Total girl?

Following on from my post on Getting Real the other day, one of the commenters asked a question that I thought was worth addressing in a separate post. It was mainly in response to something said by Jo in the comment thread about her wariness of magazines like Total Girl. The question was:

I am a bit confused about whether Total Girl and Vogue etc are really wrong from a Christian perspective.

I have always loved fashion mags from a purely artistic point of view but must admit that the photography verges on soft porn sometimes. As for Total Girl, I only buy it as a very occasional treat for my own 10 year old, who is delightfully 'young' for her age. It has cute little science articles as well as those on fashion. I am not sure it's as harmful as you say. Dolly mag sure, but Total Girl??

I'm really glad that someone asked this question, because I think that magazines like Total Girl are good case studies in thinking about some of the bigger issues relating to sexualisation of young girls.

Now, before I share a few of my thoughts, I have to admit to being a bit ignorant in this matter because I have never read Total Girl magazine. But since my anonymous friend has asked the question I have had a look at their online sample. The impression I got was that it falls under the category of a tween magazine - like a junior version of Girlfriend - am I right?

But while I'm hardly an expert, from my limited knowledge I'd have to agree with Jo that this is the sort of mag that I would be wary of with my girls as they get older. As the commenter asking the original question points out, there are some magazines that are just plain wrong to look at, under any circumstances, and Total Girl doesn't seem to fall into this category. I agree. But I do think there are many magazines, books, TV shows etc that aren't necessarily wrong in themselves, but aren't the best things to be filling our girls minds with (or our own). I think Total Girl falls into this category. (In a similar way, for example, I tend to avoid making a habit of reading fashion, lifestyle, home magazines, etc, because they feed feelings of discontent and covetousness, tempt me to spend more money on these things than I ought, and take up mental energy that could be spent more usefully - and/or more pleasurably! - on other things.)

My main concerns about Total Girl (and other tween mags like it) would be:

1. Body image issues

The types of body image that are portrayed in magazines like this, while not soft porn, are still unhelpful for young girls to interact with at this age. The girls are all slim, gorgeous, clear skinned beauties. The more girls are bombarded by these images, the more they feel they need to conform to these perfect stereotypes and loathe their own bodies. Emma Rush, in a chapter in Getting Real points to Total Girl as the type of magazine that leads to body dissatisfaction amongst tweens. She cites research which found that:

...the more girls talked about topics such as clothes, make-up, and their favourite pop stars, the more they perceived their friends to be focussed upon appearance issues, and the more they themselves internalised these appearance ideals.

(There's lots more on the effect of magazines on girls/women's body image in Faking It, by Women's Forum Australia and also in quite a few of the chapters in Getting Real including 'The Psychological and Developmental Impact of Sexualisation of Children', by Louise Newman and 'How girlhood was trashed and what we can do to get it back', by Steve Biddulph.)

2. Elevation of peer relationships at cost of parent relationships

Magazines like this encourage girls to look to their peers as their main confidantes and role models. Here's what the website tells prospective advertisers about their goal:

To discover the latest trends, entertainment news, cool activities and friendship advice more Australian tween girls buy Total Girl each month than any other tween girl's magazine. Total Girl understands tween girls and creates a girls only zone - a kind of secret club - that boys and parents don't understand.

A 'kind of secret club that their parents don't understand'?? I think this is worrying! Of course advertisers would love parents to step aside so they can fill the void and tell kids what they want and need. But this sidelines parents and leaves tweens and teens looking to their peers for nurture and support that - in Steve Biddulph's words - "they are not equipped for". This is true of any parent - but surely even more vital for us as Christian parents as we seek to pass down the truth of the gospel and model a Jesus-centred life to our kids.

3. Grooming girls for the next stage

As with most other forms of consumer good (including those marketing at 3 years olds!), the whole aim of the marketers is to groom kids for the next stage of consumerism. Even if you think a particular magazine like Total Girl is harmless enough - the aim of those selling it is to train you to buy the next level of magazine and then the next - which in most cases is a mag like Dolly or Girlfriend which does have more blatantly inappropriate material in it. And all most of these magazines are really trying to do is get you to buy more 'stuff' - effectively grooming kids to be consumers both now and in the future (see this book and this site for more information on this).

4. The moral dubiousness of 'celebrity gossip'

When you think about it, if it's not okay to gossip about people you know - why is it okay to gossip about famous people? And given that (in my opinion) it's not okay to gossip about famous people, I think that this is another reason I would be wary of magazines like this for my daughters. (Nor - putting aside the gossip dimension of the issue - would I be keen for my girls to buy into the celebrity cult, and look up to women who are famous for being famous, as if that was what life is about!)

Final thoughts?

As I said above, Total Girl doesn't seem to fall into to the 'absolutely wrong, in and of itself, under all circumstances' category of material available to young girls. But I wouldn't want to let my daughters be exposed to this stuff with no guidance from me and Dave about its contents. It may actually be something I would occasionally buy and read with my daughters (when they're older!) - to help them interact with the culture around them. It could be a chance to affirm their beauty while flipping through the pages, to chat about whether celebrity gossip is a good thing, to find out what their friends are saying about this or that. But I certainly wouldn't be buying a subscription!


(pic of girls from stock.xchng)

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'Epitaph', Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After getting last week's poem from a grave we saw in Waverley cemetery, I thought I'd make February a month of epitaphs. This week's one is the epitaph of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he wrote himself in the last year of his life.

As in some of his earlier poems (like this one) there is the suggestion that he writes out of a real internal struggle; here in this late poem, written in the face of death, the struggle seems to be leading him toward Christ, and not away from him.

