Body Love

Being the current events junkie that I am, I’ve been reading a lot of articles about rape culture and the kind of body shaming that can go along with it where victims are concerned, especially women and girls. It hits me in a strange way because I have a teen daughter who is, shall we say, not ashamed of her body. I have to admit that after growing up uncomfortable un my own skin, thinking for years that I was ugly, having been picked on for being small, for having boobs that were too big, for having hairy legs, or whatever, I don’t want my child to grow up hating her body. As far as I’m concerned she’s the most beautiful girl in the world and should feel good in her skin.

The only issue I have is this: she likes to dress somewhat provocatively. I wouldn’t classify her as an exhibitionist; that description comes with the connotation that she dresses the way she does for attention. I think she’s just comfortable as she is and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. She ran around naked all the time as a baby. Her dad used to take her to the beach in just a bathing suit bottom because he didn’t want her to have a tan line. She’s just always been kind of naked. I don’t find nudity especially disgraceful or disgusting, the way some people do, but she is just a kid. I want to give her the freedom to dress however she wants, but I admit that I’m not comfortable with my teen traipsing around in public in shorts where her bum sticks out the bottom. So I’m kind of at an impasse. She has a tendency to hear what she thinks I said rather than what I did say, and if I say “you’re not grown enough to wear those shorts,” I don’t want her to hear “put your body away. You have no business showing it.” I don’t want to body-shame her into wearing whatever everyone else in the world wants to see her in, but now that she’s growing up and changing her style to be more provocative than perhaps a teen should be, I do have to set some boundaries. But I don’t want her to think it’s because she’s gross or unattractive, and I’m concerned that that’s how she’ll take whatever I say to her.

My mother-in-law said to me that “some dirty old man is going to think she’s asking for it,” which makes me sick to my stomach. If a dirty old man thinks that about a child that is not yet sixteen then that’s what makes him a dirty old man. That’s rape culture talking. She could be wearing a parka and still be raped. Would she be asking for it then?? Or only on warm days when she wears shorts?? What rapists and pedos and abusers think and do is what makes them what they are: not what a woman wears. I sure as shit don’t want to tell my daughter that she’s responsible for what “dirty old men” think of her. By all means, she should be aware that there are people out there that are like that, but it’s not her fault if they do something bad.

Anyway, it’s the last week at school. I know they have some manner of a dress code there, and she’s got her last finals to keep her busy, but after the end of this week I have to have a whole new body talk with her, and I’m not sure how to do it without sounding like I’m telling her that her body is somehow inappropriate, although there is a time and a place for a bare butt, and I don’t want to give her the message that whatever nasty people say or do or think of how she looks is not her fault.

Quandary . . .

Facebook Parenting: For the gun-wielding madman, his family, and their need to publicize their issues.

By now most of us have seen the viral video of maniacal uber-hick Tommy Jordan going country-style ham over his bratty daughter Hannah’s whiny Facebook post. What’s been interesting for me has been the reaction. Most of the parents I’ve read and listened to are cheering for this gun-toting hillbilly fiend, which I don’t thoroughly understand. Everyone with children gets pissed off about the way their kids act sometimes; it’s universal. And many of us have ideas about what we’d like to do to our children, but reason and accountability stop us when we come to the rational conclusion that spiteful, hot-headed, knee-jerk reactions don’t teach our children anything but that it’s okay to be spiteful, hot-headed, and to not think about how they act before they act.

Usually when yokels brandish firearms and squeeze off a few rounds when they get pissed off, the rest of civilized society kind of laugh them off as being uncivilized and silly. Why not now?? Why in this instance have we suddenly changed our tune?? Why is this angry outburst and unnecessary destruction of perfectly useful property for the humiliation of a petulant child being lauded as healthy and effective parenting??

