Libby Lu and the Marginalization of Tweens

I wrote this piece for the amazing Liz Funk’s awesome blog for tween girls, Girl Headquarters. (Send this site to your daughters, nieces and sisters, it rocks!) I thought I would re-post it in its entirety here and on my blog for the Times Union. Enjoy!

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“Go ahead and complain as much as you want about the clothes…but it builds self-confidence for girls.”

“Yes they have make-up and racy clothes there but it is up to us to show our daughters what is appropriate and what is not.”

“It’s pedophile bait, pure and simple. Don’t you wonder who’s looking at your daughter when she’s walking around the mall dressed like that?”

These comments come from mothers embroiled in a debate on a Washington Post blog about the retail and “experience” chain Club Libby Lu, a store (with about 100 locations nationwide) that gives 5-to-11-year-old girls the chance to very publicly live out every little girl’s fantasy: to be a princess.

It is a “fantasy land” where tweens can have their hair and makeup done by the employees of Libby Lu, who call every girl “princess” and grant all of their wishes of fake eyelashes and pink hair extensions come true. Oh, and they have costumes that would likely infuriate their fathers if they could enter the store without being mistaken for dirty old men. Girls who do not yet have breasts or hips walk around the store in costumes of halter tops and low-slung jeans and are given lots of attention by friends and moms.

Before I begin my tangent, I am by no means accusing mothers and fathers who let their daughters go to Libby Lu of poor parenting. It is hard to tell a child she can’t go to her friend’s birthday party because Mom and Dad don’t agree with going to Libby Lu – especially when hugely popular celebrities like Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers are partnered with the store. In our media-saturated age, it gets harder and harder to protect girls from believing they are too fat or too ugly to be accepted.

One representative of Libby Lu said that it is necessary for employees to use “girlfriend-language.” The representative also added, “We get into the heads of our customers, with phrases like ‘hey, girlfriend.’”

Unfortunately, that’s not the only way Libby Lu gets into customers’ heads. Because their customers are impressionable young girls, or tweens – the group most marketed to in America.

For group birthday parties (the Libby Lu specialty), parents can expect to pay about $25 to $50 for each fellow “princess” their daughter invites to her party, depending on the store and which package she picks.

Take-home goodies from birthday parties or individual visits can include makeup compacts, picture frames, sashes, temporary tattoos, hair accessories, pink sequin tank tops, feather boas, sequin bracelets, and small stuffed animal dogs. You have probably guessed that pretty much all of these things are pink. Talk about an all-in-one deal; parents can look forward to their daughters following in the footsteps of Paris Hilton – including looking like a fool in public – with just one visit to the store.

Many parents don’t have a problem with the store because they say it’s a place where their daughters can dress up as pop stars and princesses, or just put on makeup and pink hair extensions for fun. And mothers (who possibly transfer their wishes to be little princesses again onto their own daughters) not only condone their children walking around as older, more extravagant versions of themselves – they encourage it and even post their daughters’ pictures on the Internet. A quick Google Images search of “Libby Lu” is not only a rich resource for pedophiles, but examples how oblivious these mothers are of who can see photos of their daughters looking like the Pussycat Dolls (minus 15 years).

Since when did all little girls want to be – or have to be – princesses? They walk under a huge crown logo just to get into the store, and as writer Sree Roy points out, they are greeted by large mirrors with decals that read “spoiled,” “you’re gorgeous,” and “I love your hair.” Contrary to popular belief, little girls are not programmed to love pink. Or makeup. Or “pretty” things that are forced upon them by a society unwilling to accept girls who deviate from the ultra-“feminine,” Hannah Montana and High School Musical norm.

What about the girls who like to read? Or girls who like soccer better than dressing up? What if the costumes that are supposed to fit the customers just won’t fit? What about girls who can’t afford to go to Libby Lu, or the parents who work two jobs to pay for their daughter’s birthday party but still don’t earn enough for a Libby Lu party? These girls are all ostracized from their friends at school – and possibly bullied by girls who can go to Libby Lu – because they are different. That hardly promotes equality and understanding.

This is just one more thing to keep little girls from being anything but a princess. Libby Lu is simply following suit behind Barbie and Disney princesses in the race to keep little girls from stepping outside of their gender roles. It keeps girls complacent by making them pink-and-sequin consumers, all the while teaching them that peer validation (and validation by the mothers who bring them there) is contingent upon cool hair extensions, glittery eye makeup and pink gloss that makes their lips look more childish than the girls wish them to be.

Libby Lu sure is a fantasy land. Because while it may be “natural” for little girls to want to dress up and wear makeup, they wouldn’t know how to do those things – and wishing their childhoods away as they do – if their  female relatives weren’t so beholden to makeup and “feminine” accessories, or if we grown ups didn’t tell them it was okay to walk around a mall shop with a tube top on at age five. Tweens are not meant to wear fake eyelashes and midriff-baring shirts, but we as a society are preparing them to do so when they start to grow breasts in their teens.

