Unlearning the Myths

Being the Mom of two daughters’ I have had these conversations both in and outside of my head. What to “let” them watch, how to help them have positive body images, etc… I thank having a fairly feminist sister-in-law who had a daughter before me for her example. My niece’s favorite Disney movie, of all time, was and still is Ariel. How??? From a “feminist”?? What my sister-in-law did, and I do, is use the movie to teach about how girls don’t really look that way, it is a cartoon. We can use what is there to also show what is not, if that is what we are looking for. I was a little shocked to think that some parents might just plop their child down in front of a movie (or cartoon) without previewing it first to see if it is deemed “acceptable” to that families values. I also think that our entertainment industry is trying to change along with the times and that they are slow to adopt new values within our society but can be used to see, collectively, where we have come from. I have taught my children to be skeptical of anything that is on TV. And actually other media also. A joke in our house is “the TV said it, it must be true!”. Even our news is sensationalized and biased. We have done over a year without TV also and they still know things that we never taught them (I blame the kids on the bus). Anyway I guess that my overall point is that we can teach them to view the world tentatively and try and consider the source, politics and such surrounding an item and that this is a healthier way of refusing to just swallow what they media is trying to sell us, and that these are transferrable life skills, as opposed to getting all PO’ed at Popeye who was probably quite progressive during his time, just not so much now! “Look how far we’ve come baby!” We will not be there to shelter them forever let’s help them develop the skills necessary to scrutinize the beliefs that they internalize.