There appear to be a lot of folks out there applauding this guy because the way they would like to handle their children when they act out is to beat the ever-lovin’ snot out of them, like these parents learned everything they know about parenting from reality television; you disrespect me, I beat the shit out of you, sans consequences. (I know these ideas are older than reality tv; just hang with me for a minute.) I honestly think that this is why people should be thinking long and hard before they have children, because once they’re here they’re going to fuck your world up and you’re not allowed to use violence. You, meaning the adult, are supposed to know better. I know that chaps your ass, Daddy Warhead, but if you can’t treat your children with respect then how do you expect them to know what it means?? Indulging your children by giving them stuff and then expecting them to be blindly grateful is a lovely idea, but it’s completely unrealistic. Teaching genuine gratitude is more than teaching a child to say please and thank you, and it’s a process that is rarely complete by the time a kid is fifteen. All kids want a new phone, a new iPod, an new gaming system, a new computer, a new whatever. My sister pointed out to me, when I was complaining about my own teenage daughter’s appetite for needlessly expensive shit, that kids and teens are materialistic: they all want stuff. They just do. The bottom line is that children haven’t finished their cognitive development by the age of fifteen. Unfortunately for young Hannah, the agent of her DNA has and he appears to be missing a few chromosomes. Children are still learning these things that dad Tommy is carrying on about. Some kids do get paid for helping around the house; it’s commonly called an allowance and it’s not an entirely unpopular idea just because he and his family choose not to employ it.

I say that because I’ve been told before to “behave like the grown-up” when it comes to my own kid, and in most cases the person saying that to me was right. Don’t get me wrong: being the grown up can f*ckin suck out loud. It’s rarely fun, but at some point a-grouch-for-a-grouch is not a reasonable way to approach the child. If the kid is being a mewling wretch and a parent’s reply is to be a mewling wretch back, what are we teaching them?? I know we’ve all done it. No one is perfect. I’m certainly not. But at some point it’s the job of the adult in the room to be in control of his-or-herself or he-or-she will never be in control of the situation.

There seems to be an entire culture of parents who think that they can tell their child once not to do something and that the child will never, ever do it again. It would be lovely if it actually worked that way, but in reality we all have to tell our kids over and over (and over and over and over and over) not to do things. It’s irritating as f*ck, I’ll give you that, but haven’t we all sounded like broken records until our nerves are shot and our heads hurt?? And haven’t we all had that moment when we throw up our hands, wondering what’s wrong with the child that they just don’t get it?? You can explain it six ways from Sunday and the child is still rude, or whatever. It’s embarrassing and frustrating, mostly because it reflects on us and what other people think about our parenting. And don’t try and give me that “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks” garbage, because if you didn’t care at all we wouldn’t be having these conversations with our kids in the first place. In any case, teenagers are the same way. They’re still technically children; they just look more like us. Unfortunately their brains are still not yet ripe for the proverbial picking and we have to keep reminding them to behave themselves.

I’d be curious how the issue between this father and his daughter came to this point, but it’s really none of my business. I feel like I’ve been cordially invited into a stranger’s family drama. When a video about someone else’s personal life goes viral it’s natural for the audience it creates to have their opinions, and we’ve all become audience members in someone else’s life when we see this vid. I feel like this is so none of my business, but I still find myself thinking about it. You know the phrase “when you have a problem face it, don’t Facebook it??” Well, when I have a problem sometimes I’ll use social networking as a tool to ask my friends their opinion, or to vent my frustration, as do many people and as did both of our protagonists, Tommy and Hannah. So far, none of my own personal issues have become viral videos for all and sundry. If they had, I’d be embarrassed, but that’s just me.

Obviously this is not an isolated incident that grew out of the ground, but the back story is largely a mystery to most of the viewers, other than the father telling everyone in the world that Hannah had been grounded for being immature a few months ago. I can’t speak much to what the daughter did because most of the information I have has been brought to me by her father, and that brings us to a he-said-she-said scenario from Hades. I’m not 100% sure why an angsty teen venting to friends is that big of a deal. I’m pretty dang-ola sure most of us did it in some form or another when we were kids, and I don’t think I’m going too far out on a ledge speculating that most of us got yelled at, put on restriction, kicked out of the house, had our privileges and belongings taken away (or even given away) more than once for it. If the solution to the equation was to pack hardware and bust a cap, more of our parents would have done that a long-ass time ago. Long story short, I get why the dad is pissed, but I think he is totally overreacting.

