Vintage Beauties: Cast of Punky Brewster

The cast of Punky Brewster makes the the Vintage Beauties list because they were children dressed like children. This is lacking in today's TV when you consider the pageant children reality shows like “Little Miss Perfect,” “Toddlers and Tiaras,” and “Little Beauties.”

Girl, 6, thrown off squad over ‘booty’ cheer

The Today Show reports on a 6 year old kicked of a cheerleading team because the mother questioned the point her her daughter make the following cheer: “Our backs ache, our skirts are too tight, we shake our booties from left to right!”


As Kathy Lee points out, “It’s the sexualization of our young females from an earlier and earlier [age]. When do parents lose our rights to raise children according to the values that we think are important?”

I agree on Kathy this way. When we over sexualize children, it makes it all to easy for the weak minded to prey on children. It also makes a young girl think her only commodity in life is her body.

Black History Month: Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813 – 1897) was a slave who published “Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl” in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book chronicles the hardships and sexual abuse she experienced as a female growing up in slavery. Jacobs fled slavery in 1835 by hiding in a crawlspace in her grandmother’s attic for nearly seven years before traveling to Philadelphia by boat, and eventually to New York. Jacobs was active in feminist anti-slavery movements.

Fat Girl: A True Story

Fat Girl: A True Story by Judith Moore is a book you can pass on by.

Here is the Amazon Review
Judith Moore's breathtakingly frank memoir, Fat Girl, is not for the faint of heart. It packs more emotional punch in its slight 196 pages than any doorstopper confessional. But the author warns us in her introduction of what's to come, and she consistently delivers. "Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses," Moore advises us bluntly. "I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am. I mistrust real-life stories that conclude on a triumphant note.... This is a story about an unhappy fat girl who became a fat woman who was happy and unhappy." With that, Moore unflinchingly leads us backward into a heartbreaking childhood marked by obesity, parental abuse, sexual assault, and the expected schoolyard bullying. What makes Fat Girl especially harrowing, though, is Moore's obvious self-loathing and her eagerness to share it with us. "I have been taking a hard look at myself in the dressing room's three-way mirror. Who am I kidding? My curly hair forms a corona around my round scarlet face, from the chin of which fat has begun to droop. My swollen feet in their black Mary Janes show from beneath the bottom hem of the ridiculous swaying skirt. The dressing room smells of my beefy stench. I should cry but I don't. I am used to this. I am inured." Moore's audaciousness in describing her apparently awful self ensures that her reader is never hardened to the horrors of food obsession and obesity. And while it is at times excruciatingly difficult bearing witness to Moore's merciless self-portraits, the reader cannot help but be floored by her candor. With Fat Girl, Moore has raised the stakes for autobiography while reminding us that our often thoughtless appraisals of others based on appearances can inflict genuine harm. It's a painful lesson well worth remembering.
--Kim Hughes

In my opinion the root of the author's problems is that she is crazy and not that she is fat. The author seems to never have gotten over the childish notion that "you are the center of the universe and every thing happens because of you". Even for the 196 pages that are the story, I would have had a better perspective on the thoughts of a fat person by reading Vogue Magazine.

As a fellow fat person, who is on a Weight Watchers to not be fat I can identify with fat discrimination. Yet this woman really wasn't experiencing fat discrimination most of the time. She was experience child abuse and that had nothing to do with fat and everything to do with the lack of parenting skills.

Photos of Children

In this article, Photo of Spanish Prime Minister's daughters highlights privacy concerns for world leaders, they talk about the privacy of children. The gist of the article is that Spain has a law that political children not be photography under the age of 18. Well with the Internet age of the new White House. The Spanish Prime Minister family and the President Obama's family took a photo and uploaded it to the State Department's Flickr page.

Well some in the blogosphere have labeled the girls as goth in the photo.

I feel there are two issue here that should be evaluated.

1. The use of sharing on Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, ect.
We need to always be mindful of what we are putting out there. People can use our images in bad ways. Examples:

Photo of Woman’s Son Used in Online Adoption Scam


2. Judging children in public.
Words hurt. So don't be calling out children on their looks. They can't offer a rebuttal.

Faceless Marketing

Anybody else bothered by this faceless marketing campaign for Precious? The movie looks intense (and I'm definitely going to go see it--you can check out the trailers HERE) but the erasure of the actress, new-comer Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe makes me feel uncomfortable. Now, the poster is beautiful in its haunting, kind of early 20th Century Expressionist way, but I can't help but think that perhaps this faceless campaign has to do with our protagonist being fat. Sympathizing with the faceless, drawn fatty verses the real life young woman? Faceless-ness, can be symbolic for all the neglected girls she represents (neglected by her mother, the father who raped her, and the school system that didn't get her the services she needs in order to learn how to read). Yet, at the same time, this film is based on a specific memoir, but a specific human being and the actress who was brave enough to take this difficult role ought to be acknowledged.

Anyway, dear reader, let us know your thoughts in the comments. Am I crazy for feeling uncomfortable with this campaign or is there something there?