"Presents" of Mind

First published at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/12/20/presents-of-mind/ December 20, 2012.

Each year, I cannot help but be disturbed by the holiday season and the demands for donations of gifts from all over. It’s as if “not getting something” was akin to having a fatal disease with the fervor expressed by the campaigns for gift donations. From toy drives to “adopt a family” programs, we seem to collectively view not having presents as sacrilege. Why this time of the year? What about birthdays or other milestones? What about doing something radical about poverty, hunger and need in our country to eradicate them entirely?

I have complex feelings about how we perpetuate a consumerist culture and society through the importance placed on gifts. I am also perplexed at having children from poverty-stricken families ask for video games—that are typically $60 each—when that clearly means the family not only has the $300+ gaming system, but also obviously a television and electricity. The ages of the children involved, and including parents is equally perplexing to me. I can see if someone would be without a winter jacket, yet cannot see the possible “benefit” of frivolous things like more-expensive-than-regular-soap bath products that seem to be popular requests.

It’s not that I believe people should “go without” or that we cannot feel “poor” by the standards of our specific community. For a good portion of my children’s lives, we rented a home in an affluent town in Massachusetts. An example of what I mean about feeling poor by community standards is this: one holiday season, my husband and I had saved enough money to purchase iPods for our children rather than having them share the Shuffle we won at a holiday party several years before. We got them a few other small gifts like books and some candy for their stockings. The iPods were their “big” gift and something they were definitely not expecting given our financial situation. They were both thrilled with their iPod Touches, which were the lower memory versions as they cost less. When my daughter went to school after the holidays, she found that most of her classmates and friends received iPod Touches as stocking stuffers and the first generation of iPad or a laptop or another extravagant gift as their “big” gifts. So, by community standards, our children were definitely “lacking.” At the same time, we by no means felt our lives were lacking.

I realize that living in a particular community one may feel less privileged or underprivileged by comparison. At the same time, I believe we must always keep this in perspective, and be aware of what true poverty means and how fortunate we are by worldwide standards of living. This year, with me enrolled in full time graduate school, thus working fewer hours at my three part-time jobs, and with one child in college, expenses have increased while income has decreased. We face a very limited budget this year for the holidays. In fact, we rely on the hope that my husband will receive a holiday bonus, and this is what will be used to purchase anything we decide we will do for the holidays. I know what our income level is in relation to the poverty level. We would likely “qualify” to participate in these gift programs ourselves this year. Yet, instead of asking for luxury items from others, we discussed with our children the riches we feel we do have: health, education, heat, housing, food and one another. We talked about not contributing to the debt cycle like those who charge gifts only to be burdened by bills long after the shine has worn off something new. We talked about how not opening a gift in December is not the end of the world, regardless of the Mayan calendar! (So, there was another thing we have that money cannot buy: a sense of humor and shared laughter.)

We also talked about other cultures and religions and how the gift drives, toy drives and adopt-a-family-once-a-year programs all negate anything outside of Christianity. There are no programs for Jewish families who may be struggling to provide eight nights of gifts. And, what of faiths and cultures in our country and our towns and cities that do not have a holiday in December? This, of course, brings us full circle to the needs of families and individuals the whole year round.

How is this rant part of feminist critique? Well, if feminism is really about equality for all, then we cannot look past and not consider the larger context for holiday gifting programs and how they promote consumerism or how they exclude everyone who is not of the Christian religion. We cannot, on a daily basis, look past the overstuffed vehicle in a parking lot that clearly houses at least one person, or the often invisible needs of families for food and heat. We must sustain presence of mind about issues of inequality and oppression in all arenas and refrain from making ourselves feel good about giving presents once a year.

"Cemetery Girl" Book Review and Reflection

“Cemetery Girl”

First published December 13, 2012 at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/12/13/cemetary-girl/

CEMETERY GIRL by David Bell is about a twelve-year-old girl who goes missing and is returned to her family four years later, at sixteen. The story is told from the point of view of her father. His history is complicated, and has an impact on how he deals with his daughter’s disappearance, and her return. So as to not ruin the plot or suspense, I’ll suffice to say that our worst nightmare may not be the kidnapping of our child, but rather what we learn upon his or her return. While every parent of a kidnapped child wants nothing more than the return of that child, the fact remains that the experience renders every family member changed.

