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Worth discussing?
With all of our gender semantics on the board...
This article was posted on P&CE, and I thought it might liven things up.
Fox News Attacks J. Crew President For Ad With Son?s Toenails Pink
by David Badash on April 11, 2011
If boys choose to wear nail polish the extreme religious and conservative right-wing media have no more business dictating whether or not boys should wear nail polish than they do the color ? and both Fox News and the Culture And Media Institute are doing just that.
Fox News professes to be a ?fair and balanced? ?news? organization, so reporting on a story should not include statements in a piece mis-titled, ?J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity.? The piece, by Glenn Beck co-author and former Fox News host Dr. Keith Ablow offensively states, ?Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid?and maybe a little for others who?ll be affected by your ?innocent? pleasure.?
Dr. Ablow has a high-profile psychiatric practice, so it is unprofessional and inappropriate to ?diagnose? a person ? or their parenting ? without having ever met them.
Calling Lyons? actions, ?psychological sterilization,? Ablow continues in his blatantly critical manner, writing, ?This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity?homogenizing males and females.?
?The fallout is already being seen,? Ablow ?warns,? saying, ?Increasingly, girls show none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys. That may be a good thing from the standpoint of gender equality, but it could be a bad thing since there is no longer the same typically ?feminine? brake on such behavior.?
Lost on Ablow is the teaching of respect. One is forced to wonder if Ablow has children of his own, and if Ablow is aware that teenage pregnancy ? now that the government is no longer funding abstinence-only education ? has declined.
But perhaps worse than misguided, ignorant pop-psychology is the strident attack by the Culture And Media Institute (CMI), an organization whose board includes conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III ? also a Fox News contributor, and also a member of the board of the Catholic League, which made news today as well.
(Why is the Catholic League in bed with Fox News?)
First, it should be noted to CMI that the word is ?transgender,? not ?transgendered.?
Second, CMI should know that J. Crew also sells men?s and children?s clothing, contrary to their description which states, ?Women?s clothing company highlights pink nail-polish wearing boy in promotional email.?
Third, it should be noted that painting a boy?s toenails will not make him transgender.
The piece claims that, ?Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow.? It adds, ?Jenna?s indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future. J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the fa?ade of liberal, transgendered identity politics. One has to wonder what young boys in pink nail polish has to do with selling women?s clothing.?
Actually, no, one need not ?wonder what young boys in pink nail polish has to do with selling women?s clothing.?
J. Crew is the quintessential lifestyle retailer. What will ?make life hard for the boy in the future? is attacks like the one which CMI is promulgating.
If Jenna Lyons, an extremely successful woman (who, at last report, according to Forbes, has an annual salary of $725,000, and total compensation for 2009 of $4,266,703,) and if her boy likes pink and wants to paint his toenails that color, what?s to stop him, except the bigotry of media whores like Keith Ablow and L. Brent Bozell III?
Zuma Zoom
Re: Worth discussing?
Third, it should be noted that painting a boy?s toenails will not make him transgender.- This pretty much sums it up for me. Lots of boys like pink and playing dress up and dancing. Lots of girls like mud and frogs and football. They're kids. Stop giving them the side-eye and just let them be.
Also, I kackle at Fox News being a "fair and unbalanced" news organization. Seriously. This is what we're telling folks now.
This. And also, if my son ended up being gay/transgender/whatever, thats okay with me too. He's my son, regardless of his sexual orientation, choice of style, gender identity, etc.
ETA: of course same for my daughter
Along similar lines, Chris sent me this article yesterday:
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?
It's a good read.
updated 10.03.12
There's really nothing I can say about this that hasn't been said. (And holy crap do I hate Fox news.)
It really ticks me off that the media cares so freaking much about something as stupid and harmless as painting a boy's toenails pink. Maybe he'll be embarrassed about this when he's older, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll be gay, maybe he's straight. I don't care how high-profile his mother is, but leave him and his family alone. Sure she probably knew she'd raise a few eyebrows by having that spread in the catalog, but oh well. This kind of thing should not be a big deal in this country, it really shouldn't. If people spent half the time discussing important, pressing issues as we do trivial bullsh!t like this, we'd have solved a ton of problems with this country by now.
Amazing the amount of energy they just spent in analyzing and casting aspersions on the child's future possible sexuality--based on one picture in a catalog. How wonderful of Fox News to be so concerned with the boy's future well-being and not try to stir up controversy and make a non-issue into an issue.
Phew. So glad we have them on the front lines, looking out for the country's well-being and pointing out horrorific travesties like this.
I won't lie, I pretty much dismissed any argument made in this article the moment I read "Fox News..." and then again when I saw "Glen Beck". I won't get into my feelings about that "news" organization or that man because that's not really what's important in this.
The whole thing is ridiculous to say the least. He's a little boy doing something that his mother and probably he thought was fun. So what if he likes pink? It's a color, not a sexual orientation/gender identifier. If he does grow up to be gay or transgender it will have nothing to do with the fact that his mother painted his toenails pink in a picture. There is where my issue with Fox News comes in because they push the agenda that being homosexual or transgender is something that is not pre-determined but can thrust on a person by lifestyle influences and I personally think thats bullsh!t.
When I was little my stepdad let me put curlers in his hair and paint his nails, because it made me happy...not because he was/is secretly gay. Does this mean we shouldn't let little girls play sports any more because it will make them too masculine or will confuse their gender role? No, the only answer to that is no. Also, the concept of a gender role seems too archaic to palatte. If Jay never washed the dishes or I never took out the trash or mowed the lawn then these things wouldn't get done in a timely manner. Just because I can use a power tool does not been my uterus has jumped out of my body and run screaming for the hills.
Fox News = we have to drum up non-important things to talk about because the real news is not pleasing to our view points.
/rant
Yeah, thats about where I stopped, too.
updated 10.03.12
I feel like we're pressured to look a certain way in so many different ways. TV, film/movie, magazines, etc. It sort of made me think of To Wong Foo, when at the end the cop said something along the lines of the Founding Fathers wearing wigs. Guess certain things are allowed.
Fox News sucks horribly.
Zuma Zoom
Well said!
This was interesting!
Agreed. I liked it a lot. Wonder if there is a study of some sort somewhere about the gender neutrality of the way one grew up and how one raises his/her own child? Because when I grew up, my room was yellow (pretty neutral) and because I had boy cousins, we played equally with Barbie's and Tonka trucks. And my favorite color is orange. I'm also pretty practical (what if one child is a boy, the other a girl?) so all of my baby ideas are pretty neutral (greens, browns, yellows, oranges) and not the typical of today pinks/blues.
ETA: I just looked at the photo in question and nobody (in the article or here) commented that there was also a bottle of orange polish in the photo as well. So, Fox News, what is it you really find offensive: that his nails are pink or that they are painted in the first place?? What if they were painted blue, would that be more gender appropriate?