Something for the 13-year-old:

And for the 9-year-old:

This is why we need to keep telling them other stories.

Cross-posted from A Magical Year without Disney:

Here’s a clip of Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, talking about the four-billion-dollar Disney Princess complex and the difficulty and rewards of not choosing Disney.

Remember, Orenstein will be reading at the Barnes and Noble at the Galleria in Edina at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Friday, January 28.

We had an instructive back-to-school event at my daughters’ K-8 public school here in Minneapolis, where we visited classrooms, talked to teachers, dropped off supplies, signed up to volunteer, and turned in a ridiculous number of filled-out forms.

Our local public library, part of the Hennepin County Library system, participated by providing a table of materials, including information on library hours and programs, recommended readings for specific age groups, tips for parents to encourage reading at  home, and these:

1) packages of Disney tattoos, and

2) packs of Disney “painting” sheets.

Both are ads for a new DVD release of Disney’s Pinocchio. Not ads for books. Not ads for something that will be coming to the library.

And both are specifically designed to be appealing to children.

The materials weren’t displayed on the public library’s table for long — I removed them as soon as I got permission from the school staff. Later, I contacted the library and received a long and sincere apology (accepted). The librarian there told me that they often get mailings of materials like this from publishers. (Disney Publishing Worldwide includes Disney Global Book Group, Global Children’s Magazines, and Disney Family Fun Group.)

I spoke with another librarian from a different Hennepin County library and asked her why a publisher would even think that distributing advertising via a public library would be appropriate. She responded, “They’re marketers. They’ll try anything once.”

She told me that when she receives those mailings, they are immediately dumped into the recycling.

This made me wonder if the Hennepin County Library system had a policy addressing corporate advertising. Answer? No. When I explained the incident to their communications manager, she let me know that they do “employ the best practice of refraining from promoting this kind of corporate advertising” and “While we do not currently have a policy, this is a guideline that staff are encouraged to follow.”

I work in a public organization and I know there are zillions of rules around promoting private interests with public funds. So I’m surprised the libraries don’t have a more solid policy in place.

Perhaps they should.

Cross-posted at A Magical Year Without Disney.

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?