School's out. Summer is official and our routine has to shift. I have to look deep inside and find Fun Mommy.

by Tracee Sioux

When I was a girl, Dolly Parton had "big ones." They were big like a caricature. Dolly's were abnormal and the butt of jokes all over the media.

I was a B or C cup and my breasts were "normal." When you're a girl it's important to be "normal."

In today's terms Dolly Parton isn't even that big. As a society, we are inundated with images of overly-large, disproportionate, abnormally perky, unnaturally "perfect" breasts all over the media and marketing.

Vast numbers of the breasts we see as "perfect" and "normal" have been altered, surgically or graphically.

Where Dolly Parton's breasts were an anomaly for our generation, Dolly Parton's breasts are essentially "the norm" for our daughters. They have no other frame of reference.

Yesterday on Blog Fabulous, I wrote about how our own perception of what breasts are "supposed to look like" has been distorted. This distorted perception is creating poor body image in real women. Women tend to stand in the mirror and compare themselves to this distorted image of the media's version of "normal."

Imagine how much worse it must be for our daughters?

What I'm about to say may be radical and may seem wildly inappropriate in 1970s parenting terms.

Get ready . . .hold your breath. . .

If it is age-appropriate and you're hearing your daughter mutter dissatisfaction about the size or shape of her breasts or the color of her nipples, you might consider visiting the Normal Breasts Gallery with her.

There, I said it. You should show her pictures of non-sexualized real women's breasts to show her what real women naturally look like.

The Normal Breasts Gallery is an Internet gallery of nude photos of anonymous real women's breasts, combined with short essays exploring how these women feel about their breasts.

Without it, our daughters' only frame of reference is the distorted media representation of breasts and our own. That can't be good for making them feel normal and coming to self-acceptance.

Read more about the damage of seeing only sexualized breasts in the media in APA Reports Sexualizatuion of Girls Devastating.

Image Source: Ebay Ad - click to buy it.

Dear Friends and Family,

I know you love Ainsley and so I sold your names, addresses, email addresses, phone and cell numbers to solicitors for a school fund raiser.

They gave the school 50 cents for each family member or friend I sold out.

Gotta support our schools. I knew you'd understand.

Love, Tracee

(I'm only kidding. I would never, ever do this to you and you better not do it to me.)

Hi Mom. Don't you want to buy some Dollar Store crap for $15 for Ainsley's school? They'll give Ainsley a 25 cent pencil if you buy $50 worth.

Mom, can I feed a real tiger and get my picture made, it's a fund raiser for school?

How much?

$18.

No.

waaaa waaaa waaa! I WANT TO FEED THE BABY TIGER WITH A BOTTLE!

Daddy will photoshop one for you. (see above pic)

Please can't we buy the cereal with a Box Top?

Ainsley, I'm not changing cereal for Box Tops.

I have to bring the paper back by Thursday with 10 Box Tops on it.

I'll paper clip $1 to the note.

No, that's cheating! You have to put Box Tops on it or they won't give me a prize!

Grandma don't you want to pay $5 more for the Family Home Journal. It's a fundraiser for Ainsley's school.

No.

Dear Primary School: Thanks for all the family harmony over the fundraisers this year. It's been real.

Sack Race

How Low Can You Go?

Team Work

Tug Of War!

Visit the Carnival of Family Life over at Colloquium.

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I dropped my tooth in the grass at school.

Love, Ainsley

This is the 3rd note. The Tooth Fairy left $1 in paper money.

Note 1 - Dear Tooth Fairy

Note 2 - Tooth Fairy Inflation

I do not want Ainsley growing up feeling like she can't do anything around a vehicle. Women and girls drive. They buy cars. Their cars need maintenance.

Ainsley's Daddy takes her out to work on the car if he has to change a tire or replace break pads.

Sometimes I realize it's easier for me to do something than to get it to the top of my husband's list. Like recharging our air conditioner in the van. He doesn't have time. So, I did it myself - read the 10 steps to recharging an air conditioner on Blog Fabulous.

It occurred to me that it would benefit Ainsley to see Mommy participating in the fixing and maintaining a car. And really it was easy enough that she could do it too. It looked so fun her friend joined in.

For information about how women can fix and maintain their own cars visit AskPatty.com.

You better be positive he's a prince before you marry him, Ainsley. I can't tell you how many women I know who married a toad and found out he was incapable of being anything other than a toad.

