Picket Fence Post

Your latest issue may sell like gangbusters because of the hype generated by the hub-bub over the semi-naked photo of a 15-year-old celebrity you have published inside your magazine, the one where a sad looking girl has a bed sheet wrapped around the upper portion of her body, revealing her back. That will certainly be great for the magazine’s bottom line in a difficult market.

The parents of and the marketing machine surrounding this 15-year-old may or may not have agreed to allow the girl to pose in a way that makes her look as if she’s topless, but for that sheet. Maybe it’s a calculated ploy to nudge the multi-million-dollar franchise that is this child from the tweens-market to a slightly older demographic by having the under-aged girl pose provocatively, with a sheet . . . which belongs on a bed . . . evoking a bed-like scene.

But you decided to publish and post online photos of an under-aged girl, thereby sexualizing her. True, earlier this year a sexy photo of the girl flashing a glimpse of her bra to the camera wielded by a friend was posted on a social networking web site. However couldn’t one argue, that, in an era of fallen and seriously troubled young female starlets, that having a 15-year-old girl pose with simply a sheet wrapped around her upper torso indicates adult approval for being photographed in sexy poses?

This is where the damage is sustained. It’s up to you, as a responsible magazine, to not help take advantage of a 15-year-old, even if she is a mega-celebrity, beloved by millions of tween-aged girls who see her as an idol and want to mimic whatever she does.

If you want to run sexy photos of consenting adults, go for it. Run all the button-pushing photos and articles you want. But in the future, maybe you should think twice before contributing to the exploitation of a child, even if she or her handlers are willing participants.

Signed,

A concerned mom of a 9-year-old girl

Setting:

Morning, just minutes before three kids have to dash outside to make the school bus in time. One child had already shouted, “I hate you!” when Mom insisted that, because it was raining and 50 degrees outside, the child should skip the shorts and wear pants. Three school snacks had been crammed into backpacks, including two non-nut-related items because there are nut allergies in two of the kids’ classes. Water bottles for the snacks had been filled, after a thorough check of the bottles to make sure they didn’t have the poison 7 inside the recycling symbol stamped on the bottom. Lunch money for the three children had been distributed.

Eldest Boy approaches his sloppily pony-tailed mom (who’s dressed in all black yoga attire though she hasn’t been to yoga in months and is so seriously NOT Zen-like). The Boy is wearing a subversive, chesire cat grin.

ELDEST BOY: Moooom. You’ll never guess what [YOUNGEST BOY] just did with a marker.

MOM: (*Groans, imagining all manner of illicit marker action.*) Do I even want to know?

ELDEST BOY: He wrote his name on the rug on the stairs.

Mom fights the urge to break things and calmly summons the Youngest Boy to the kitchen where she’s putting the milk and juice bottles back in the fridge. Considering that Mom hasn’t shouted nor turned purple yet, the Youngest Boy cautiously enters the kitchen.

MOM: What marker did you use? (*Praying silently it wasn’t one of the many permanent Sharpie markers that had been pilfered from her home office.*)

YOUNGEST BOY: (*Crickets*)

THE GIRL: (*Grinning because she hasn’t yet had an argument with Mom this particular morning so she’s sucking up*) He used a washable marker, Mom.

Mom exhales. Looking at the perp she quietly asks:

MOM: Why did you do that?

YOUNGEST BOY: (*Giant pregnant pause.*) I dunno.

Mom thinks she sees a smirk but is hoping there isn’t one as she mulls over what kind of punishment the Youngest Boy will get.

Epilogue:

So much for “washable.” The remains of the teal-colored first grade scrawl — where the Youngest Boy claimed the third stair from the bottom as his own – are still evident on the cream-colored carpet, the first thing one sees upon entering the front door.

You may know Christie Mellor from her Three Martini Playdate books which lampoon today’s parenting trends. Now, the humorist takes on not the grade school set, but twentysomethings (who need a little direction in their lives) in her new book Were You Raised by Wolves?: Clues to the Mysteries of Adulthood. Mellor fielded some questions from your intrepid Picket Fence Post scribe:

Meredith O’Brien, Picket Fence Post: Your two previous tongue-in-cheek Three Martini Playdate books urged parents to raise their children to become civilized, well-rounded adults and to conduct that child rearing in a way in which parents actually get to enjoy being adults and not simply serve as their kids’ executive secretaries and all-purpose servants.

Were You Raised by Wolves? aims to tell young adults — whose parents couldn’t benefit from your Three Martini sage advice in time for their kids — how to be civilized, well-rounded adults. Why did you decide to write this and how do you think college grads will respond to such counsel?

