The Careless Language Of Sexual Violence. There are crimes and then there are crimes and then there are atrocities.
These are, I suppose, matters of scale. I read an article in the New York Times about an eleven-year old girl who was gang raped by eighteen men in Cleveland, Texas. The levels of horror to this story are many, from the victim’s age to what is known about what happened to her, to the number of attackers, to the public response in that town, to how it is being reported. There is video of the attack too, because this is the future. The unspeakable will be televised. The Times article was entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” as if the victim in question was the town itself. The overall tone of the article was what a shame it all was, how so many lives were affected by this one terrible event. We live in a culture that is very permissive where rape is concerned.
Every other movie aired on Lifetime or Lifetime Movie Network features some kind of violence against women. I am trying to connect my ideas here. The destructive culture of pretty pink princesses. Girls the world over often go through a "princess phase," enthralled with anything pink and pretty — most especially the Disney princesses.
When it happened to Peggy Orenstein's daughter Daisy, the contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine stepped back to examine the phenomenon. She found that the girlie-girl culture being marketed to little girls was less innocent than it might seem, and can have negative consequences for girls' psychological, social and physical development. Orenstein's exploration took her to Walt Disney World, the American Girl flagship store in New York City and a child beauty pageant. She details her quest in the new book, "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture" (Harper Collins, Jan. 25). LiveScience: How did you get inspired to write the book?
Orenstein: I'm a mother, and I think that when you're an adult, you don't really notice what's going on so much in the world of kids' culture. In a word, yes. Northwest: Toppenish teen fakes pregnancy as school project. Published: Thursday, April 21, 2011, 3:10 p.m. Gordon King / Yakima Herald-Republic Toppenish High School senior Gaby Rodriguez reveals to the school her pregnancy is a fake. She used padding to simulate the pregnancy during the school year. She made the announcement at a school assembly Wednesday. By Adriana Janovich, Yakima Herald-Republic YAKIMA -- Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump. It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. For the past 6½ months -- the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School -- the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy. Not Your Average Feminist: It's About People, Not Breasts.