Papaganda! I love it. One smart boy you've got there.
And thanks for putting that damned song in my head. I haven't heard it in years but it seems to be stored in there somewhere and you have brought it forward. :-P
Mighty good points you and your son made there. I have 3 daughters, and the older ones keep tiptoeing around the Bratz crap. My five year old wanted a Bratz theme birthday party. Needless to say she didn't get it! It's absolutely disgusting. It's not like I give in and buy any of this stuff, and I've told them a little about how I'm opposed to these stupid dolls, but I feel that I need to make it more clear. Any thoughts on good ways to state my case with them? I'll be starting with the points you made in this post, for sure.
JoVE, the scary thing is I recall singing along to the radio along with my entire elementary school one day at lunch when that song came on the radio. Yeek!
Terra, I feel for you. I only have boys so I don't have direct experience dealing with hottie-toy issues (although Rocketboy did have my old Donnie and Marie dolls for a while). I found a good discussion, pro and con, of Bratz here:
http://blogher.org/node/11534
I do have issues with cheap plastic toys, which Bratz seem to be. I have sort of got Rboy off the junk-toy train by talking about sweatshops and child labor and how a toy isn't much fun if you realize that other people suffered to make it for you. Not that it always overcomes the craven desire for beeping plastic crap (even I get the bug sometimes), but it slows it down some.
When I was a kid it was Barbies (the ones where the legs were stiff-I'm old).
Anyway, all my friends wanted to play barbie wedding day.
Boring!
I took mine to the creek and played barbie jungle explorer.
I think alot of it is a learned behavior.
It's really great what you're teaching.
Your son is an amazing wordsmith: papaganda is brilliant. There's a site on the internet where you can add and define words that you coin, and then you can list who is the coiner. Can't remember the address, but i bet you could google it, and then he can have permanent (well, as well you can have on the internet) credit!
If you want to know what some girls of my generation (30 something) were doing with their barbies, go to pamie.com and search 'barbie'. All except for me, as they were too expensive, or maybe that was just my mom's way of not buying them.
But you know, growing up, i thought girls were better off than boys. Why? Girls got tonka trucks and tools AND dolls. Boys only got tonka trucks and tools. And also, girls got to wear pants AND skirts. Boys only got pants.
Of course, when i got to school I quickly figured out that there were other ways to measure . . . !
Still, i'm permanently grateful to my mom for her no-nonsense, brand of feminism. Even if she never called it that, I do!
That does it. Papaganda for me from now on.
Any time you've got more like that Rboy, just holler. Anytime...
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