Kudos to my little Mary for noticing this. She saw the ad on the back of Parents Magazine for March, where a woman is standing there in nothing but booty shorts and a mostly unbuttoned shirt. She immediately brought up the article from February, which pointed out a somewhat disturbing study that indicates little girls seem to want to be “too sexy” … “And they wonder why??”
We’re told women are valuable, powerful, strong, etc. But the images we see tell us over and over again that women exist primarily to be sexy. If seeing is believing, lets see some pictures of women doing amazing things!
I never use my neglected Single Mormon Mommy Facebook Page, but I think it’d be a great place So let’s use a pinterest board to collect some images for Mary … and the girls you love … to see. So I’m asking you:
Please find positive images of women doing good things, and share them there (I think I have to grant you permission, but you can contact me to ask) Or you can post to the facebook page and I’ll transfer them over. And yes, in case you didn’t know, I think being a mom is a pretty amazing thing, too. š
Legend of Velda 
The Onion gets it right (as usual), in sad but true fashion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/teenage-girl-blossoming-into-beautiful-object,31061/
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Wow. Yeah — you know I remember watching Mary making faces at herself in the mirror one day and wondered how long we could hold onto that. She’s ten now, and already a few people have come to me asking why Mary seems so insistent on being a tom-boy instead of blossoming into a beautiful girl.
A girl who outscored the entire fifth grade on her last math test — yeahhh!
And I think the “object” of this article, and so many other objectified women, may well still have fantastic personalities and do wonderful things. Just they aren’t encouraged to show that. In the dating world for myself, knowledge and talent feel at best like accessories to our main function. And expression like this is probably seen as very unbecoming.
I’ve had guys tell me they can’t go out with me because I’m too much like a peer. “You know all the things I know, maybe more. I can’t date a smart woman. But we could be friends!” … um, no, no we can’t.
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In the 1990’s I became concerned when the sports magazines I bought for my classroom was filled with images that contained tobacco and alcohol products. I spent up to a half hour every month, covering or cutting them out. The tipping point came when the magazine included a tear off postcard for people to send away for a free sample of “smokeless tobacco”. I sat down and wrote the publisher (a well-known sports figure) a letter saying that he should hold himself and his magazine to a higher standard, because not every middle schooler had a person who cared enough to cut up or cover his magazine. He wrote me a blow-off letter stating that tobacco advertising was “historical” with his two-year old magazine. Six months later, he announced that his magazine would not long take tobacco advertising. Ok, then, where’s my envelope and paper? Let’s write the magazines personally and let them know that we are not happy with the way they are portraying girls/women.
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Fantastic comment, Kelly, and a great idea too. Thanks!
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