Libby Lu may boost their confidence, but that’s because moms and employees are calling them princesses as they stand around all dressed up, and perhaps don’t tell them that enough when they look like actual plain-old little girls. In actuality, we are teaching girls to feel good about themselves only as hypersexualized, done-up versions of themselves. It teaches girls at an even earlier age that they must look hot and sexy to be understood and accepted. This same mentality is what drives teens and women toward eating disorders and body image issues.

Girls this young are incapable of making judgment calls and knowing that it is inappropriate for five-year-olds to be sexy. It is necessary to teach children to be critical of these trends, to know that people are trying to make money off of them and to know what they are comfortable with. If mothers take their kids to Libby Lu, they should stand their ground and let their daughters know what pushes the limits of appropriateness and why.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a smart girl or a sporty girl on the inside unless you’ve got the halter top and sexy makeup that will make people look at you in the first place. Girls learn the way of the world early on at Libby Lu, because in thousands of years, women still have to put on high heels and eyeliner to be important.

VH1 Loves Every Decade

When VH1 began their I Love The 80s goldmine a few years ago, I have to say that I was on board. I’m not sure that I’m considered a child of the 80s by people who lived through the entire decade, but it was fun looking back at old toys and TV shows that spilled into the 90s and made a lasting impression on me, in addition to understanding part of my childhood. (Like the part about why my mom crimped my hair as a 5-year-old in 1992 when clearly crimping was cool ten years before that.)

To target a new audience, VH1 came out with I Love The 70s. It was somewhat enjoyable, and this time they brought in a few new players to analyze nuggets of pop culture so that people tuning in could yell, “Oh my God, I totally forgot about that [toy/song/show/movie/fad/cultural event/time we didn't know about the Internet and life was so simple and fun]!” Then came I Love The 90s, which gave kids my age a reason to watch VH1 (before the premieres of such gems as Flavor of Love and Hogan Knows Best) and bitch about the Spice Girls breaking up. Those I Love shows were followed by a landslide of sequel shows to capitalize on this nostalgia: I Love The 70s Volume 2, I Love The 80s Strikes Back, I Love the 80s 3-D (seriously), and I Love The 90s Part Deux. And NOW, we have the opportunity to be nostalgic about things that were still happening. Best Week Ever features TV and news clips followed by snarky commentary from regular VH1 comedians every Friday night.

Now, we can reminisce about the 00’s (what are we calling this decade, anyway?) with VH1’s I Love The New Milennium, which premiered tonight at 9 PM with the year 2000. So far, they have just reminded me about shows that are still running new episodes (Survivor, CSI, etc.), songs that are still played on the radio, Razor scooters that are still widely ridden by youngsters, events that still impact our lives (the 2000 election) and items that still irritate the hell out of me (see image above). I am now able to think about and watch things that I see daily when I’m not actually seeing them.

Couldn’t we at least waited until this decade was over? I’m waiting for the premiere of I Loved The Last Hour. I’ll also be waiting for Michael Ian Black to get a career outside of making fun of the last 35 years of American culture.

Condolences

My deepest sympathy and prayers go to the family of Joshua Szostak, who was found today after being missing for four months. Josh was a kind spirit and a downright nice kid whose life was unfairly cut short.

To express your condolences, you can write the Szostak family here.

The Doctor Who Hears Voices

There are few positive aspects of having only five channels. (Obviously, basic cable is a bit different in the UK.) One of them, though, is having easy access to quality news and documentaries. The Doctor Who Hears Voices, a film by director Leo Regan, challenges the social stigma of having a mental illness and raises ethical questions about the use of medicine and being honest with employers about suffering from mental problems. It aired last night on Channel 4.

Rufus May, the psychologist who treats Ruth, believes that medicine can be detrimental to a patient’s health. (“When you give someone medicine, it makes them dumb and shuts them up. You’re not making them better, you’re making them stupid,” he said.)

To protect Ruth’s identity, the director used an actress to re-enact conversations between Rufus and Ruth. The actress had nothing to go on but notes about Ruth’s condition. The director says however that his interviews with Rufus are pure documentary.

Ruth is a new doctor who reveals to her employers that she has thought about suicide. She is deemed unfit to practice and is temporarily released from her position at a hospital. Ruth’s employers – who only believe that she is depressed, and are not aware of the voices – require her to take medication. She is determined to return to work and rather than take medication, she asks Rufus for help. She must undergo a series of evaluations, during which Ruth must act like she is getting better while her voice tells her that she is a fraud and a liar.