What stays with me as the result of reading this book are the questions that we ask ourselves as parents, as well as the questions we would like to avoid. We all consider when we might allow our children to walk to the park alone, or walk home from school or to a friend’s house. We check with friends, consider our own childhood experiences, and think about the safety of our current block, neighborhood, city or town. We track milestones, possibly mark a wall in a closet or the casing of a bedroom door with physical growth. We keep report cards to measure our children’s academic success and progress. We may cherish and simultaneously regret the first day of kindergarten, graduation from elementary school, the first day of high school and high school graduation. We worry and celebrate the first date, the first time they take the car out alone after getting a license, and freshman year of college.

Some of us talk about sex. We have the “birds and bees” talk, or leave a book on puberty on the night stand in our child’s room. A few of us address burgeoning sexuality, and attempt to normalize the feelings our children may have. How often do we talk about sexual development outside of the girls-develop-breasts-and-get-their-periods and boys-grow-hair-and-get-deeper-voices-and-may-experience-nocturnal-emissions? Yes, it is that awkward and silly, isn’t it? It is extremely challenging for parents to consider the sexual identity of their children. Especially in the United States at this point in our culture and society, our children are no longer children once we consider sex. Or, they remain children and are patronized, even when their burgeoning sexuality becomes obvious. There are the pregnancies and bladder infections that are also discovered to include chlamydia. Even then, most parents don’t address the sexuality of their children. It’s like the pregnancy is the thing we deal with, and we ignore the “how” of it. It’s that we address the antibiotics, and maybe even talk about the importance of condoms, without ever really talking about sex itself. We only talk about sex with our kids as part of reproduction, or when we’re warning them away from it.

What CEMETERY GIRL reminded me of is the fact that there are a lot of unhealthy views of sex and we pass these along to our children. It perpetuates generation after generation. We don’t want to consider that our eleven-year-old children, male or female, may be exploring their bodies, and discovering the pleasures that can be found within them. That’s “too early” for such talks in the minds of most parents. Or, we’re in denial. We say, “Well, other kids may be like that, but my daughter/son is so innocent!” In some instances, that is true. When my daughter took a class sponsored by the local Unitarian Universalist Church entitled “Our Whole Lives,” or “O.W.L.,” there was a girl from her class at school who cried every time the class was held. She was the same age as my daughter, yet was definitely not ready for the information presented.

The point of this article is to encourage us all to know our children. What I mean by that is actually “get to know” our children, rather than assuming that we do. We have to let our children know us, too. No, we don’t have to share details of our sexual lives. Rather, we need to be open, really open, to talking with our children, to figuring out the difference between kids who say, “Oh, no, not more sex talk,” and otherwise handle the information well when we have the talk after talk after talk, and the kids who really aren’t ready for the conversation—truly, and that it’s not us who isn’t ready. We have to make ourselves ready for conversation, too. We have to be honest with our kids. When a friend said she was envious of my ability to talk openly with my own children about sex and sexuality, I told her it was perfectly okay that she wasn’t comfortable, actually. All she had to do was be honest about this with her kids. She didn’t know how to react when her daughter asked questions that she was not sure how to answer. I told her it was okay to let her daughter know that she had no idea how to respond. And, it is. It’s okay to tell our kids that we’re not sure how to answer their questions, or that we may not have the answers, but also that we’ll get them. It’s okay to let our kids know that we want to talk with them, but that while we want a relationship that is more open than that which we had with our own parents, we, too, sometimes may be embarrassed or unsure as to how to talk about topics we find difficult. We must promise them that we’ll work on our own issues with open sex talk as we work on the topics they bring to us. And, we have to uphold that promise.

For a suspenseful read, that will leave you thinking long and hard about what you know about your children, what you may or may not want to know, and how important it might be to have the hard talks, check out CEMETERY GIRL. It’s left me thinking about what I even consider “my worst nightmare” and how having our dearest wish fulfilled can sometimes leave us with more questions, with unanswerable questions, and questions that we don’t really want to have answered possibly. CEMETERY GIRL is suspenseful and compellingly told, from an interesting viewpoint with a very different outcome than the typical thriller in this genre. It will also leave you thinking about your own children, or nieces and nephews, and asking important questions.

Are We Brave Enough?

