Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
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is this ad geared towards the parents or the children?
[Read the article: Tonka trucks are made for boys!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've seen ads for both the Rose Petal Cottage and the Tonka truck now, but both were aired during the news. They seem to be addressing the parents, not the kids. Are the same ads airing during Saturday morning cartoons or other children's programming, or do they have different ones that basically say "pester Mommy to buy you this"?
Boys ARE different. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but when I was teaching preschool, it usually wasn't the girls who were throwing their socks down the toilets/ smearing boogers on each other/ growling at each other from across the table for no apparent reason/ getting in fistfights for the hell of it, etc. Nor, when they played with the toy cars, did everything always end in a multi-car fiery explosion.
Both the toys look pretty cool--don't know why they made the Rose Petal Cottage so explicitly feminine unless it was to compete with the gender-neutral playhouses made by Little Tykes that are marketed to both boys AND girls. You know, parents who know they have a "princess" daughter who would be happier with something frilly...
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would you be so disturbed by it if she WAS a slut?
[Read the article: My girlfriend's daughter is dressing like a stripper for Halloween!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's what creeps me out about this guy--he's not so disturbed by a 16-year-old dressing as a stripper for Halloween, he's disturbed by a VIRGIN 16-year-old dressing like a stripper for Halloween.
She's not his daughter, she's not his stepdaughter, and while there'd be no way in hell I'd let my hypothetical 16-year-old go out as a stripper for Halloween...it's really her mother's decision and not the end of the world one way or the other.
That said, I'm bored to tears by all the slutty costumes. Sex isn't a sacred cow anymore. And don't give me psuedo-feminist crap about inhibitions and prudery etc. You aren't striking any kind of blow for empowerment by dressing like a run-of-the-mill hooker. Remember Sophia Loren's saying, "Sex appeal is 50% what you got and 50% what people think you got"? When you dress in the same cookie-cutter Made-in-China whore outfit as everybody else, people ain't gonna think you got much more than what's already on display. By all means be sexy, but use some imagination!
(BTW, just finished my sewing on my own costume. Black shoes, black socks, long black skirt, white apron, pilgrim bonnet, black sweater with the red letters "JF" sewn on it...and a very cute little African-American baby doll in pilgrim clothes. You figure it out.)
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low-cut blouse on secretary? OK. on executive? bad.
[Read the article: Women at work and other stylistic concerns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wasn't this all grappled with 20+ years ago in the movie "Working Girl"? The more things change...
Slightly OT, but what I'd someday like to see is an article about how social background/perceptions of social background work out along male and female executives and politicians. Whether you like either of them or not, no one's really arguing that both Bill and Hillary Clinton aren't highly intelligent and skilled politicians in their own rights. Bill, though, is the poor son of a five-times married mother from Hope, Arkansas, while Hillary is from the upper-middle class Chicago suburb of Park Ridge. Hillary's background probably wouldn't hurt perceptions of a male candidate, but how would people handle a trailer trash woman running for president?
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the problem is partly the titles...
[Read the article: The Daringly Irrelevant Book for Girls?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...partly the contents.
I got nothing against boys OR girls making tree forts or friendship bracelets or whatever. Why "The Dangerous Book for Boys" wasn't "The Dangerous Book for Boys and Girls" is a little beyond me, since I paged through it in the bookstore and a lot of those activities were things I enjoyed as a girl, and I wasn't a tomboy.
But I don't remember seeing anything about stocks/bonds/female leaders in the book for boys. Why? Will the boys not also grow up and need to manage their investments?
And come on--the reign of Elizabeth I was full of enough bloodshed and intrigue to satisfy the most Tom Sawyerish of boys.
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wow, what's with all the hating on this woman going to England?
[Read the article: Do I have a drinking problem?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She had a bad childhood and only recently figured out what a stable relationship looked like--geez, now that she has every duck in a row socially, how dare she take any risk in order to pursue her own dream! She ought to devote the rest of her life to managing all those relationships, just like she did as a kid and a young adult, except that now it's OK because the relationships are good ones!
And, my God, starting a Ph.D. at 32--she ought to be home tending to her bad hip or something! (Me smells other academics who are trying to narrow the tenure competition by discouraging anyone and everyone else from completing their Ph.Ds.)
Maybe she and her S.O. feel the relationship is strong enough to withstand the temporary physical separation. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, but we don't have enough information to judge.
She was over there for more than a year before the depression/drinking started, and she isn't complaining about academia or England itself. She was asking if she had a drinking problem. The answer is yes, given the info she gave about her drinking.