Christie Mellor, author of Were You Raised by Wolves?: It started as a nugget of a suggestion from my publisher — but I had been taking notes for a while on the very topic, I just didn’t realize that I’d already started the book in my head. I wanted to put the fun back into being a grown-up. I remember when I was a kid, being a grown-up seemed all cool and mysterious and fabulous. So I wanted to put the fabulousness back into it, but with some gentle suggestions on behavior and etiquette, to fill in the gaps that may have been left by an overly supervised upbringing.

As far as the twentysomethings responding, well, I’m hoping that since I’m not their mother and I’m not being naggy, that they’ll have fun with it. And maybe they’ll want to pass the book around to people they know. They may not recognize themselves as needing any help, but they may recognize friends or coworkers. And of course, it’s always fun to laugh at friends and co-workers.

The hope is that through the humor, a seed will be planted. A very good and thoughtful friend wrote me this in an e-mail regarding my book which I really should have printed on the back cover:

“It really is a common sense manifesto for injecting a better theology and philosopher into the world (to borrow Ignacious J. Reilly’s refrain from “Confederacy of Dunces”) — which modern culture so desperately needs — using essential older world values in newer world togs, all with your unique and magical style. And never mind the adorable, original illustrations.”

Now isn’t that just the sweetest? I would like to think he’s right on target and that Were You Raised by Wolves? will catch on as an etiquette book, albeit a humorous, hip etiquette book, with recipes and hangover cures. (more…)

ABC Thursday: Could this be the making of a new, must-see TV night? Thursdays, 9-11 p.m. with Grey’s Anatomy at 9, followed by Lost at 10?

The first, post-writers’ strike episodes of both programs aired last night (I could watch without feeling guilty for missing a Red Sox game as, sadly, the Olde Towne Team had already lost earlier in the day) and I was more giddy than I should have been about seeing the new shows. I kept my expectations in check, though, as nothing good comes from having high expectations about one’s favorite TV shows.

Grey’s was satisfactory and, thank God, no longer featured the wretched, unwise and now-ended Gizzie (the coupling of George and Izzie). While I loved seeing Miranda Bailey’s toddler son in his backwards baseball cap (too cute!), I was impressed by the fact that Meredith Grey was given a spine. At least for one episode.

As for Lost, I continue to be simultaneously confounded and intrigued by each new episode and have no earthly idea how this whole thing’s going to end. For every new question that’s answered, the show yields 10 more. I’m just hopeful that the loose ends all tie up logically when the show concludes or else I’ll be mighty peeved.

The only thing that would’ve made my TV viewing night better — other than a Sox victory — would’ve been if The Office and 30 Rock aired in the 8 o’clock hour rather than in the 9 o’clock hour, opposite Grey’s so I could watch all of those programs in one night. (Good thing for my trusty DVR which recorded the comedies for me . . . one of the best gifts ever.) But even if The Office and 30 Rock aired earlier, I wouldn’t be able to watch them live anyway because my three kiddos are still wide awake at 8 p.m. I definitely don’t want my grade schoolers watching 30 Rock and then asking me what the word “MILF” means.

Speaking of 30 Rock . . . its star, Tina Fey, is headlining a new movie, Baby Mama, being released today. I’m planning on seeing it tonight with a gal pal to see if it’s as hilarious and politically incorrect as its trailer.

So, now it’s your turn: What TV shows are you watching? Which ones are you following, now that the TV writers are once again writing?

Image credit: ABC.

I honestly do not know what to make of this new report that has been making its way through the media landscape over the past week, warning parents that plastic bottles and canned goods lined with a particular chemical — bisphenol A (BPA) — can be toxic to our offspring.

Here I am, a moderate, pro-green kinda gal, sending my kids to school with reusable, plastic water bottles each day for their snack times and for use during water breaks at their various sporting events, instead of giving them a brand, new, unopened bottle of water. When my children get those plastic, kid-friendly cups at restaurants, we take them home and reuse them until they, essentially, disintegrate. When we buy take-out or pre-made food (you do not want to know how much Chinese take-out crosses my threshold) that come in plastic containers, we keep the containers and reuse them — in lieu of plastic wrap or tin foil put over bowls when we store or reheat food — until the containers are no longer usable, in which case we bring them to our town’s recycling center.

And then the rug got pulled out from under me.

