Grumble magazine

It seemed harmless enough. A waitress brought over some coloring for my daughter as we were wrestling to get settled down into the restaurant to eat lunch. At the time, it was a welcome distraction; little did I know it was a subliminal invitation to corruption.

My daughter was eagerly coloring with her four crayons as I glanced over the menu. I remembered thinking whatever she was coloring in looked rather strange, like a fluffy grocery bag, but I didn’t think much more about it as I was hungry and the baby was pulling on my shirt. Once orders had been taken and the little one was happily banging a spoon against the table, I figured out what it was that she’d colored in.

“Isn’t it pretty?” my daughter asked eagerly.

“Very pretty,” I agreed. She’d scribbled over a picture of a bag with a tag that said “SALE” on it. Weird. It was apparently a matching game where you tried to figure out which ones were the same. Okay…no biggie. So what was niggling me?

The same picture of the bag was in the maze. The bag on SALE was in one corner, the high-heeled shoe was in the other. Was this showing how you walked to the sale? In heels? I guessed so… but there was something else…

Ah! The word search. What were the words my impressionable preschool daughter was asked to find? Here’s the list:

• Mall Queen
• Born to Shop
• Diva
• Party
• Shopper Sales
• Purchase

The word scramble wasn’t much better. Arguably, it was worse:

• Shop
• Hat
• Glasses
• Nail Polish
• Purse
• Phone

On the flipside of the color-in placemat were big pictures she could color in with ease. They had all the pictures that were drawn or written on the back as well as a few more details including flowers, “SALE” exclamations and a VIP Shopper credit card.

Now I admit I may be a little sensitive to this issue, considering I lecture about body image and girls’ self-esteem, and am perhaps more than a little like Sailor Mur in that I don’t have any desire to girlie up my daughter any more than she wants to be. (She loves pink, adores dressing up, and likes to make up stories about fairy princesses and animals. Fine.) However, I don’t need any help to start training my child to be a mallrat, shop-o-holic or lookist consumer, thankyouverymuch!

The gum-snapping, credit-card wielding spoiled princess is as reviled in this country as it is celebrated. While there are too many movies, books and stereotypes here to count, the image has its place, and well-done reverse-stereotyping is what made things like Legally Blonde or Buffy the Vampire Slayer funny. But for little kids, it’s a lot less funny, because they don’t get the joke. They think it’s real. In fact, there is now a line of dolls, toys, cartoons, clothing and accessories that’s aimed right at the heart of it: “Bratz.” To compete with classic Barbie pink-colored consumerism, Bratz kids are big-eyed, big-headed rich little Daddy’s Girls who have itty-bitty bodies and big, fat wallets stuffed with somebody else’s money. Terrific. Much improved, thank you.

90 percent of the toys and dolls surveyed for girls ages two to ten years emphasize beauty, shopping, and dating…

How many times have we heard about the sad fact that girls get to play with dollies and don’t play games that teach about math and science skills like boys? (This is a current focus of the Girl Scouts of America: Girls in Technology.) Take a look: the board and computer games aimed at girls are, by in large, about makeup, clothing, fashion, shopping and being a princess/fairy/mermaid who wins the game by finding happily-ever-after with a prince. Hoorah. The Renfrew Center, a national residential facility for girls and women with eating disorders, conducted a clinical survey that found “90 percent of the toys and dolls surveyed for girls ages two to ten years emphasize beauty, shopping, and dating… In one shopping mall game surveyed, the stores include a beauty salon, a bridal shop, a store with glamorous gowns and one for pretty ballerinas. In another game, the object is for the girls to buy the most items in the shortest amount of time.” It’s like Monopoly for the Mall of America. The few games aimed at girls that do not do this are often mysteries and puzzle-games, which are great, but also feature girls and women who more often resemble Carmen Sandiego (a.k.a. Brunette Barbie) than Dora the Explorer.

The Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery even has a definition for rampant consumerism: “a pattern of chronic, repetitive purchasing that becomes difficult to stop and ultimately results in harmful consequences. It is defined as an impulse control disorder and has features similar to other addictive disorders without involving use of an intoxicating drug.” So it’s not like I just have to keep my kid off the classic drugs and alcohol - beyond drinking cough syrup, snorting pressurized air, whipping helium balloons or popping X at water-cooler raves - but now I have to worry about whether she’s compulsively purchasing things on 24-hour online catalogs? Great.

At age three-and-a-half, I’m just not ready for her to take on this kind of pressure.

My gasp of righteous indignation is something I’m certain my husband has grown very used to over time. I picked up the placemat and held it up to him.

“Okay,” I said, “so am I being over-sensitive about this?”

It took him a split-second. “No.” He took it in his hands, flipped it over, inspecting both sides, and he looked at our daughter. “You did a beautiful job, sweetheart!” he beamed at her, handing it back to me.

“Can I keep it?” I asked her enthusiastically.

“Yes!” she said.

“Thank you!” I gave her a hug and a kiss. I folded it up, tucked it into my bag, and instead of throwing it out, resolved to write about it. Which I just did.

Now it’s in the trash where it belongs.