Tags
children, heartbreaker, parenting, princess, red pill, relationships, sassy, self confidence, self esteem
I was cleaning out my car and something about my youngest’s booster seat caught my eye that I had never noticed before, the word “Fabulous!” in the middle of a heart on the headrest.
I guess I had chosen the seat simply because it was pink, but had never given much thought to the fabric. Lo and behold as I looked closer I saw in other hearts all over the chair these words, too:
- Princess
- Sweetie
- Sassy
- Heart-breaker
It made me ponder the “go girl” culture that would put such words on a female toddler chair, and how early the “You are fabulous because you are a female” indoctrination begins and how widespread and almost invisible it has become in our culture.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think females can be fabulous, but being female alone does not automatically make one so. Fabulous is a title earned, not a title granted.
And, I don’t especially think “sassy” and “heartbreaker” are good qualities to encourage in a girl. I am not sure why anyone would?
The self esteem movement aimed to make kids (especially girls) feel better about themselves with external validation and unearned accolades such as these. But I would argue they are a double edged sword, subtly implying one is a victim rather than a victor.
True self esteem comes from inside, not outside. It is forged by overcoming struggle, mastering skills, and by proving oneself to oneself and the world. Internal based self esteem is solid, it is not based upon what OTHERS think, but rather what one thinks of SELF.
Self esteem based on external validation, in comparison, is a bottomless pit needing fuel from never ending accolades. It’s unstable. Not real. Dangerous, really. It’s the stuff drama queens, materialists, Facebook “like” trolls, and selfie obsessed gals are made of. “Tell me again, and again, and again you like me, I am fabulous, and worthy!” It lasts as long as the words hang in the air and then more outside validation is needed to keep propping up the externally-based self image.
Luckily my daughter can’t read the words on her car seat. And by the time she can, it will thankfully be obsolete.
Of course I will tell her she is fabulous, and that I love her, but I will also tell her when she is not being so fabulous, and will encourage her to develop a solid internal self confidence and self esteem so that she doesn’t need to be told over and over she has value. She’ll know that she does, and that part of that value is what she brings to the world, not just what she gets from it.
Kind of reminds me of that old tale about building one’s house upon the rock, and not upon the sand.
What do you think? Please share in the comments.
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
I wonder what messages they put on the boys’ seats?
Wait until they become teenagers, then you’ll start to see stuff like “98% naughty, 2% nice”
@ Julia yikes! I saw similar tshirts when shopping for my pre teen the other day. Again, why on earth encourage that???
Are teenagers using booster seats?
This one:
What about the famous one ” Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them”?
@moi if the regulations keep going teens will be in booster seats! I can remember standing up in the backseat hanging over the front at my you fest daughter’s age! No seat belts even!
A kid I know, when he was about 7, was subjected to a video at school with the general theme ‘you are wonderful.’ He came home and asked his mother, ‘mom, how can they be so sure I’m wonderful? They don’t even know me!’
Smarter than the teachers and the video-makers…
As my little story indicates, the inculcation of phony ‘self-esteem’ isn’t limited to girls….However, I do believe it’s much more intensive and continuous in their case.
The “Everybody deserves a medal” mentality drives me nuts. Nobody can be wrong, nobody can be the loser—everyone has to be a winner! Someone winning means that another person loses, and that makes the loser “feel” bad. Stamp out winning! It’s evil to be a winner because the losers have their feelings hurt! It’s all crazy.
This breeds a generation of people who can’t be corrected or told they should work harder to earn respect.
My daughter is 8 and I struggle to find clothes for her that aren’t completely inappropriate that don’t say things like brat or sassy or whatever. It’s extraordinary frustrating so I tend to stick to basics.
keep open, honest communication on the table all the time. my girls know i’ll tell them the truth, as it is. they know that if they’re beautiful, i’ll tell them. but if they’re acting like brats, i’ll tell them that, too. they know that, past first impressions, the outside only matters as much as they can back it up from the inside.
Agreed Cyn, I won’t buy any of that stuff either!