A division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now says that use of any products that contain BPA have sparked “some concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children,” reported the Boston Globe. The federal government tells consumers to look for plastic products with the numeral “7″ inside of the little triangular arrow recycling symbol and “to avoid canned goods.” (So we have to say adieu to our staple of canned beans, practically the only protein my Youngest Boy will willingly consume?)

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The CNN headline says all you really need to know:

“$10,000 for child’s birthday?”

Do not wipe your glasses. Or refresh your screen. You read it correctly.

Ten. Thousand. Dead. Presidents.

The CNN article discussed a company that makes kids’ birthday cakes for the tidy sum of $1,000, and told the tale of a mother who threw $5,000 party for her 3-year-old.

A few years ago, I tried to pitch a column to an editor who thought I was out of my gourd when I argued that there was a good reason to run my piece, saying that someone needed to plead with these people to put things into perspective and to reign in pediatric birthday party madness. At that time, the high-end price for such soirees was a mere $1,000.

“If your mom’s your best friend, who’s your mother?”

So asked the editors at the Reuters news service in the headline to a story which decries the rise in the number of mothers — an expert calls it “epidemic” — who seek to be their children’s best friends instead of boundary-setting parents.

The Reuters article quotes clinical psychologist Stephan Poulter who says that many of today’s parents do not want to establish and enforce house rules. “. . . [K]ids need a parent, not another friend, and this [being best friends with your children] leaves them motherless,” Poulter told Reuters. “This can create a lot of rage in boys, and daughters who are drug-orientated and out of control tend to be motherless daughters of this type.”

I cannot wait to show this article to my kids, who constantly accuse me of trying to single-handedly destroy their happiness by doing irrational and cruel things such as insisting that they bathe regularly, that they go to bed at what I consider to be a reasonable hour (8:30, that’s the goal anyway) and by making them wear coats and long pants in 50-degree weather even when they say they’ll be laughed at in school because all the other kids in their class are apparently donning beach wear. In April. In New England.

Image credit: The WB.

Thank you Jeff Jacoby for causing tears to come to my eyes while I drank my morning coffee and read his column in today’s Boston Globe about his 11-year-old son’s “penchant for pinching treats” from his family’s pantry.

While the Spouse and I routinely wonder about how we should deal with our 6-year-old’s tendency to smuggle food into his room (he’s not yet adept at hiding the evidence and has a wretched poker face . . . unlike some others who live in our household who shall remain unnamed), it’s reassuring to read about how parents deal with their kid’s white lies.

How, you ask, did a column about a child hiding a box of Fruit Loops in his bed make me tear up? By paragraphs like this one from Jacoby’s essay addressed to his son:

“When you were a baby, I loved watching you sleep. Sometimes I would stroke your tiny hand as you lay in your crib, and you would instinctively wrap your fingers around one of mine, clinging to me even in your sleep. Could you sense somehow that I was a safe harbor, a snug refuge from the world’s storms and stresses? Mama and I have tried to be that haven, to furnish you with the physical, emotional and spiritual resources you’ll need as you journey through life.”

I had to turn to the sports section to read about the last-minute heroics in yesterday’s Boston Red Sox game to curtail the sniffling.

Am I the only one who misses thirtysomething, even though the last new episode aired way back when I was in college . . . in the Stone Age?

For all of those who criticized the late 1980s/early 1990s show as whiny and self-absorbed, there were plenty of others (my hand is raised) who found it to be a smart and thoughtful portrait of people struggling with life in their 30s, once kids enter the picture.

I similarly fawned over the late 1990s/early 2000s show Once and Again, created by the thirtysomethingfolks about people who were in their 40s and coping with divorce and raising snarky teenagers.

In a new column for Mommy Track’d, I lament the fact that there just aren’t many working moms whose lives and struggles are the focus of TV dramas anymore.

Image credit: Amazon.com.

I’m on a hamster wheel. And I can’t seem to get off of it.

I usually block out — probably for self-preservational purposes — how absolutely loony the springtime can get when you have three kids who play sports. I was deluded into thinking that I actually had a handle on things, at least between January and early March, when the only real holidays are Valentine’s Day and the start of the spring training. You don’t have to send cards to anyone, make special meals or buy gifts to celebrate the fact that baseball’s back.

Then spring officially arrived. And all hell broke loose.

On Sunday, the Spouse and I had to sit down with spreadsheets, calendars, four bottles of Advil and a bottle of Merlot in order to figure out the next few weeks, schedule-wise. (We’re still scraping the ceiling following my head explosion.) Take this week’s nuttiness:

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