I can’t imagine the irreparable damage that’s been done to this father-daughter relationship. He thinks he’s teaching her respect, but respect is not the living in fear of your trigger-happy dad and the possibility that he’ll blast a hole in your shit whenever he hulks up. If this dad’s aim was to publicly humiliate his daughter, he’s succeeded admirably. She may not act out again, but not because she understands that it’s wrong: it’ll be because she’ll be wondering what her erratic, acrimonious father will do next time. I would not blame Hannah if she ceased trusting him altogether. He says he’d moved out by the time he was fifteen. If he continues to use mean-spirited shame tactics in a public arena as parenting tools, there’s a good chance his girl will take his advice and high-tail it on out of his jurisdiction nice and early, and by any means necessary.

Hannah, honey, I say this without malice as a parent to a teen your age and a woman who was once the brattiest of all the brats in the land: consider this your wake-up call. It’s okay to be annoyed with your parents; it happens to all of us. Believe me. But there are expectations for you and your behavior and you, my dear, must extract your pretty head from your behind and do something other than what you’re doing, because what you’re doing isn’t working. You can’t change how your parents react to you or what you do. You can only change how you act and what you do. If you want independence, get a baby-sitting job and start spending more time at the library doing homework, or whatever you have to do to make some changes in your life. It’s what it is now, plain and simple. Your family seems to think that you’re old enough to start making some of your own decisions. It’s inconvenient, but somewhere between your note on Facebook and your family’s reaction, this is where you are and what you have to work with. If you’re going to gripe online you have to be responsible for what you say. We all do. If you think you deserve better then get up off your butt and make it happen, because no one is going to hand you shit and update your computer for you forever. If you want something no one is entitled to take away from you, then you do have to get it your damn self. You can grow up and be a trophy wife, but then you’re still relying on someone else to get it for you. I hope this whole debacle teaches you some things, one of them being that you probably can’t trust people who discharge firearms into perfectly useful pieces of expensive technology out of anger. Get it together, babe, and “may the forces of evil become confused on the way to your home.”

Addendum: Children and Food Labels

There is one more personal anecdote I would like to add to my last post.

I have a daughter who is thirteen. Last year, while she was still twelve, we went to the grocery store and were picking out a salad dressing. Now, dressing is not a particularly healthy thing to consume. Anyone who can read a label knows this, whether they acknowledge it or not. So, we were picking what kind of dressing we wanted and comparing nutrition labels. You know; calories per serving, grams of fat. My mom has had issues with high cholesterol and high blood pressure in the past. Nothing to write home about, but enough to where I feel like I can teach my daughter what those things are and what they mean nutritionally, so we were looking at cholesterol and sodium as well. I thought we were having an interesting conversation; organic vs synthetic, local vs big brand, less expensive vs more expensive. Then this woman slams down a bottle of dressing in her cart. I turn to look. She makes direct eye contact, cocks her head, scoffs and stomps off. I look at my daughter. Anyone who knows me knows she’s tiny, and anyone who knows her knows she’s athletic. I can no longer give my friends my daughter’s old clothes, even to the seven-year-olds, because my thirteen-year-old is smaller than they are. She is not now, nor has she ever been, failure to thrive. She just came from a family of really tiny people and, as such, is really tiny. Her mother, at a massive 5’5” and 115 is taller than her father, though not by much. So, the kid’s small. BFD. Her entire life I’ve had random strangers in stores tell me I’m mistreating my child because she’s always looked younger than she is. Here I am trying to teach her how to read food labels, a skill everyone should have and that a twelve-year-old is mature enough to begin learning about, and this bitch is passing judgment like I’m a pageant mom trying to make sure my eight-year-old doesn’t eat salad dressing that’s too high in fat content. So, you can’t win for losing, sometimes. At least someone out there gave a shit whether she knew what she was thinking or not.