Not that it matters all that much but, if I were in the business of making car seats, why would I want to make one that is specific to one gender? I would be limiting my market to half. If I made one that was generic, it would apply to all.
Agreed Fuzzie. For some reason they are all pink or blue (or maybe purple and forest green.) There are very few truly gender neutral models. Maybe the marketers hope that if you have another child, you’ll need to get the opposite color scheme if you have the opposite?
And now that I think of it, this booster seat was also my oldest’s booster seat! Lol… that actually did save me a lot of $$$ to not have to go out and buy all new stuff…
Nice essay. Very important ideas. It think it comes under the category of saying the truth. Not to say someone is great when they are not.
Fuzzie – when my babies were little, everything like that was still gender-neutral. i remember when they started making car seats, strollers, etc, in gender-specific colors … after my babies were too old for that.
Side note, perfect example of how while I can be hyper aware of some things I can also own a booster seat that I have seen daily for the past 10+ years and never really noticed the fabric! Lol.
RPG and Ame,
I can see how manufacturers would do that. Had they made a generic seat that would take care of another kid that would be a lost sale. Had they made a specific seat, they had a chance at another sale. That is cold. Parents of kids that age are usually cash strapped.
@RPGN: Of the 4 labels, I actually do kind of like ‘sassy’. My middle one has a good helping of sass in her personality, and I think it helps her to keep from being walked on by others. She’s definitely not been brought up as a princess, driving her pickup and shooting her 700-P.
Moi I prefer “spunky” to describe that vs “sassy.” Spunky is standing up for oneself, not being afraid of the world, confident. Sassy is more like bratty and back talking, a know it all. Spunky I would consider a positive, sassy not so much. It’s cute at times In a little girl I suppose but in an older woman its a pain.
double standards for your daughters? understand this, others won’t rationalize her sass in the same way
No, not a double standard. I actually like a little sass in women. Although maybe @RPGs choice of “Spunky” is a little more appropriate at to the point.
This does raise a point that often fathers (not saying you Moi, don’t take this personal at all) can be part of the cycle if they fill their little girl’s heads w this nonsense or overdo the “whatever princess wants, princess gets” thing. It is true some dads are overindulgent and that can lead to big problems for their daughters as adults. Moms over encouraging the “go girl” mentality do similar damage but in another way. In the end we are raising these children to be future marriage partners and members of society, teaching them they are the special snowflake center of the universe who can do no wrong serves no one.
@RPG: no offense taken at all. I do spoil her at times (even at 21), but I also hold her accountable for what she does wrong.
Took her truck away for doing something wrong.
Bought her an AimPoint Pro for Xmas.
Balance is the key!
Well said. It reminds me of when I was a preteen/teen, in the 90s. I had shirts that said things like “brat”, “skinny bitch” and even “eye candy.” Very cringe worthy to think about today. Empowering messages and encouragement is important for both girls and boys, but we need to teach them exactly what you said, that it comes from within.
Girls and women tend to be more narcissistic then men – for good biological reasons; in the SMP men sell what they do, women sell who they are.
So men tend to display the fruits of what they do – cars, watches. flash the cash, etc, whilst women tend to display who they are – clothes, make-up etc but most importantly will try to make everything about themselves. They have to – attention is women’s currency of choice because you cant ‘sell’ yourself if no one is even looking. There is nothing wrong with this.
Except when it gets out of control. Earlier, saner, cultures understood the corrosive effects of women’s narcissism and put constraints on the way women behaved to limit it’s expression. Women’s narcissism was moderated.
Now we have gone the other way and actually encourage it. The very first powerpoint my daughter was taught at school at 7 years of age was entitled ‘All About Me’. Of all the subjects under the sun, this was what the school considered the best. A sign of the times we live in.
A number of my daughter’s peers (now mid teens) seem to have been raised in a ‘princess bubble’. They seemed to get whatever they want and now we are seeing the consequences; snarky, obnoxious, entitled attitudes which with depressing regularity seems to pre-dispose them to segway into slutty behavior.
