims Baby Einstein products are backed up by research?

Research has shown that humans acquire knowledge through three channels of learning — seeing, hearing and doing. We develop products in various media, such as video, audio, print and toys that offer a range of visual, auditory and tactile experiences.

And what dummies would fall for statements such as Baby Einstein contributes to increased brain capacity – especially if they appeared in a company press release. Sheesh!

And since the FTC brought no action against Baby Einstein, intelligent parents can clearly see that Disney was never making false claims and therefore, their marketing wouldn’t change at all.

Upon careful review of the matter, including non-public information submitted to the staff, [the FTC] determined not to recommend enforcement action at this time. Among the factors we considered are changes made recently to the Baby Einstein website — the removal of numerous testimonials that had previously appeard on the website and changes in the descriptions of certain videos marketed for this age group — as well as Baby Einstein’s representations that the company will take appropriate steps to ensure that any future advertising claims of educational and/or developmental benefit for children are adequately substantiated.

Who exactly are these bozo parents who thought that Baby Einstein videos would be educational, even though, of course, no one ever suggested that they might be?

Many, it turns out, were the parents surveyed by Andrew Meltzoff, when he was trying to find out if parents really did use the television “as a babysitter.” According to Bronson and Merryman’s NurtureShock:

In that study, parents did confirm that some babysitting was going on, but the main reason infants were watching television — especially videos such as those in the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby series — was because parents believed the programs would give their children a cognitive advantage.

“We had parents with kids in front of the TV for as many as twenty house a week ‘for their brain development,’” recalled Dr. Andrew Meltzoff . . . . ”Parents told us that they couldn’t provide  much for their children, and that troubled them, so they had saved up and bought the videos hoping that would make up for everything else. . . . They said they thought that  was the best thing they could do for their babies.” (p. 200)

 Morons.

Read also: Let’s stop being babies about Disney’s Einstein videos and  Baby Einstein controversy: What parents need to know

Image via daddytypes