If you are interested in reading a bit more about the graves of poets, I recommend this site - it's fascinating!

Epitaph

'Stop, Christian Passer-by! - Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he. -
O, lift one thought in prayer for S.T.C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise - to be forgiven for fame
He ask'd for praise - to be forgiven for fame
He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ.
Do thou the same!'

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Book of the Week: 'Alice in Wonderland' (audio version)

Our family recently had the pleasure of listening to an audio book version of Alice in Wonderland (over and over again!!) as we drove around the South Island of New Zealand. We had a lot of driving to do some days and it really helped pass the time for all of us (and meant we never heard the words 'are we there yet'!).

This particular one was read by Fiona Shaw. She reads it beautifully and we were amazed by the varied voices she used for all the characters - and the fact she remembered each voice and could slip in and out of them so easily. It gave me new heights to aspire to when reading to my kids!

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Getting Real: some thoughts

Last year, I shared that I was going to read Melinda Tankard Reist's book Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls. Well, I finished reading the last couple of chapters over the holidays and (as I expected) it was a very challenging and disturbing read. The book is a collection of articles by different authors on various aspects of the sexualisation of young girls in our culture. The authors are quite a diverse group, and come from a variety of ideological perspectives.

It's worth remembering this as you read because most of them aren't writing from a Christian perspective. We may agree about the conclusions but the way of getting there is different. This doesn't always matter - but sometimes it does! For example, quite a few of the articles were written from the kind of feminist perspective is interested in talking about boys and men only in relation to what they do as the exploiters and abusers of girls and women. Of course, the book is a book about girls - so I didn't expect that boys would feature heavily. But at times, I felt that some of the authors were assuming that girls were the only victims of the sex / pornography / industries - and that boys were only ever the perpetrators. As a mother of a boy (as well as two girls) I would hate to see my son grow up in a culture that was even more suspicious of and hostile to masculinity than it already is.

At the heart of it, the plague of pornography and premature sexualisation in our culture is not just a feminist issue - it is an issue that affects all of us and it's part of a larger dysfunction in our sexual relationships that comes from the idolatry of our hearts.

But although it isn't a Christian book, this is a good book for Christians to read. Reading it helped to increase my awareness of these issues. It gave me some practical suggestions for how to act as a concerned citizen (see this site for more info). It also gave some good advice for me as a parent (especially Steve Biddulph's chapter which I will be quoting from soon!). As well as reading it to help you find ways can be vigilant with your children in these matters, it's also a good book to read so that you can be on top of these conversations with other mums at the school gate.

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Iced tea tips?

Dave bought me an iced tea jug for Christmas. I've been wanting one for ages because I love iced tea! I also think it will be an easy and cheap drink to serve when we have guests in our home over Summer. Problem is, I don't really know much about making iced tea. I've tried a few times, and it's worked okay, but I'd love to hear your tips for making it better. I'd also love it if you could share some recipes - from the basic to the more adventurous. North American readers, I'm especially looking forward to hearing from you on this one!





Photo from stockxchng.

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A visit to a friend in hospital

I visited an elderly friend in hospital the other day. She was very unwell when I got there - the most obvious symptom being confusion and loss of lucidity. Sentences trailed off or went round and round in circles, my questions were answered with blank looks. I sat there not really sure what to do in a situation like this - trying my best, but aware I was quite out of my depth.

About half way through my visit, she tried to tell me about someone who had come earlier in the day and pointed to a Bible lying on the bed, with a scrap of paper inside. She motioned for me to pick it up, and doing so, I saw that the friend had written a verse from Psalm 19. My friend picked up the paper, clutched it and read the verse - the first complete sentence of my visit - the words familiar to her tongue.

"Did she read some Psalms to you?" I asked her. My elderly friend nodded. Grateful for the earlier visitor's example I offered to read this one to her again. And for the first time in the visit, the words on my tongue felt as if they had some weight and consequence, and it seemed as if they were getting through and making sense to her.

The rest of the visit was punctuated by more readings of the verse on the paper and she held it tightly in her hand. She was literally holding on to God's word.

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Rest in Labor

As I mentioned in this post, Dave and I spent a little while meandering through Waverley cemetery on Saturday, on the way back from Bondi to Clovelly.

One of the grave stones we saw was for a young CMS missionary, who had died around the turn of the century in Tinnevelly, India. Underneath the text of Revelation 22:3 were a couple of lines of poetry, which we had never seen before:

For there his servants shall him serve,
And serving rest,
Conveying blessings but to find
Themselves most blest.

With the help of Google, we were able to track the poem down to a collection of poetry that was included at the back of an old edition of the manual of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross (an Anglican lay order for women, founded in America in the late nineteenth century). No author's name was given.

The lines that were quoted in the epitaph for the missionary are the best ones in the poem ("perfectest" in the final line, as a rhyme for "rest" and "blest", was a bit of a stretch!) but overall it still seemed worthy of inclusion as a Poetry Monday one-off (unless someone can tell me who the poet was!?).

Still thinking over the theme of the poem - I think there's definitely a half-truth in it, as long as the Rev 22:3, John 4:34 kind of idea (rest in labour) doesn't get used to completely trump the Rev 14:13, Genesis 2:2 kind of idea (rest from labour).

Anyway, here it is...

Rest in Labor

I ask no ease from restful toil;
My toil is rest:

Who at the Master's table serves
Is also guest.

For toil is rest, refection sweet,
When toil is love,

And work itself its own reward
Here as above.

For there his servants shall him serve,
And serving rest,

Conveying blessings but to find
Themselves most blest.

Lord deepen here the love which there
Thou perfectest.

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