Sexist Messij T-Shurtz Suck

My first-grade daughter can count simple groupings in her head. Last year, she zipped through her kindergarten math workbook problems with a confident cry of "This is so easy!" On road trips, she begs me to give her addition and subtraction questions to solve.

But in a few years, she'll be hitting the mall with her friends and finding shirts like this at Forever21:










Last year, she got glowing remarks on her report card. Her science teacher smiled as she told me, "Sarah is the kind of student who will do well in any subject."

Maybe not for long, once she starts seeing shirts like these around the halls:









Swell. It's cool to hate both school and spelling.


Forever21 isn't the only store selling this crap. JC Penney had to eat a lot of product and bad publicity when the blogoverse started campaigning against this beauty of a message shirt:






Seriously? I mean, seriously? Didn't anyone in their R&D, design or marketing departments feel a qualm for even a nanosecond that this sentence might just possibly be offensively sexist? Heck, the guys on staff would know what a nanosecond is or how to spell "qualm," right?

Why are we still so in love with the girls-are-dumb stereotype? Why do we insist on perpetuating the idea that math, science and technology should be men's domains? The statistics on women in these fields - we hold just 31 percent of medical careers, 25 percent of all mathematical and computer science jobs and a mere 11 percent of engineering jobs - are nothing to laugh about, on clothing or otherwise.

We're anything but "allergic" to these subjects. One study from Cornell found that girls scored as well as or better than boys in math all the way up through college. And we're not necessarily trapped by a glass mathematical ceiling: the Cornell psychologists found that women were actually slightly more likely to be offered tenure-track science, technology and math positions. But somewhere along the line, women stop thinking of math and tech as a calling. Some switch over to more organic professions like biology and veterinary medicine (where we do outrank men); others, notably math professors, find it hard to maintain their demanding careers once they have children.

And maybe, just maybe, some internalize the message that women aren't meant to excel in traditionally male professions. Why bother trying when, as Barbie notoriously said not long ago, "math is hard"? Being a smart woman is only acceptable if you're also cute and pick a glamorous profession. We admire Natalie Portman's Ivy League degree, but we wouldn't gush over her as much if she were merely winning a Nobel in astrophysics instead of an Oscar. We give Hillary Clinton props for her political accomplishments, but unsheathe our claws if she wears the wrong pantsuit or looks a trifle jowly.

Ironically, Forever21 also sells shirts with far more empowering messages - "Believe in Me" and the like. Several are Christian-themed, cross and all. Would Jesus tell girls that they didn't have to worry their pretty little heads over algebra and spelling?

This isn't meant to criticize girls who do find math difficult, or who choose more artistic professions. Guilty as charged on both counts. But my mother-hackles bristle when I see retailers selling negative messages about education to girls with developing minds and ideas, all in the name of humor and profit.

I see my daughter skip down the street to school every morning and run out smiling six hours later, talking about the "awesome" day she had. Her joy in learning is every parent's dream.

Maybe the geniuses at Forever21 should visit her skool school and see what real girls think of math.

Spiders, Crocodiles and 9/11

"Moooommm?" It's five minutes past bedtime. Stories have been read, water fetched, lights turned out, soothing classical music is playing. But all is not well in my son's world: "I hear a tapping noise, and I think it's coming from the CD player. Could you turn on the light and see if there's a spider there?"

There's no point in citing the infinitesimal odds that there actually is an eight-legger in wooden clogs doing the cha-cha in his room. At eight and a half, he's going through an arachnophobic stage  - "the more I know about spiders, the more I'm afraid of them," he says. I know it's best to respect his young fears, keep the ceiling corners clear of cobwebs and conduct the occasional CD-player spider check.

Later that night, my daughter wanders into our bedroom. "I had a bad dream," she confides. "There was a crocodile, and I fell into the water, and it was going to eat me, but then it ate you...can you come sit with me?"

Crocodiles show up in her nightmares often; she grabs my hand while walking through the zoo and aquarium just in case we happen to pass a croc tank. Sometimes it's ghosts, but the toothy reptile is tops on her terror list.

Soothing these nightly terrors is costing me a bit of sleep these days. But I just gulp an extra coffee (or two) and say a prayer of thanks that the only bad dreams they have are normal childhood fears of scary animals, which will go away in time. I'm grateful they don't have to live with the memory of the day far more evil monsters attacked their city and took away a nation's sense of security forever.

Born a few years after the attacks, my children are only just starting to learn what happened on that clear-blue September day. We use simple language, taking care not to overwhelm them with grim details, and offer reassurances that Mom and Dad will always do their best to protect them. For now, it is enough.

In years to come, they'll hear and understand more from the family members who actually lived through the horror. They'll learn how their father saw the towers collapsing from his office window and how he later saw coverage of  7 WTC - where he'd worked just a couple of years earlier - turning to rubble. They'll hear how their mother saw the buildings burning on her commute to midtown, spent a morning trying to get through to family on lines that went dead, then later joined the hundreds of panicked, tearful and stunned people walking across the 59th Street Bridge, hoping to get to a safety that no longer existed. They'll hear even more sobering memories from their paramedic aunt and Marine reservist uncle, whose son is named for a firefighter and former Marine lost in the attacks.