First published Dec. 4, 2012 at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/12/04/are-we-brave-enough/

The allure of princesses for little girls cannot be denied. And neither can the ambivalence or straight-out abhorrence some mothers feel towards those same princesses. The focus on some prescribed external beauty and a delicate femininity is difficult for many women to swallow as their little girls prance past in frilly gowns, plastic high-heeled shoes and glittery accoutrement. Some assert the princess-ing of our daughters is not harmful in the least while others believe thinking it harmless is dangerous to those little girls’ developing ideas of what it means to be a woman today. And maybe the clothes and accessories in and of themselves are not particularly harmful. Perhaps the dress-up is a simple exploration in normal childhood imaginative play and role-playing. It can be argued, however, that the danger arrives with the contextualization of the ideas of princess through literature and especially the Disney depiction of princesses in their movies. The Disney Princesses have become pervasive in our culture—from the repetitive watching of the movies and spin-off television shows to all the accompanying merchandise, the Princesses have been difficult to avoid for watchful mothers for the past generation.

The Princesses have not done much to assert themselves as strong female role models. Their passive roles in their own stories, their need to be rescued by the Prince, their primary self-actualization ascertained through attaining that same Prince in marriage. In many of the stories, the Princesses neither fight nor work for what they glean in the end. They represent stereotypical gender roles, stereotypical ideals of femininity, a singular kind of girliness which polarizes gender in a world that ultimately encourages women to seek equal ground with our male counterparts in our personal and professional relationships with them. Additionally, the gender polarization effectually marginalizes any child (regardless of gender) who does not fit the mold.

BRAVE, the latest Disney/Pixar release, might be a film in which the contemporary paradigm of princess is challenged. While BRAVE, does begin with a terrifying scenes of a bear attack and then follows the Disney tradition of establishing a horrible mother figure, the film does contain redeeming qualities. Near the beginning of the film, Merida, the princess, is shown riding off on her horse for a day wherein “she can change her fate.” Merida is entering her teen years, when she is to be betrothed. She does not wish to have marriage foisted upon her, and she also wants to make her own way in the world.

In some respects, the old “women-are-the-weaker, yet-more-intelligent” sex stereotypes are at play. At the same time, Elinor, the queen, is not portrayed as overly voluptuous, and when she makes order of the brawling clans in the throne room, she does so with her commanding presence. Both her strength of character and her demand for respect come through. Late in the film, Elinor in a guise as a bear, attempts to sneak through the throne room to her chambers where she and Merida will “mend the bond that pride has broken.” This will be achieved by Merida sewing back together the tapestry she destroyed in a fit of rage at her mother and Merida herself commands the presence of the men in the room. Again, here, there is a reverence for Merida’s presence, and there is not a hint or whiff of the male gaze as being commanded by her female form. For these instances of women commanding attention, and not with their corporeal forms, but rather from a position of respect, the film deserves kudos.

In the end, Merida says, “Our fate lies within us. You only need to be brave enough to see it.” She might seem to be talking to herself, and to other young women who might break with whatever traditions that do not serve them. However, mothers might be remiss if they do not also hear Merida’s reminder. Our fate does lie within us, and our daughters’ fates lie within them. We must be brave to raise our daughters and to support our sisters and friends to find their own ways within themselves. We must also not allow our own worries and fears to cloud the vision of our daughters’ fates when they bravely attempt to reveal them to us.

At the same time, our daughters might realize that as mothers we can turn into metaphorical bears as Elinor’s actual form does in the film. We are brave enough to raise our claws and risk our own lives for our daughters. We will protect our daughters fiercely, like nature demonstrates with a mother bear and her cubs. We try to differentiate when to resort to “tooth and claw” and when maintaining decorum is required.

For many reasons, BRAVE might not be the “feminist film” we might have hoped for when we saw the previews of the brazen young woman riding bareback, shooting arrows directly to the bulls-eye with every pull on the bow. But it contains more depth of character in the female characters than that of Disney Princesses past. Feminism wears many faces and is not just about girls taking on what are considered traditionally boyish feats. Feminism can also be the strength of women like Elinor, who command respect for their intellect, and maybe even sew tapestries in their spare time. Being feminist is about what Merida says at the end of the film—it is being brave enough to see the greatness inside ourselves and to manifest it in the world. It is about being brave enough to support our sisters, friends and daughters as they, too, look bravely within, draw upon the strength of mother bears they find inside themselves, and manifest that strength in the world.

Melissa Corliss Delorenzo contributed to this article.