Pretty good piece

Just for old times’ sake, I wandered through the 4-6X section. It was just an arm’s length away, but it was the difference between a Happy Meal at the playground and bulimia at the bar. So far, these clothes had been left mercifully untouched by the wand of the skank fairy, whom I envision as looking a lot like Tara Reid.

Instead of being able to buy pretty things for my daughter, sweet somethings in ice cream colors, I must now shop at big, boxy unisex stores where you can still buy shorts that don’t say DELICIOUS on the bottom or T-shirts that are plain instead of, swear to God, a size 7 belly shirt with MADE YA LOOK on the front. Look at what? There’s not supposed to be anything to look at on a seven-year-old. Because they’re children.

Sweet Jesus, what I’d do for a lousy ladybug collar on a smocked dress. Instead, this season’s Easter look consisted of sequined and chiffon body-hugging sheaths. I know that my daughter and I will fight about clothes in a few years, perhaps horribly, but, for now, there will be none of this Little Ladies of the Night look.

And while moms and daughters have always fought over clothes (let’s face it, even Marcia Brady wore some shockingly short dresses, and those baby-doll pj’s in front of stepbrother Greg were icky), the clothing wars were usually taking place between mom and teen, not mom and first-grader.

When you see a size 7 shirt that says SEXY! or a mom and her little girl strolling through the mall in matching shorts with JUICY scrawled across the butt, you have to wonder what the hell is going on.

The saddest part about all this is that if you dress like you’re a twenty-two-year-old going out to a club after a tough day at work in the city, you don’t get to enjoy being a little kid.

Deliver me from an outraged third-grader who thinks she’s entitled to the entire line at Abercrombie & Fitch. Put on a normal pair of jeans and go play kickball, you brat! And tell yo mama I said so.

But I guess it all depends.  As a member of the Evangelical ghetto (the few, but the oh so proud), I’ve got a subculture that usually reinforces something a little less insane.  I haven’t asked Jennifer, but I think there are places to shop outside New York City that give better options.

On Nov. 8 Morgan Webb vlogged some thoughts on the controversy Manhunt 2, which, though somewhat irreverent, contain a lot of wisdom.

Which brings me to the Golden Compass. This would be a good time to apply the rule that silence is golden.

In some places they also do it to get bigger football players.  Make them repeat early grades too, sometimes.  No, I’m not joking.

When we did our short-lived  stint in public school this was advocated by teachers as much as parents.  “Your son is bored and restless in class so we think it would be good for him to go through the same material next year.”

I guess we are a weird society in what we think should be common and what should be particular.  Marriage?  That’s not a public concern at all.  Education Curriculum?  He need a giant factory to toss all the different children into and they will all come out the other side just the way we want them.  If a kid is not adept in being subject to mass production, then he needs to be shoved through that stage of the machine a second time.

Let us finally consider how naive it is altogether to say: “Man ought to be such and such!” Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the abundance of a lavish play and change of forms—and some wretched loafer of a moralist comments: “No! Man ought to be different” … He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, “Ecce homo!”

Obviously, I’d apply this differently than Nietzsche.  But it does seems to point to the abuse embedded in a public education philosophy.