Picket Fence Post

Worried that the railing-thin young female stars of the newly revamped 90210 are sending the wrong message to impressionable girls, Entertainment Weekly ran a piece quoting unnamed sources who said folks are growing concerned about the actresses’ bodies which were called ”alarmingly thin, with arms that seem thickest at the wrist, and legs that look like, well arms.” The AMC show Mad Men (shout out to the Emmy winner for best drama!) was singled out for promoting a “healthy body image” mostly because of actress Christina Hendricks, who plays a sultry office manager on the program and who EW called “the very definition of sexy.”

While watching the Emmys last night, I was absolutely taken with how Hendricks made actual, feminine curves fashionable. Take a look at the photo of Hendricks in her green dress at last night’s awards show. Amidst the sea of toothpicks, she stood out and, to echo EW, provided a much healthier attitude toward the female form than the anorexic celebs who usually populate red carpets.

So if you have a daughter who starts to covet the figures of one of the new 90210 gals, show her a photo of Hendricks (maybe not this one of the gown with the plunging neckline, but a tasteful one from the show, like this one) and tell her there are other ways to be beautiful.

Better yet, visit the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty web site, be sure to check out the section for moms who are looking to help their daughters cultivate a healthy body image, and direct your daughter to the section just for the girls.

Image credit: AP/Chris Pizzello/Boston Globe.

Note: If you’re a Mad Men fan — and I know you all want to be – be sure to check out my latest Pop Culture and Politics column about the mixed messages we received from the media over the past 10 days about what we want and expect from American career women.

I donned my TV critic’s cap and dished with one of the two Manic Mommies about the new fall television season, the national political conventions, the Olympics, Mad Men, 90210, The Office and what I think about the title of the new CBS show, The Mentalist.

You can get directions on how to download/listen to the Manic Mommies podcast here. (It’s a radio show on the internet, for the uninitiated.) Or you can just go to iTunes and download it for free — gotta love the free! – to listen to our sparklingly witty conversation.

Image credit: Manic Mommies.

Fans of AMC’s critically acclaimed early 1960s drama Mad Men have no doubt noticed that folks tended to raise their children a tad bit differently when John F. Kennedy was the president than people do now. Not has a child on Mad Men repeatedly been shown fixing drinks for adults, but parents’ friends have slapped misbehaving youth and a pregnant woman openly drank, smoked and consumed caffeinated coffee, all considered no-no’s for today’s gestating ladies.

The most recent Mad Men episode was chock-full of examples of how much parenting has changed:

By watching the exploits of lead characters Don and Betty Draper and their grade-school-aged kids, Sally and Bobby, viewers saw Betty demand that Don spank their son in order to teach the boy right from wrong, particularly after he’d repeatedly lied to his mother. When Don refused to do so — instead disciplined Bobby by saying, “Mommy says you broke the hi-fi. I believe her. Don’t do it again.” and then telling him to go bed – Betty challenged Don, asking him if he thought he’d be the man he is if his father hadn’t spanked him.

Later in the episode, Don had to take Sally to work with him, where the girl received . . . an education. (See video here.)

But, ironically, the recent Mad Men show also dramatized examples of how parenting hasn’t changed completely, despite the passage of 40 years:

Bobby and Sally walked in on Don and Betty when they were in bed one morning as the parents were at the very beginning of gettin’ busy (Don was on top of Betty, but under the sheets). Don ordered the kids out of the room as they asked what was going on. ”We’re . . . (*pause*) sleeping,” Don said gruffly.

During another fight about Don’s “style” of discipline, Betty told her husband that she was tired of being trapped at home all day, “outnumbered” by the kids, only to have him come home and be “the hero.” (The “hero” thing happens at our house all the time.)

FYI: If you’re a Mad Men fan, please join me every Monday on my Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum blog where I discuss the latest episode and all things Draper.

Item #1: Adam@Home

I’ve been loving the latest Brian Basset cartoons, Adam@Home, where a work-from-home dad named Adam (has three kids and a wife who works elsewhere) is fielding online questions about what it’s like to work at home with kids bustling about and fighting. This week’s cartoons have cut a wee bit too close to my life’s experience as a work-from-home parent. I have several of the comic strips up on the fridge and in my home office that regularly make me laugh, though, sadly, the humor is lost on the children.

Item #2: thirtysomething Online

Shh! I’ve got a secret. If, like me, you’ve been waiting patiently (or in my case impatiently) for the 1980s thoughtful yuppie drama thirtysomething to be released on DVD (or VHS) and cannot, for the life of you, understand why it hasn’t come out yet, I have a solution for you. Try YouTube. Type in “thirtysomething.” Scroll down the page and you won’t be disappointed.

After watching many of the episodes which are 20+ years old, I find that — fashion aside — they hold up well, particularly when it comes to the angst one of the lead characters, Hope Steadman (Mel Harris) felt about working parenthood. (During the series, she wound up working outside the home after being an at-home mom for a while.) The clip below is from the first episode of the second season after Hope had decided to go back to work at an environmental magazine when her daughter was 20 months old. She and her husband Michael were also debating whether to have another child.

 Item #3: Halloween ALREADY!

It’s the first full week of August. My family just got back from our summer vacation, and what am I finding, other than beach sand still littering the mini-van? Halloween stuff for sale in stores and e-mails in my inbox from Halloween costumer purveyors. This initial Halloween appearance seems earlier than last year when I first spotted Halloween products while shopping for my twins’ late summer birthday party supplies. I say to you premature Halloween pushers: No mas! It’s scary enough to think about back-to-school shopping (school idiotically starts BEFORE Labor Day around these parts), I don’t need the added pressure of Halloween costume shopping.

