EnMasse

[Hephaestion]

Oh ick-ick-ICK!!!

I like a phrase that a reader used in the comments: "Ah the romance of the Stepford wives meets baby gulag. WTF is wrong with the parents? If the wanted dolls they should have bought dolls and not Effed up a child's life."
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin

[anne cameron]

Right now my youngest treasure, just turned four, is probably smeared with mud, in damp blue jeans, a tee under a muddy jacket, feet in mis-matched gum boots, busy building a road and, who knows, maybe a city out of the mud in the yard. She probably has some peanut butter smears around her mouth and may well be chewing Hallowe'en gum. Her hair, the blackest hair I've seen in years, is whacked off short right now because she got fed up with the washing, brushing, and combing thing, took a pair of scissors to the once shoulder-length mop, and then wept and insisted she wanted it all to go...so her mom asked "are you sure" and Ellie said she was sure and out came the clippers. Ellie is pleased with the result, already planning to do it again.

This other thing, the pageants, really horrifies me. I can't stop equating it to the proliferation of kiddie porn and the growing tolerance for pedophilia.

There's a recurrent programme on TV "Toddlers and Tiaras" I think it's called. I made myself watch most of one hour-long episode and was struck by the parents who seemed to me to be trying to live their own lives through their kids, and who also seemed to me to be physically unattractive and, mostly, dumb as hammers. I'm sure my own dismay at what was being shown influenced my opinion of the parents, surely they couldn't all be stupid and ugly...

And I was chilled by the unrelenting pressure put on those kids.