June 15, 2012 Last year when I wrote about Mattel’s vampy campy Monster High dolls I purposely didn’t even name their brand, hoping it would quietly fizzle and bury itself in the outcry of parents tired of sexploitation, sassy, rude, mean behavioral cues sent to kids, blatant consumerism and vapid values.When Mattel tried to backpedal from the toxic messages in their webisodes … [Read more...]
June 1, 2012 Personally, I don’t think 8th grade and ‘cocktail dress’ should be uttered in the same sentence, but alas, there are entire websites ratcheting up the ‘kids getting older younger’ (KGOY) effect of marketing mania turning ‘tweens’ into 8th grade glamorama Disney divas with little regard for kids’ socioemotional health and developmental milestones. As 8th grade … [Read more...]
May 30, 2012 Before we ramp up with the next surge of ‘graduation spending’ stats or infographics citing what ‘media’ deem to be ‘credible sources’ without diving deeper into fact checking, I’d like to ask media pundits, where is our collective knowledge gain? We’ve got far more than 22 pages of Google results citing ‘junk science’ as fact from reputable news organizations … [Read more...]
May 15, 2015 Update! Great then/now retrospective in the New York Times that spans proms over 60 years, all the way up to current "promposal" shenanigans, spending surges and social media selfies! Enjoy. May 24, 2012 UPDATE woohoo! Called it! Validation happy dance! Today Show notes HUGE Visa survey inaccuracies in this blurb-> "Prom Spending Myth" but no one is seeing it … [Read more...]
Update Feb. 12, 2016 With the 2016 Grammys coming up this weekend, I wanted to add two posts by the author of The Achilles Effect and Boys, Sex & Media as a ponderable question about what we're choosing to honor and award with media messaging and masculinity. Without vilifying an entire genre, specific artist, or lyrics lens (not interested in uncorking a censorship convo; … [Read more...]
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