Item #1: No ‘Bliss’ for Real Moms

Galt Niederhoffer wants all of you mommies to knock it off with your mommy propaganda, saying stuff like “motherhood is bliss” because, as she says on The Huffington Post, it’s not. In her post entitled, “The Bliss Myth: Cut the Crap Mommies,” Niederhoffer wrote:

“Why not acknowledge that frustration, boredom, guilt and ambivalence are universal, unavoidable facets of motherhood? Sharing will make us better and happier mothers, affording women the comfort of community and the benefit of shared information — the very tools we need to transcend motherhood’s challenges.”

Well, if Niederhoffer had been reading the Picket Fence Post, she would’ve never gotten the misguided notion that parenthood is bliss. Maybe I should e-mail her a few links to places where she can get a reality check on what real, non-blissed-out parenting is like here on Planet Earth.

Item #2: Family Meals Good for Parents Too

Speaking of real parenting . . . Slate’s Emily Bazelton tells us that while we’ve all heard about how absolutely fantastic and grounding it is for children to sit down with their parents for family meals each night — family-meal-eating kids are less likely to get into trouble, are more likely to feel closer to their family, get higher grades, become rocket scientists, etc. – it’s also good for parents too. Bazelton wrote:

“The research by lead author Jenet Jacob of Brigham Young University found that among 1,580 parents who worked at IBM, those who said their jobs interfered less with being home for dinner tended to feel greater personal success, and success in relationships with their spouses and their children. The working parents — both mothers and fathers — had all of these buoyant feelings if they made it home for dinner more regularly, even if they still worked long hours. They also felt more kindly toward their workplace.”

I know I’d certainly feel better if The Spouse were home more often for family meals, then I wouldn’t be the only one to develop a migraine when the kids say they utterly loathe what I’ve made for dinner (there’s always at least one protester per meal), then watch them sulk and, in at least the case of one child, literally throw up all over the kitchen table in order to avoid eating the baked chicken. Good times.

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Item #1: An American Girl + Great Depression=Kit Kittredge

Took The Girl to see Kit Kittredge: An American Girl with my neighbors and their daughters, and several plastic, overpriced dolls. Was pleasantly surprised to see that the film, which is set during the Great Depression, didn’t completely sugar-coat the struggles families endured, such as having the bank repossess family houses (and businesses), having to take in boarders to earn money, seeing fathers leave their families in search of employment and having to keep chickens in order to sell their eggs. The story was told through the eyes of grade schooler Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin) who, much to my giddy delight, aspired to be a reporter and toiled away in the attic on her typewriter.

“I don’t ever want to live in a Depression,” The Girl told me afterward, saying that it must’ve been “very hard and awful.” Days later, she used one of the ancient, manual typewriters I have in my office and typed out her very own summary of the film. A sample of The Girl’s summary: “Kit and Ruthy and their school class had to help in the soup kitchen. The soup kitchen was a place where people who needed food could eat. When they got there Kit saw her father. Then she knew he had lost his job. She was right.”

Item #2: TCM’s ‘Essentials Jr.’

Speaking of Abigail Breslin . . . she and her Kittredge co-star Chris O’Donnell have been co-hosting a Sunday night series on the Turner Classic Movies channel called, TCM Essentials Jr., where, each week, a classic, family friendly film is aired at 8 p.m. This week’s feature is Meet Me in St. Louis, a film, which I am embarrassed to say, I’ve never seen but one that Breslin says is a favorite of hers. Other upcoming films to be aired: Roman Holiday on August 3 and Yours, Mine and Ours on August 24.

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Three for Thursdays (or Four for Fridays if I don’t post on Thursday) will be a regular feature here on the Picket Fence Post. This feature will include newsy/fun/intriguing items that I stumbled upon in the past week. If you happen to see something — an interesting news story, a funny video, an outrage, etc. — that you think would be perfect for Three for Thursdays, please be sure to send it my way.

Item #1: Grey’s Finale

Will Meredith and Derek finally end the on-again/off-again romantic dance and commit already? Certainly the challenges of being a couple can provide drama and comedy, if it didn’t, then Mad About You would’ve been canceled after its pilot episode. Will Miranda figure out a way to repair her relationship with her estranged husband and reunite her family? Will Christina emerge from her “Like a Virgin”-singing funk? We’ll find out tonight in the Grey’s Anatomy finale. But, as with most bonus-sized finales — tonight’s show is two hours long — they tend to disappoint. Hopefully that won’t be the case tonight. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that nothing totally absurd will happen. Like Gizzie, part II.

Item #2: First-Born Rule-Followers and Their Strict ‘Rents

I KNEW IT! As the oldest child in my own family, I’ve always felt as though it’s harder to be the older kid than the younger one, even when you factor the hand-me-downs into the picture. Now a study in the latest issue of the Economic Journal confirms it.

“The study showed that older siblings were much less likely to drop out of school or, in the case of girls, get pregnant, than the youngest in the family, perhaps because of a lifetime of being held to higher standards,” reported MSNBC. “That stricter parenting style [used with the older child] often shapes the first-born kid into a play-by-the-rules perfectionist.”

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Catch Grey’s Anatomy last week, the episode in which Dr. Miranda Bailey’s toddler got booted out of Seattle Grace’s daycare center for punching a fellow toddler in a dispute involving a graham cracker?

This episode was just one in a long line of episodes which focused on the immense difficulty the Bailey character is having balancing her desire to do some serious medical butt-kicking as Seattle Grace’s chief resident, with the desire of her estranged at-home spouse to spend some time with him and their child. The successful career professional pitted against the resentful at-home spouse who feels neglected.

I discuss this Grey’s Anatomy/working parent story line in my latest Mommy Track’d piece and ask the questions: Do you sympathize with the characters in their struggle? Do you wish there were more workplace flexibility? or is this just the way things are when your kids are little?

Image credit: ABC.

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.