Childhood Influences

In November my husband and I are having a baby girl.  I am starting to think about how to present a healthy image of what a girl should be, what a woman should be, what kind of person she should aim to become, etc. and I'm finding that there are a lot of different paths she might choose from and many different influences about which path to take.  While I will make sure she gets exposed to lots of very positive NYC media like The Muppets Take Manhattan, Miracle on 34th Street, and Spider-Man my bigger concern is that she be exposed to lots of positive female role models and positive examples of what adult men and women should be.

Something that is both a benefit and a detriment of living in NYC is being exposed to all sorts of people, from the most coked-up homeless person to the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.  I very much look forward to exposing her to all sorts of cultures but the cost I will pay for that is explaining homelessness and other unpleasant sides of humanity.  My hope is that she sees where poor decisions and bad luck can take you in life and that will push her to work hard to do better but you never know what messages children pick up from the world around them, especially media images.

I used to love Inspector Gadget, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and She-Ra which I think were excellent examples of strong, intelligent people (and turtles, of course) but at the same time I watched Jem, which was basically a show where the animators barely attempted to make sure her cartoon hoo-ha didn't pop out from under her micro-mini and plenty of Disney movies with excessively thin and barely dressed heroines (I'm looking at you, Ariel and Princess Jasmine!)  And let's face it, even though she was massively powerful She-Ra still dressed like a hooker at a sci-fi convention.

I'd like my daughter to be able to watch the occasional show or movie that skirts the line, not only because I don't think it is healthy to have a child that is too sheltered from culture and media but also because these things provide excellent talking points to start a discussion about personal values and such.  And to be fair, the large majority of children's programming and toys, while perhaps not incredibly educational or anything, aren't inappropriate or damaging.  However, there appear to be a few really inappropriate toys and shows that are overly violent or place too much emphasis on weight and appearance.  Hell, even Strawberry Shortcake, the most adorable of 80's characters, has been revamped to make sure little girls know that you should be rail thin with long, silky hair.  Heaven forbid a little girl be a bit pudgy or have curly hair!  Take a look at the new vs. the old Strawberry Shortcake:

I know that most programming for kids is innocuous but I want more from my daughter's television, music, and other media experiences than that.  I want for her to see more of things like the Powerpuff Girls (scientist father, crime fighting little girls, no excessively exposed skin or excessively tiny waists) and Dora the Explorer (explorer and naturalist little girl who loves her brother and works to save the environment) and less Cinderella (cleans a lot and her biggest accomplishment is marrying a rich man) and iCarly (ultimate dream is to be a reality tv star.) I also don't want to have to watch 7,000 hours of children's programming to determine which of the shows and movies should make up her viewing time, however much or little of it there might be.  In a perfect world when she got old enough to appreciate television she would watch an hour or so a week and no more, but realistically I understand that TV might be what allows me to take a shower without an interruption too so who can say what will happen?

It's a good thing we have a little more time before she is born!  We've got a lot of research to do, and not just best brands of diapers or how to operate a breast pump either.  Hopefully by the time she is old enough to get into TV we will have figured out exactly how we want to approach the situation.