But my children have the blessing of distance. They and their peers will be shocked and saddened by what they learn, but it will never have a visceral impact on them, just as my generation can't fully comprehend the enormity of Pearl Harbor, Vietnam or the Kennedy assassination. (I'm told that after RFK was shot, I tried to comfort a sobbing aunt by saying, "Don't worry...there'll be another Kennedy.") Only a special subset of under-10 children will feel a true personal connection to relatives lost before they were born. For the rest of these 21st-century babies, September 11 will be a history lesson, not a part of their life story.

We parents, along with all who can and do remember, have an obligation to share the story and lessons of 9/11 to this new generation and the children who will come after them. We can't force them to mourn losses they don't truly feel - nor should we. But through our words, and more importantly, through our own actions, we can instill in them a pride in their country, a respect for those who serve it, a deep love and respect for all their fellow human beings and a passion for peace.

If we tirelessly make this our mission, then perhaps future generations of children will have nothing to fear but an imaginary spider in their bedrooms.

Won't You Please Repost This? (Pleeeease?)

We interrupt our regular Momsperiment parent-ramblings to bring you this important message:

So how many weeks along are you - four, six, twelve? And what are you craving - Reese's Pieces? Junior Mints? Salmon-skin sushi with spicy tuna topping, followed by boiled rutabaga and passionfruit sorbet?

And if you're three weeks along and eating doughnuts, does that mean you're not hanging your purse on the bedpost anymore? Or wearing a purple lace bra? It's so hard to keep track nowadays. But the important thing is that you're posting the message on Facebook and telling all your friends to do the same, because this will help raise awareness of breast cancer and make the world a better place.

Unless you can't do it just yet because your news feed is already taken up ("just for an hour!") by an awareness-raising message for cancer of all varieties...or domestic violence...or animal abuse...or bullying...or autism...or troops serving overseas...or mental illness...or omphaloskepsis.

Or maybe you've been overwhelmed by so many of these "awareness" requests that you've quietly begun to ignore them all, or to post a wise-ass parody like, "Please repost this if you know someone, or know someone who knows someone, or knows someone whose second cousin twice removed knows someone. And for Pete's sake, don't forget the hearts! <3 <3 <3"

You get the point. We've all seen these memes on our friends' news feeds, and possibly reposted one or two ourselves because we thought it was meaningful. But maybe it's time to think before we blindly do the copy-and-paste thing yet again.

This new "craving" meme for breast cancer awareness is misguided on several levels. First, as this blogger points out, it doesn't take into account the millions of women struggling with infertility who don't take pregnancy announcements lightly. They'd love nothing more than to share their bumps and cravings with their FB friends, and it hurts to see other women casually tossing around preggy-speak, however well-intentioned.

Second, how does passing along coy little messages about candy and bras advance the cause of breast cancer? It doesn't add a penny toward research or offer any real help to the women who are either living with the disease or reclaiming their lives after treatment. The message links to no pertinent sites, provides no follow-up, offers no information about a disease that's anything but sweet as Hershey's Kisses.

More baffling still, we're supposed to keep this secret from all the guys on our friend list - as if this were some cute little Girl Code about makeup or bachelorette parties. If anything, shouldn't men be brought more deeply into the dialogue? Shouldn't they learn more about the various types and stages of breast cancer, the targeted treatments, the odds of recurrence? Shouldn't they be encouraged to do some homework before buying pink-ribbon products to make sure enough of the proceeds are actually going toward research? Shouldn't they learn how to support and empathize with women terrified that their disease may cost them their femininity and sexiness - not to mention their lives?

That's the whole problem with these social media "awareness" posts. They give us a brief frisson of do-gooder satisfaction - Look how much I really care! - without actually having to go out of our way to do anything more concrete. In their most obnoxious form, they tack on a little guilt trip for good measure: 93% of you won't bother to repost this (and if you don't, it means you're an uncaring, un-American scumbucket who probably kicks little old ladies in the ribs for fun).

"But isn't it good that I'm making my Facebook friends aware of these important issues?" you ask. Sure, awareness is great. Knowledge beats ignorance any day of the week. But without action, awareness is pointless: it's like blowing a kiss and saying "Hang in there!" to a drowning man flailing in the water.

A breast cancer survivor may be grateful that her friends feel strongly about the topic, but given the choice, she'd probably prefer that they donate some money toward research, or better yet, bring some dinner to her family when she's too tired and nauseated from chemo to cook. A mom of a child on the autism spectrum may appreciate the thought that someone's aware of the condition - but when her child is having a sensory meltdown in the supermarket, will that "aware" person glare at her or make some comment about "mothers who can't control their bratty kids"?

Instead of creating or reposting yet another "awareness" meme, what if we were to post something specific we did as a result of our newfound knowledge? Imagine if our friends' walls were filled with messages like this:

My son and his friends were trash-talking about a classmate they think is gay. I'm sitting him down tonight for a long talk about tolerance and bullying, and I think the school principal ought to know about this, too.


Just got back from a nice lunch with a good friend. Her mother has Alzheimer's, and she was grateful for the chance to take a break from caregiving and vent a little. Here's what she wishes people knew about this disease...


Starting a bake sale fund-raiser on the 21st for IAVA, the first and largest organization specifically offering support to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Message me for details on contributing baked goods or to donate money to this worthy cause!!

Now those are the kinds of posts we all should be craving.