I, personally, believe that more parents should be teaching their children how to read nutrition labels and to make smart food choices, but what the hell do I know?? To some, I’m a skinny liberal bitch teaching her eight-year-old to shun calories.

Apparently There IS No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

I’m still pretty uneducated on the whole school lunch ideas that the Obama administration is pushing around, I admit, but from what I’ve read I don’t understand why so many people are so pissed off. I really don’t. And to be honest, most of the people I’ve sat and listened to bitch and moan are a) wealthy as fuck and b) would hate the president if he deigned to say that the sky was blue or that puppies are cute. Suffice to say, if you are wealthy enough to feed your children and smart enough to not overload them with junk food, then this new law is not directed at you. Okay?? So back the fuck off, because there are people out there who need what’s being offered them. I know how much y’all jus’ love to make sure that the have-nots remain the have-nots, but seriously. What is your damage, Heather?? Healthier lunches made available to low-income school children?? That’s a fuckin’ problem?? Oil your knees, grow a heart, obtain a brain and STFU because if you think this is a bad thing then you have no soul.

I’ve worked and socialized with children and families who come from all kinds of backgrounds. Or, as we’re supposed to say, “socioeconomic status.” At one point I was teaching preschool full-time at an establishment in Seattle which accepted a large number of DSHS children while working part-time teaching athletics at a private facility that is not known for being inexpensive, if you smell what I’m cookin’. It was an interesting time for me, especially as a broke single mom who had chosen poorly at her career (teaching), who lived well below the poverty level for both the city and the nation, had a baby daddy whose family wiped their asses with $100 bills while I was still taking classes part time at the community college.

I observed some interesting behavior when it came to food and parenting. The wealthy gave all: hot dogs, chips, milkshakes, French fries, pastries. No matter the circumstances or the time of day, child gets what child wants. For example, my own daughter was fortunate enough to be granted ice skating lessons by her grandmother, which meant sitting at the arena with her grandmother’s friends and their competitive skater children who inhaled pizza and doughnuts immediately before practice and considered me a food tyrant for giving my daughter fruit, crackers or veggies with peanut butter and water or juice before skating and allowing her to have pizza after. I heard what people said behind my back: I’d been a gymnast and that obviously made me an anorexic and therefore I could not possibly know how to feed myself, let alone a child. My mind railed against these stupid bitches!! When had they ever been athletes?? When had they ever eaten McDonald’s right before practice and went the whole afternoon with a stomach ache because of it?? They looked like all they ate was pizza and doughnuts. And who died and made them the food police?? If my kid is going to be an athlete, she should learn to eat like one. That did not and does not mean no pizza and doughnuts ever; it meant no pizza and doughnuts until after practice. What’s so mean about that I’m not sure I’ll ever understand, save for the fact that it’s not how the older, richer in-vitro moms fed their children.

When I began more full-time work with children again, I saw things that were even more disturbing. One week I would be working at the preschool, where one family was so poor they sent their two children to school with a lunch in one brown bag: two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on not dog buns. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, as a single mom there were times I’ve had to be creative with my daughter’s lunch, and times when I’ve had to send her to school without a lunch knowing that the school has an emergency lunch program that isn’t going to allow her to starve. Of course, they send you a bill at the end of the year, but I digress. So, on one hand it was sweet that this mother made the effort. That is not, however, a sufficient meal for children in full-time preschool. So, the food that had meant to be used exclusively for snack time was used to feed the really poor kids. Which, of course, meant less for the kids who threw away half of their lunches because they didn’t feel like eating pears that day, but really. In all fairness, it is the right of families to purchase food and have kids throw it away. Even at a low-income-friendly school. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s true. Obviously no school subsidized lunch program was offered, but when one child wastes while another child wants (or needs), it’s difficult to watch.