Of course with narcissism being encouraged it is no longer just girls who are turning out like this – a fair number of boys are as well. But the effects seem more deleterious in the girls than the boys.
Fortunately there are still a good number of parents out there teaching their children to see and limit narcissistic behavior. But it is a constant battle against those who don’t and the wider culture in general to guide your daughter along the right path.
But it has to be done. From my observations, the costs are simply too high not to.
Pics or it didn’t happen! lol 😉
Thank God I don’t have daughters! I can see how an overindulgent father could lead to out of control hypergamy via the princess role. These girls are headed for a hard fall later. There will be no living with them.
As for sluttiness, best to blame frivorcing wives who alienate fathers.
Ya want sassy. princess. overindulged snowflake?
Go to any horsebarn. Literally the Daddy buy me a pony types.
Except they go. Have someone bring the horse out of the pristine stall, tack up, have a lesson generally ending in a pout because of the stupid horse, get off and get into Daddys mercedes.
Then the real people cool the horse down, ride it properly so it knows it is a good horse, bed it, feed it. In the morning turn it out to pasture, scoop the stall and clean the tack. The lowly people, the peons paid by daddy.
Course the funny part is the bad horse that wont listen, picks up the wrong lead, even bucks turns into a graceful thing of beauty when someone who actually invests i learning the art gets on.
I had one princess trying to get a horse to canter. Wasnt clear in cues, got scared in the gather. the horse was frustrated and trying to listen. Finally got fedup and gave the tiniest buck. Not to throw her but to show displeasure. Princess screamed. Dove off and yelled “Get rid of him, he’s dangerous.”.
So To prove a point I took off the saddle and reins. Got on bareback and launched into a full canter from a standing start. Cantering circles around princess I asked “So this is the dangerous horse who cant canter?”
Afterwards Daddy came up to me from the stands and said “Thanks. She’s been needing that for a long time but the Mrs won’t let me say anything.” Shook his hand while staring at Mommy Icequeen in the stands. Funny they sd the horse and never came back.
Oh and I was not the coach.
I was just working my horse in the other end of the arena. The female coach knows horses but couldn’t get thru to the princess. So I just stepped in to show both that it was not the horse but the rider. ya cant lie to a horse.
Horseman – wow, sounds like you taught dad a lesson, too.
Horseman,
You just reminded me of the woman who had the two mares that I looked after for so long. She would trailer them back soaking wet from the ride and let them loose. She wanted me to plumb a shower for them with hot water.
I now know why I turned down her offer to ride. I didn’t want to owe her anything.
Ladders…”The very first powerpoint my daughter was taught at school at 7 years of age was entitled ‘All About Me’.”
Two problems with this approach: a) the subject, and b) the medium.
I used to occasionally see Marine Corps vans which had a sword painted on the side, with the motto: “Earned. Never Given.”
One of the biggest divisions in American society, I think, is between those who understand this concept and those who do not.
@horseman, my oldest is taking riding lessons from a local woman. She insists the kids do all the work, as it preps the horse and helps with bonding as you say. I am glad she does that. I wouldn’t like the princess style horse lessons!
Come to live on Degoba these special snowflakes should.
Learn about reality they will
New post at Spawny’s there is,
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/differences/
Yes do check out Spawny’s too guys! Lots of great posts there on these topics as well! And good commentary (including sometimes typos free comments by me, but not too often typo free! Lol.)
And also, these lessons are $30 for an hour, probably much less than princess lessons cost! Lol. Win-win!
The teacher is actually a very neat lady, she also does animal guided therapy so I have noticed her doing so w my daughter a bit (who is on the shy side). She’s teaching her to stand tall, project confidence, show the horse it’s all OK via body language and her personal energy etc. I think it’s well worth the $$$ just for those lessons alone! She does the opposite for boisterous/bossy kids she says, teaches them honor the horse and to not push too hard, too fast, etc. Interesting stuff!
RPG,
I think that you found a good teacher for your daughter. Feeding the horse is very important.
