Princess and the Pea

Nails with Daisies

My 10-year old Rosie loves the funny pages in the Sunday paper.  But what caught her eye today was large illustration in the Ideas section depicting three tweens looking disgusted at a TV set. Of course I had already blurted out, “What’s this about?”

It was an article by Ty Burr, a media critic, entitled She Did What? It was the perfect conversation piece over pancakes. The tag line was:  “As one starlet after another goes off the rails, what kind of example are they setting for American girls? Maybe a good one. Meet a new cultural force: the anti-role model.”

When I asked her what she thought the point of the article was she had a hard time articulating it, even though her reading comprehension is advanced.  So she settled on the part about Lindsey Lohan and the photo of her passed out “after a hard night of partying.”  The photo is ugly and confusing for a little girl who had just seen “The Parent Trap” remake a few months ago.  How could that be the same girl?

I had to explain to both she and her sister what “partying” meant in this context. So we talked about stars and glamour and the not-so glamorous things about a life in the lime light.  This is much harder for my seven year old to understand.  She’s the kid who intuitively picks up on every nuance about what is cool (see snowboarding post).  She and I had gone together for the first time to have our nails done just two days prior.  This is something my mother never did with me. (Why spend the money? She was an Avon Lady after all and could do these things for us herself.  Never mind the idea of having a treat, a bit of self-indulgence, or some mother-daughter bonding out in the big world.)  I’m now getting to a place, just shy of 43, to allow myself to enjoy these kinds of extravagances -- my manicure was $12 and Adele's cost $7. 

Recently, a colleague of mine called an impromptu business meeting at a nail salon and three of us talked shop over a manicure and a pedicure. The idea of it was shocking to me but I never said a word. But it made me think that it would be nice to look at polished toes while doing yoga, the only time I get to myself while at the same time being shoeless.

I was surprised ad Adele’s reaction to our outing, I confess.  She chose a mint green polish and wanted polka dots. She had to settle for white daisies on the nails of each ring finger.  It was the first time in a long time that she sat still.  Later that evening she twirled about and squealed, “My body feels different!”  How so? (I had to ask, of course -- couldn’t let her bask in her new found glory of feeling pretty without an explanation.)  “I just dooooooo!”

It wasn’t just about adornment for Adele. She felt it in her whole being and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. So I let it go and just enjoyed the moment with her.  Yet, she clearly had some notion of these green little nails and a sense of herself -- her self- image -- as different than it had been just a few hours before.  She was pleased with herself.  That was it.  She was pleased with her body.

What a concept.

P.S.  See Letter to My Body project at Blogher.

Hooked on Tamagotchis

My girls are now hooked on Tamagotchis®, these key chain electronic games where you grow a creature – or better said, watch a blob “evolve” into some surprise pet formation. It may turn out to be male or female and over the first weeks you play with it and let it sleep, eat and poop. Yes, my seven-year old loves the latter because you can wirelessly send the poop to another Tamagotchi player as a gift. Nice way to get back at big sister.

These virtual pets have been around a long time but there’s been some sort of resurgence among the elementary school kids, which seems to have successfully overtaken the Webkins® craze. It must be the technology getting better and better – especially that kids can interact wirelessly with other players.

Apparently Rosie’s best friends, twin sisters, have married and mated their characters recently. One sister has a male pet and the other a female pet. Now that these characters are adults, they can have babies together to build a “Familitchi”. Yes, it’s true. Electronic toys for the 7-11 crowd are mating with one another.

Rosie, now 10 ½ – just about a pre-teen – gushed when she told me all about it yesterday. She was totally flushed with surprise and horror (“Isn’t that just so weird?”). It was the rage on the bus ride home. To this news my Younger screamed from the other side of the house: “Can girls get married?” (Yes, I shouted back thinking of the world at large made up of real people – and we live in Massachusetts, that liberal state). She was, of course, thinking how her Tamagotchi could mate with another female pet owned by some friend when it grows up. It was actually a good question. It made me think: Do digital humanoids or pets or what-have-you have to get married to have babyoids? Might these Tamagotchi’s break sex and gender barriers? Might they be more “alien” or androgynous, or did some game inventor not think beyond the consequences of such heterosexual, evolutionary game play.

All I know is that if it’s not some headline across the newspaper regarding sex scandals it will be these silly toys that prompt “The Talk” on how babies are made. I better learn how to play one. Might help with the explaining.

Stay tuned.