In the wealthier of the two environments, I would spend a week coaching athletic camps, fun camps, and almost every child signed up had a food allergy. (Care to wager how many of the low-income kids at the preschool had food allergies??) Half the kids had access to their parents’ member accounts and would purchase food the camp leaders had been told not to give them. Celiac disease?? My auntie. The kid who’s supposedly allergic to gluten just downed three hot dogs with buns, a bowl of mac and cheese and tried to sneak Mountain Dew from the fountain after the other leaders and I had restricted them to lemonade, water along with one paper cup of sprite each. Fortunately, no one got sick, no one told their parents about the crap they sneaked and charged to their parents’ accounts, and no one got in trouble. However, my astonishment at the lengths I’ve seen these kids go to just to have the junk food that they want remains, and I see very few adults saying no to these kids. I thought I was being the food police; making sure no one ate anything they were “allergic” to or didn’t have at least some nutritional benefit, or had beverages that had too much sugar or caffeine. And the longer I’ve worked at this establishment I’ve seen how indulged some of these kids really are. Every time I see them eat, they’re eating junk food. These are children whose parents can (and likely do) buy local and organic, which is something that low-income people can’t always afford to do because it’s so damned expensive, and their kids are scarfing hot dogs and Pepsi and no one is saying anything to the kids. For a time I thought that kids who are shitty food were from families who couldn’t afford healthy food, because let’s face it, healthy food is hella more expensive, but they’re not. They’re from families with educated parents, who should know better, who want their children to be athletes and serve them muy burgers and fries just as often as they are from lower-income families.

So the poor are too poor to feed their kids, which has a lot to do with the rate of childhood obesity in America. Yet, the wealthy don’t seem to give much of a damn what their kids eat. Do they think it’s all gravy (pardon the pun)?? That they’ll be able to afford dieticians and fat farms for their kids when they don’t know how to control or regulate their food intake then they’re older?? Who is teaching the rich kids that three hot dogs is not the correct portion, and who is sharing one with the poor kid who doesn’t have one??

At no point would I presume to say that all parents, of any income bracket, do not know how to feed their children. That is not the point I’m trying to make at all, and if you think it is then you haven’t been paying attention. Kids out there need guidance they are evidently not getting from their parents. Not all kids, but kids. Teachers talk about good nutritional habits, but not everyone in the world can afford them. We are adults, and our job as adults and as parents is to stand up for these kids and do what’s right for them even if it may not be right for us. It’s called being an adult, being a parent, and participating in the health and growth of the society in which you live.

And no, I’m not a socialist, but the more right wing, conservative, tea party propaganda I read about and hear makes me beg for Emma Goldman to rise from the great beyond and start kicking some ass.

Working with older kids, I’ve had the displeasure of hearing the horror stories of what the public schools offer to middle and high schoolers for lunch. One local middle school had a coffee cart, but they had to limit the consumption of coffee drinks to the cafeteria because children were buying coffees, taking them into the hallways and dumping them around; making messes and vandalizing the lockers of kids they didn’t like. Yeah. Middle school kids. Being served lattes and cappuccinos and mochas at school. Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks that’s fucked up and actually sees the problem here?? Other kids admitted to me that their parents packed them lunches that they threw away and used money to buy chips, soft drinks, doughnuts, coffee, fries. I knew these kids parents. Some of them were not allowed to have Gatorade at gymnastics class, yet they were tossing out their lunches in favor of crap.

So, yeah. Something needs to be done. Whether you feel like you’re teaching you children good habits or not, if they have the option to pitch their lunch in a trash can and mow down burritos so unhealthy even Taco Bell would say “hey, that’s just fucked up,” then they’re going to take it. These vending and a la carte options must be scrapped, and that’s something that this new law is trying to make happen. Why is that bad?? What would you rather have your kid be offered as a snack when they’re away from you: an apple or a bag of chips??

While I understand that some people feel like their intelligence is being insulted and their parenting methods undermined, fuckin’ deal!! As Americans, we embarrass ourselves every damn day and pretty much deserve to have our intelligence insulted. But this is for our kids: ALL of them, not just yours, you bourgeois geek. If you pulled your head out of your ass long enough to read something other than the GOP website, perhaps you’d understand that.

Anyway.

At ease.

Bill O’Reilly is on line one.