@ fuzzie I have met some pretty wacked out horse people in my life so I asked this gal a whole lot of questions as well as just let her talk as I felt it put. I am pretty picky about who I let influence my kids, I am trying hard to insulate them from most of the bunk advice and such aimed at girls today. Best I can anyway w/o isolating them too much. But no way I would let a princess type teach her about horses (or life!)
You did good. I would bet that even you younger one knows better that my horse lady.
Is it more difficult to raise boys or girls these days? I have noticed parents pushing their daughters into aggressive sports and trying to masculinize them while the boys are left to their own devices. The promotion of self esteem has gone over the top. I once had to advise a student who graduated as valedictorian of her class in high school and advised her to take remedial classes because her testing scores for math and english were below college level. She was obviously very angry and disappointed that the school system had cheated her out. In the end, the quest for equality using feel good policies have led to the destruction of the meritocracy. This has also ended up in giving us ” generation jello”, a generation of young people unable to think critically, unable to tolerate contrary opinions and need safe spaces to shield themselves from the adversities of the world.
There have been quite a few horror stories about people who graduated, went to work…and were so upset that their first performance appraisal wasn’t “walks on water, doesn’t even get feet wet”, or the absence of a hoped-for bonus or promotion, that….***they had one of their PARENTS call their boss***.
The mind boggles.
David Foster – “or the absence of a hoped-for bonus or promotion, that….***they had one of their PARENTS call their boss***.”
– – – – –
that is beyond mind boggling … that is … i don’t even know what that is. that they would even think to have their parents call their boss … that their parents would even make that call … *SCREAM!!!*
it’s one thing, as a parent, to have your kid’s back – at any age … it’s another to CYA. or, rather, CTA.
When my daughter was in middle school I caught her wearing something like Ash described
I tossed her in my car, literally, drove to the bad part of town and told her the next time I catch her dressed like a whore, I would drop her off at this exact street corner to live like a whore
Raising kids in these fallen times is difficult IF you put unconditional love and dumb shit like that over the family name. It’s a lot easier when virtue means more then squishy shit
if approving of one’s daughter dressing like a whore is considered ‘unconditional love’ … someone’s got a super screwed up version of unconditional love.
and, honestly … it is refreshing to see a dad who is willing to tell his daughter NO! i have been absolutely shocked at what dads have approved their daughters to wear.
+10 to Ton for being a dad who tells his daughter No.
my girls know they have a choice in what to wear … they can dress appropriately and live in my house, or they can be stupid – and if under 18, they can have a bare room, one blanket, and 3 changes of clothes. over 18, they can move out. those choices apply to just about everything else, too. their choice.
A friend of mine complained to a while ago that she could not find any clothing for her pre- adolescent daughter because the clothes in the stores were too skimpy and slutty!! She was very saddened and frustrated because of it.
jg1 – it is very frustrating … and truly very sad 😦
This is why everybody needs to learn how to sew their own clothes.
i’m terrible at sewing clothes. i can sew just about anything else, except clothes.
just gotta be creative when shopping.
As an undergraduate in the 90’s, I noticed the mothers of the incoming freshman were dressed more sluttier than the daughters. It was as though the mothers were competing with the daughters. I thought that it was appalling because the adults are not setting the standards and being role models for their kids! When did the value system turn upside down like this? At least in the 90’s the women still rather feminine, until we hit the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the millennium where the women who coming into my classes were very muscular and unfeminine. I wonder at times who turned the switch on? It was also hard to adjust to the reality of having mini she-hulks in my classes!!!
JG1 –
that is very interesting … haven’t thought of the timeline of it all. i’m about ten years ahead of you … an undergraduate in the early 80’s, and our mothers still looked like our mothers (remembering all of us moving into our dorms our freshman year).