Exuberance

I’ve been watching the HBO series In Treatment that follows a therapist and his sessions with various patients over the course of 9 weeks.  I watch it partly to keep track of how my profession is portrayed in the media and partly because I’ve come to like HBO programming (the monthly cable fee is considerably less than going to the movies every weekend, squeezing in a meal like my husband I used to do pre-children, and paying for a sitter). My favorite character is the teenage girl, Sophie, who makes suicidal gestures in her effort to make sense of her confusing life with a depressed mom and elusive dad.  I find her characterization the most authentic of all the characters.

But even more so, I can see glimmers of my own girls’ sweeps of mood, impulsiveness, and yearning – and I suppose my own recollections of a torn childhood with divorced parents.  I could as well say my mom was depressed and my father elusive – and that I made it through OK.   I think what strikes me now, watching the character of Sophie unfold and her sense of self solidify in her growing attachment to her therapist, is that adolescence is one wild card and it’s a wonder any of us survive it at all. 

Sophie has sex with her mentor and gymnastics coach, rides her bike into traffic breaking both arms, verbally abuses her mother, idealizes her absent father who sleeps with the models he photographs, and she only finds structure and control in the restrictive world of competitive gymnastics that keeps her body like a child's.

I can’t predict what my Rosie or Adele might be like as teens but I can be pretty sure that they’ll do some pretty stupid things. I can see it in the inexplicable burst of tears and the occasional storming up the stairs and the impulsive and sometimes provocative dancing around the kitchen table – I know these behaviors will exponentially increase. There’s apt term in Barbara Strauch’s book, The Primal Teen (a primer of any parent with the approaching adolescent) where refers to this manifestation of teen behavior as the brain’s “exuberance”.

I would say that’s a pretty good “positive reframe”.  I hope I remember it in a few years.

Laundry and Lemonade

I can’t think of any mother that hasn’t nearly gone insane with the loads of laundry that seem to pile up in various nooks of a house or accumulate to mini-mountain peaks on the floor of whatever room holds the washer…the kitchen, pantry, basement. Even when the day is done and I just yearn to plop on the couch and watch a mind-numbing show – my recent fix is In Treatment with the tragic therapist played by Gabriel Byrne (I have to watch it to keep up with how my profession is portrayed in the media) – there appears the scent of fabric softener. And low and behold before me as I round the corner to the living room is a pile of wrinkled but clean and dry clothes strewn across the carpet. They are waiting obviously for me, and no other, to neatly assemble them in stacks by color, type and owner.

How did it get there? And for how long has this mass been walked over by every household member from the age of 7 to 51? Did I dump them before my five-day business trip only to return with the assemblage unmoved? Could it be that another 50 pairs of undies, socks, and sweatshirts have been washed and dried in my absence – by whom? How much can a family of four go through in a few days? Am I losing my mind?

I plop in the middle of it all – knowing I could never overlook it while tying to relax in front of the TV – unlike my husband who has an amazing ability for selective attention to his surroundings. Apparently, my daughters have the same genetic defect. I’m hoping that by the time the girls are teenagers they will have to wash their own jeans if they want a fresh pair for school. Maybe that’s when the environmental – or social – cues will ignite the clean gene in them. So, I sit among the mass not sure what to feel. I just know I have a strong yearning for lemonade.

Sock Hop Opt Out

There’s another 4^th grade sock hop and I’m going to miss it – you know the chaperone part.  I like being an outside witness to all the tweening.  After the disorganized first sock hop earlier in the year, I can only hope that Friday night’s dance might offer a tad bit more organized entertainment. 

“So, Mom,” began Rosie, “I know you sort of think they are crazy but there’s another sock hop. [Long pause, bright blush] Sooooo…Can I go?”

Like I would deprive her of the girl shrieking, groupie encouraging, cultural indoctrination into heterosexual flirtation? Like I have that power?

Of course, Rosie and her friends have already planned the carpool and which parent will be driving (the one with the mega SUV and inconsistent parenting rules).  I’ll be a good 4 hours away in another city feeling a tad guilty and yet relieved to be saving my ear drums.  I mentioned the girls’ plan to my husband, who will be a single parent for five days. 

“Do I have to go to it?” he asked, cringing. 

I suggested it may be an interesting experience – bringing back those good old memories of childhood excitement and angst.  For me it brings up an Indie movie we watched in our early dating years, The Doll House.”  It was a story about a middle school girl ala Ugly Betty at 12 who was so awkward, naïve and unprotected, it was painful to see.  I think every viewer left that theater feeling mortified, if not somewhat nauseous from the post traumatic trigger of preadolescent shame.  We’ve all been there.

But still, sock hops in 4^th grade seem to me an unnecessary push toward dating and mating rituals.  Unfortunately, this time I won’t be able to learn about any innocent flirtations, double date scheming, and secret trinkets.

But I bet her little spy sister, Adele, will tell me.