I would so love to attend this FTC forum in D.C. that I am almost willing to snack on [fill in name of food industry sponsor]’s delicious products all day long. While standing in the front of the room. And passing out coupons.  

FTC Announces Agenda for December 15 Forum to Explore Food Marketing to Children
Will Address Developments in Self-Regulation; Report on Recommended Nutritional Standards

The Federal Trade Commission announced the agenda and speakers for its December 15, 2009 public forum titled “Sizing Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity.”

The forum participants will present new research on the impact of various food advertising techniques on children and discuss the statutory and constitutional issues surrounding governmental regulation of food marketing. Panelists also will address the food and entertainment industries’ self-regulatory efforts and implementation of the recommendations in the FTC’s 2008 report, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation. In addition, the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children – comprised of representatives from the FTC, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Department of Agriculture – will report on the status of recommended nutritional standards for foods marketed to children, followed by a Town Hall discussion.

An agenda for the forum is available. Updated information will be posted as it becomes available.

Read the rest of the press release.

If you live in Minnesota you’ve undoubtedly been solicited to contribute to a worthy nonprofit tomorrow, November 17, on Give to the Max Day. It’s sponsored by GiveMN, “a new online resource that helps Minnesotans discover, support and engage with the charities that are right for them.”

All contributions made from 8:00 a.m. on November 17, 2009 until 8:00 a.m  on November 18, 2009 will be matched by the generosity of some super big foundations. That’s free money!

So please consider donating half as much as you might otherwise to Parents for Ethical Marketing. Why? So we can keep fighting the good fight. Thanks.

This morning I had the honor of participating on a panel for the Minnesota Public Health Association, Unhealthy Influences: The Impact of Advertising on the Health of Children. 

If you attended the panel, here’s some information that you might find helpful:

PEM Primer for CCFC Summit (basic background information on Parents for Ethical Marketing)
Report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

A few posts on sexualization:
From the makers of Disney My Baby Princess, Sluts! I mean, Struts!
Sitter’s Checklist: Parenting, toy makeovers, and even more! ways to get kids to buy stuff
A sexualized Miley Cyrus? One word: Disney.
Sitter’s Checklist: Sweet Valley High, Bratz, Bimbos, and Who’s to blame

Some things I mentioned:
Retailer rue21 profits from sexualizing girls, thinks you should, too
Sexed-up six-year-olds roaming the streets at night: Must be Halloween
Beauty school parties for preteens

Resources:
The Lolita Effect, or, Yes, Virginia, little girls really are sexualized by the media
Sitter’s Checklist: Kids and food, sexualization, and smoking
Sexualizing Childhood — Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood

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

A thrilling success for CCFC:

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

My super-short history of the Baby Einstein video saga.

See how this advocacy thing works?

And remember when Change.org pointed out that even though it says so on the box, Fruit Loops aren’t healthy? And now, after the FDA agreed, Kellogg’s is going to stop saying that.

See? Isn’t this fun?

Let’s continue with Scholastic. Not the old Scholastic problems, but a new one: Scholastic bans book because author refuses to change same-sex parent characters into heterosexuals.

May be time to write Scholastic or, better yet, reconsider that Scholastic book fair at your child’s school. See CCFC’s Guide to Commercial-Free Book Fairs.

An American Girl Doll catalog arrived in our mailbox yesterday. When I called to be removed from their mailing list, I found out our address had been purchased from another company but that the customer service representative could delete our address from all future mailings.

The rep was quite nice on the phone, and I swear I was not looking for trouble. After we had conducted our business, she continued: “Why don’t you give your catalog to a little girl in the neighborhood? Or donate it to your local library? They love to get our catalogs!”

Really? I was skeptical. A call to my local library confirmed this. “You’re right in thinking that’s odd, I don’t know what we’d do with a catalog,” a librarian at Minneapolis’ Central Library told me.

Another Minneapolis librarian told me that they’d probably donate it to a local shelter.

Our copy stayed in our house. While I worked in the kitchen, my seven-year-old read it to me, and I used it as an exercise to help her understand the value of money. For example, instead of paying $44 for the “homemade cookie” accessory pack, we can use what we already have in our own kitchen to make cookies — and figure out what else $44 could buy.

After that, she took her scissors to it and created stories surrounding the cut-out pictures of the the dolls and the dogs and the horses.

Seems an American Girl Doll sales catalog is good for something.

Related: The cutline from the photo accompanying Chris Riemenschneider’s Strib column today about the Mall of America was changed in the online version. The original reads:

Real American girls rest at the MOA’s American Girl store. With luck and a few made-up stories (such as the one about the doll that bit a girl), our author can steer his daughter away from the place.

Precious!

 ♦ ♦ ♦

Run, now, to True/Slant to read Stephen C. Webster’s The Most Offensive Commercial Ever Produced. A beautiful dissection of a current Levi’s commerial in which Walt Whitman and his words are bastardized, Webster exposes the profit-fueled hypocrisy that brings together a poor, abolitionist poet and a company known for numerous fair labor violations.

What would Whitman have written about such a uniquely American company [Levi Strauss]?

Would he have joyously celebrated an institution which left its equal daughters and equal sons to rot in the baking Texas sun?

Would the great poet have rejoiced in the servitude of those not fortunate enough to live on allegedly free soil?

Oh yes, perhaps he would have taken up for a company that stitches $5 of cloth together and resells it for nearly $100.

Or would he have beat his breast in bitter sadness and populist fury at what the “grand, sane, towering, seated Mother” America had wrought on her children?

Read and talk your (older) children through this one. True/Slant, where have you been all my life?

♦ ♦ ♦

Scholastic Corporation continues to hide behind their “book publisher” label and promoting Goosebumps-branded products for Halloween: The televison series will air on Cartoon Network five days a week; Goosebump ”premiums” will be featured at Taco Bell, bookmarks, treat bags and posters will be distributed via AAA to public schools,* and free Goosebump-branded activities will be offered at shopping malls on Saturdays.   

Television’s Cartoon Network? Fast-food restaurant Taco Bell? And shopping malls? I must not be the only one confused, as even the good folks at  Scholastic’s blog need to remind us:

. . . we can’t forget that Goosebumps is all about the THRILL of reading . . . .

Uh-huh.

*Note to Scholastic: Better check school policies. Minneapolis Public Schools prohibits selling to children — and teachers — in school.

♦ ♦ ♦

And finally, Target Australia is selling matching bras and underwear to toddlers: Frightening pressure is putting young girls in bras.

Larger image here. H/T Norwegianity. Photo courtesy allisonallison.

There are so many ways to criticize the American Girl doll complex. If you still need convincing, Dr. Michael Rich from the Center on Media and Child Health offers this simple fact:

In short, the less that a doll, or any toy, does on its own—the fewer pre-written stories they come with, and the fewer bells and whistles that determine how a child plays with it—the better the toy is for challenging, stretching, and energizing the growing brain. . . . I encourage you to find [a doll] that isn’t branded at all. Its lack of branding and back story will allow her imagination to go wherever it takes her.*

Think before buying: Who benefits from this purchase? Is it really the child? Is it me (because *I* think it’s cute)? Or is it the multi-million dollar corporation behind it?

More about Dr. Rich, Ask the Mediatrician, and the Center on Media and Child Health.

*Susan Linn has this topic covered in The Case for Make-Believe (now available in paperback).