but, you’re right … somewhere toward the end of the 90’s, things changed. i remember that maternity fashions changed from, well, maternity whale clothes to ‘sexy’ around the turn of the millennium because i delivered my 2nd baby in January 2000, and by then, my maternity clothes were becoming waaay out-of-fashion. the term ‘sexy’ took on new meanings and became mainstream, and moms no longer wanted to look like moms … they wanted to be sexy. then, not only did they want to look sexy, they wanted their little girls to look sexy – competition. i remember when my babies were preschoolers other moms describing their daughters in certain clothes and bikinis as ‘sexy.’ i had a lot going on in my life at that time, but i remember being dumbfounded that moms would want to refer to their toddler/preschool daughters as sexy. because of this, the fashions for little girls changed drastically from looking like little girls to looking like ‘hot chicks’ who were actually only preschoolers, kindergarteners, etc. and the moms were celebrating this, proclaiming this, relishing this. moms getting boob jobs became standard issue at this time, too … and moms strutting with their little girl daughters running around town. the top-styles changed for women from loose-fitting to tight fitting … causing moms who wanted to compete with their daughters to get those boob jobs and shape up. also, there was a lot more affluence, so moms could stay at home, go to the gym, work out, play tennis, strut around in their tiny clothes, and look hot … and have the money to search for the hottest clothes for their little girls, too.
True, the whole “cougar” years were bad as well, hopefully this is no longer a “thing?”
Our culture does not value the various female life stages really anymore (older women want to be forever young!) and it creates a lot of weirdness. The time to be young is when one is young, not when one is old enough to be a (young) grandma practically… it’s just, um, yeah… unsightly. Better to age with grace and style, embrace life seasons as they come.
I never had any trouble raising a modest daughter. Despite the divorce that no one anticipated, her mother and I were on the same page w r t children being children. She would feed them and put them to bed before I came home. We didn’t have cable and the TV was kept in the closet. She liked American Girl dresses, and learned to sew at 5 because she w!as bumped from kindergarten to second grade the first week — to strengthen her fingers for using a pencil. We lived in fancy horse country (Middleburg, VA) but I refused to buy her a horse. Her mother did a great job teaching her that children have too much self respect to sexualize themselves.
I recall two incidents that were problematic. At 13 her mom bought her some shoes that were too old for her. My Russian girlfriend went ballistic and I brought up the matter w the ex- . Shoes disappeared. At sixteen she stayed out too late once. Her mom agreed that she’d earned a grounding.
But at 16 she went off to college, unworldly and barely pubescent. I flew her in my plane and moved her in; it was the same dorm where I met her mom. I’m not sure who was more wrecked, but I bailed before she saw me bawling.
She graduated at 19 with two majors and three languages, all american in lacrosse, and most of her private pilot license. Off to NYC.
Here’s the punch line: now she lives, at 28, the GoGurrl life. Fashion exec, marathoner, Euro travel, no continuity in love. I have to game her to keep our relationship functional.
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BV – wow. Wow.
kudos to you for working to keep your relationship functional with your daughter. whether she knows it or not, she needs her Daddy.
I think it is sad that a father has to game is his own daughter to have a functional relationship with his own child. Whatever happened normal parent-child relationships? Why can’t a father and mother communicate with their children, the way it used to be? I have never been into the ‘game’ thing, but those who can use it and have success with women, kudos to them. Does, Ugogirrl mean, no marriage or children living in a cracker box in a big city, earning a good salary and having fabulous friends with a busy social life? Are these distractions to continue a depopulation agenda?
Congrats on raising a successful young woman. And I am so sorry to read the relationship part.
“Fabulous is a title earned, not a title granted.” -I can respect that
there is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/young-men-part-i/
It really sux that even toddlers are being sexualized like this!! As Sue suggests, the only way is to sew your own clothes. It may very well come to that, considering the way things are headed.
I do not care if “fabulousness” is earned or bestowed, but this is the “Sex and the City” meme all successful young women are following. They enjoy big city life, have high earning jobs, hot friends and hot night life…I see a lot of this in the Evan Mark Katz blog where a lot of women in their late 20’s to mid 40’s who are high earners with fabulous friends but they are unable to or do not have time to find love.