While she is working at a nursing home, Ruth is convinced that the bubbles in the fish tank are controlling someones heart. She says that the voice tells her constantly that she is a “worthless piece of shit,” that she will never get a job and will end up alone, in addition to encouraging her to kill herself in different ways. While at first Rufus thinks that she is only a danger to herself, Ruth’s voice begins telling her to kill her parents and refrain from seeing Rufus. Ruth is paranoid and believes that the government is following her, and that Rufus is trying to kidnap her when he invites her to his home. She waits on his front porch for over two hours before ringing the doorbell for fear that her voice is correct.

There is one scene where Ruth, who is bipolar, has a particularly difficult time and is having a manic fit. She darts in and out of the road in front of a garbage truck. Instead of succumbing to the voice or telling her to pop a pill, Rufus encourages her to physically fight with him to express her anger at the voice in her head.

When the filmmaker implies that none of these delusions are real, Ruth is made to feel crazy and gets angry. For schizophrenics, these delusions are as real as anything they have ever lived, and diminishing these feelings by chalking it up to a mental illness is insulting. (It is much like telling a depressed person to shake off sadness and be happy, or telling a person with a panic disorder to calm down.) Much like a psychologist would analyze dreams or earlier life situations, Rufus sees the symbolism in Ruth’s delusions, even relating the beating heart and the fish tank to the death of her brother, who died of a heart attack. By the end of the film, he and Ruth identify the voice as a bully that put Ruth down in high school.

Rufus at times attempts to talk to the voice through Ruth and tells it to stop misleading Ruth. He assures Ruth that he cares about her and tells her to stop pushing people away – a lifelong problem she has had that may have been the beginning of her feeling trapped and alone.

Throughout the film, Rufus’s radical approaches to treating schizophrenia are continually challenged by psychologists who insist on using medication almost 100% of the time. Rufus admits that his own experiences overcoming schizophrenia might make him less understanding about its perceived necessity. One actually says that if a patient of his refused to take medication, he would have them institutionalized, restrained by nurses and forcibly injected. This type of attitude can lead patients to feel humiliated and degraded, as well as helpless and even more out of control than they might without being forced to take medication.

Rufus implies that the trauma of a psychiatric ward makes it harder or even impossible to overcome schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. “You’re mentally ill, they’re not…these people will never invite you home for dinner,” he says. “These people think you are genetically different to them, a degenerate.” By making patients feel inferior and treating them as if they are animals who are not smart or capable enough to get well, institution workers could actually be prohibiting them from getting better.

Rufus admits that he had to lie about his medical history because he had mental problems in order to train as a psychologist. Mental illness is so highly stigmatized that if you are diagnosed and you have to apply for jobs, most psychologists will tell you to refrain from telling your potential employers about your problem.

The end of the film shows Ruth back to work, happy and on the road to recovery. She says that she still hears the voice, but the problem is not the voice. In fact, she said, she has gotten used to it. “Him being here isn’t a boundary,” she tells the director. “He’s not the problem. It’s if people found out. That would be the problem.”

The documentary really analyzes the question of whether or not people with mental illnesses can live normal lives. While schizophrenia is not as common as such mental problems as depression or bipolar disorder, most every day people are no strangers to mental illness. In fact, it is estimated that one in four people deal with a mental illness at some point in their lives. So before you dismiss people with mental illnesses as crazy, remember that there are likely many people in your life – perhaps even yourself – who struggle to overcome mental problems every day.

Speaker’s Corner

This Sunday morning I decided to wake up early and head over to Speaker’s Corner, an area in Hyde Park (near Marble Arch) where anyone can stand on something that makes them a little taller than everyone else and spew any kind of hateful, obnoxious shit their hearts desire. I clearly decided not to participate because I didn’t have anything particularly misogynistic, racist, jingoistic or homophobic to say this weekend.

On paper, Speaker’s Corner is a truly admirable expression of democracy and free speech; there is a place for the intellectual, the dumb, the poor, the crude and the downright crazy. A London tradition since the mid-1800s, the area has was frequented by influential leaders like Karl Marx and George Orwell.

But when does free speech become inconvenient and downright ridiculous? When guys like the one below loudly proclaim that women should go back to the kitchen, get naked and be available for him to grope whenever he feels like it. (My New York attitude and inner feminist obviously did not sit well with this man, who, after screaming that women are incompetent and stupid, tried to hit on me, which provoked a reaction from me which is not fit to be printed or read by my parents.) I’ve included some pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

The he-man woman hater screaming on his soapbox. Note the only three teeth in his head.
All of them were yellow.

One of his more appropriate signs.

A crowd gathers around one of the speakers who could actually intelligently articulate his thoughts.

This guy perhaps offended me most by singing a really terrible rendition of The Clash’s “London Calling.”

In London and have something offensive to say? Find out how to visit here.