Things to Do while Internet Connection is Down.

• Rewire and exchange broken light fixture in the kitchen.
• Accidentally put a nail in hair mistaking it for a hair pin.
• Spend three minutes looking for a nail in hair, without finding it.
• Wash down coat.
• Hang painting on the wall in the kitchen.
• Fold the laundry mountain.
• Try to get Chemical Brothers' Galvanize out of head.
• Very light (so as not to get too tired in the case of Internet reconnecting) dusting.
• Read a treatment for a script.
• Wash the four sweaters that cannot go in the spin cycle.
• Make and drink coffee.
• Read a chapter in a work related book.
• Brush hair.
• Find nail in hair.
• Braid hair.
• Get ready for yoga.
• Climb giant pebble mountain in driveway brought to us by building site next door while being heckled by construction workers.
• Realize that both glutei maximi hurt from yesterday's yoga class.
• Climb giant pebble mountain in driveway in darkness.
• Make dinner.
• Write blog entry in Microsoft Word.

Pink Princess

We were talking about pink. The color pink, not the singer.
I said something to the effect of how I hate that it is marketed towards girls in everything, leaving their poor parents without much option.
My friend replied "But I don't see why my daughter can't be allowed to play princess while she is a kid? I would much rather she go through her pink phase while she is young, than when she is say 16."
Knowing that I was entering the minefield where we non-parents are inevitably killed, - simply because we do not have children and therefore must shut up - I dropped the subject.

But what I was thinking was something like this:
When it comes to children's clothing there is a horrific gender gap that, honestly, makes them into the teenagers they become later on.
If we teach tiny kids that girls should be pleasing and pretty and that boys should be monster loving super heroes, can we be surprised when a thirteen year old girl is having sex with multiple partners and a thirteen year old boy is violent?
If all marketing is geared towards putting the value of a girl into how beautiful she is and whether she is wanted by all, can we be surprised that she seeks that same attention when she grows older? Is it strange that she wants to wear the sexy clothes that MTV- princesses are wearing? It seems to me that it is the next logical step.
The same goes for boys. If a boy is taught that his value is in relation to how violent he can be towards perceived bad guys, can we be surprised when he is violent at all?
We ask that teenagers know right from wrong, but how are they supposed to know any better than we teach them?
I don't know what it is like to be a parent, I can only imagine that it is a life full of wondering whether any of the thousands of decisions one has to make for one's kids will eventually harm them.
But perhaps there needs to be a quiet uprising against the gender marketing monster?