Another new post at Spawny’s there is
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/missing-the-boat-part-ii/
…I see a lot of this in the Evan Mark Katz blog where a lot of women in their late 20’s to mid 40’s who are high earners with fabulous friends
Wonder how truly fabulous the friends really are I do
i think the bottom line is that parenting is hard. and no matter how great a job you do, kids grow up and become adults and have the freedom to make their own choices … choices we, as parents, have no control over. choices that sometimes make us celebrate … sometimes make us sigh … and sometimes make us wonder what the heck we could have done different to avoid *that*. but … sometimes … it’s just not about us. it’s about them. and that is often even harder to accept.
——-
jg1 – there are actually good choices in clothing for kids, but sometimes it takes a bit more time and creativity to find. that crap-clothing is out there, but we don’t have to buy it.
often times it’s standing up to your pre-teen, teenager, and telling them you don’t care what all the other moms are buying their kids, you are not going to buy that for yours … and as long as they’re living in your house, they’re not wearing it. i’m not talking about making your kid look like they just walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie … they can still look fashionable … just more selective. of course, it begins earlier than that … mom and dad deciding that those decisions are made in the home and not by comparing themselves to every other parent/family/kid out there. my girls know that i don’t give a flip what other parents and kids are doing.
a lot of times it’s the moms … the mom has to not care what her own friends are going to think if she doesn’t dress her child like all the other kids.
also, location has a lot to do with this. if you’re in a city, the way kids dress will be different than in a rural small town. still … it can all be dealt with appropriately if the mom is willing. kids are going to whine and complain and push the envelope; it’s the parents job to draw the line and stick to it.
“Our culture does not value the various female life stages really anymore”
Not “our culture”. Women. Women don’t value femininity, elevating masculinity. Women reject staying home to be mothers and stay at home wives, the very model of femininity. Instead, women embrace leaving home to get jobs and build a career, the very model of masculinity. These women forgot that the reason men do this is to support their wives and children, not because it’s somehow more gratifying and fulfilling to leave the people you care about the most to spend time doing things you find so tedious and boring people have to pay to do those things. Working isn’t about fulfillment and never has been.
Men have always valued women, in all life stages. Women, though, want to hold onto that feeling of being a sexual object. of being desired by all men who look at her, thus rejecting being a wife, and being motherly and grandmotherly. Somehow feminism became dominant in Hollywood and various entertainment centers and started sowing this toxic culture where it could. This has, as anyone can expect, bad consequences.
Thankfully, there are enough men and women who actually value masculinity and femininity that this awfulness hasn’t enveloped our society. Most parts of American culture do value women in all their life stages. For decades, though, that culture has been in retreat, having been branded PATRIARCHY!! ™, thus mysoginist. More unsettling, though, is that it’s not clear whether or not this retreat will stop and be reversed. Some rays of hope that this will happen, but right now, that’s all it is.
Think on that: women branded the culture that valued femininity as being mysoginist.
In a twisted perspective, this isn’t surprising. The birth of feminism, the cultural movement that came to demean and devalue femininity, was started by single women (unable to atract a man), bored housewives (who could afford to outsource her feminine duties), and old maids (women who had passed their child bearing years) Women don’t really value femininity, rather masculinity, the same way that men don’t really value masculinity, rather femininity. That’s why women are attracted to men and men are attracted to women. Somehow the wires got crossed in some women who thought that since they valued masculininty more than femininity, women should be more masculine. These people are weird and should be openly told so. Somehow, it became sexist to do this.
Alex…. I could not agree with you more. It’s too bad that only women who are older truly understand this.
Alex wrote: “Working isn’t about fulfillment and never has been.”
Well… there’s work and there’s work.
Lucille Ball was just in the news today and I’m thinking of her show (and her real life). The Lucy in her show was always trying to “work” (in her husband’s show business career). The real-life Lucy was a pretty capable “worker” too. The show was done for laughs, but the fact is that there were many talented “working” women in that show, so the concept is not exactly new.
Women aren’t pushing men aside to work as ditch diggers or garbage collectors. But there is some “work” that is more like a calling, and women can get that calling just like men do. They always have. If God didn’t want them to do anything besides taking care of children, He wouldn’t have given them talents and aptitudes to do other things.
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There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/so-simple/