(If you're not very careful you can marry a toad and he'll turn into an ass.) I'll save this sage bit of wisdom for when I'm allowed to say "ass" in her presence.

Can I have that for my room?

No.

Why not?

It's not appropriate.

I was thinking about what I hate about the Princess Culture. It's the same reason I hate The Bachelor, Rock of Love and Flavor of Love - all Princess Culture derivatives.

All the princesses wait to be CHOSEN. They never do the choosing. That's a passive position to take when considering who to marry.

Instead of conditioning girls to pick the person that's best for them, the paradigm encourages girls to wait to be chosen. Will he like me or the step-sisters? Will he choose me if the slipper fits?

That's a self-defeating way to teach girls how to pick a spouse.

No wonder there's a one in two divorce rate. Half the women realized they got picked by a wrong or incompatible prince.

The Princesses are willing to spend the rest of their lives someone they don't even know.

Try as I might I have verbally, and by way of example and distraction, done my best to steer Ainsley away from Princess Culture. I tell her to pick another movie or book. I tell her what's wrong with the Princesses choices and assumptions about her capability to save herself. I expose her to better and more powerful characters in literature, movies and television.

I stop short of completely forbidding all Princess Pretend Play because I don't want to make it more attractive - as the forbidden often is. I want her to be able to talk to me about anything and obviously if I can't take a little Cinderella chat then sex will be out-of-the-question later. I want to keep the dialogue open.

Still, for all my talk, I send a Princess in the Pea to school on Favorite Character Day and she comes home Sleeping Beauty. For Halloween we dress up to be caricatures of 1980s beauty queens and she declares herself Cinderella.

Same pink frilly and pouffy thrift-store dress.

Very different idea of who girls and women are. I hear the argument that mothers are the biggest influence in their daughters lives - I make the argument all the time - but all evidence suggests there is no amount of magic on earth that's going to negate Disney's GIRL CRACK message that girls should be a b-l-e-e-p-i-ng Princess.

Empowering Girls: Enchanted: New Generation Princess Fable

Empowering Girls: Princess Culture Examined

Cinderella Should Have Saved Her Self

Ariel - The Little Mute

Belle - Battered Codependent

When I am a teenager I'm going to wear a dress like that.

Ainsley, please wait until you are an adult.

Why Mommy?

If you wear that as a teenager all the other mothers will judge me.

Note to my mother: I. Am. So. Sorry!

Image Source: Knoxnews

Dutch Blitz has some body image issues. She used to be a size 15 and she still feels unacceptably fat sometimes, though the scale and the tag in her clothes tell her she's not. I know this because I've read her very honest and poignant blogs about her feelings about her body. She wrote a A Letter To My Body about the betrayal girls and women can feel when their bodies defy expectations.

She wrote one called Thinner that I found particularly insightful in regards to empowering daughters.

It does no good to tell a woman "don't feel this way." I don't know why, it's just not effective. It does no good to tell a daughter, "don't feel this way." People get all proprietary about their feelings, like they have a right to them - negative ones and all.

Dutch Blitz knows there is "no good reason" to feel like crap about her very small, very socially acceptable, very healthy, very functional, perfectly-good body. But, she does anyway, 15% of the time.

"I struggle. I wish that I didn’t," Dutch Blitz writes. "I wish that the eighty-five percent became one hundred percent. That I could exude confidence and comfort. That I could stop looking at myself in such a harsh light. I want to be an example to my daughter.Then I think that maybe I am. Maybe, in my insecurity, I can show her that I am human too. That I see all of the pressure that is put onto women. That I, too, succumb to it sometimes."

The beautiful part about it is that she knows her negative body feelings are illogical and self-defeating and she's working her way out of it. She acknowledges the impact her poor body image will have on her daughter. But, she also acknowledges that adapting yet another standard of perfection, "how we must feel about ourselves," isn't much help to her daughter.

If we tell our daughters "beauty doesn't matter at all," they look at all the evidence around them and know that it's a lie or a delusion. "Don't have body issues," isn't a particularly effective strategy.

Beauty doesn't matter, beauty shouldn't matter.

Whatever.

We know that in a million ways it does. Our daughter's know it too. We're all suseptable to marketing and we all fall prey to the beauty ideal in some degree in our darkest moments.

To lie about those moments to our daughters will only make us less credible. To claim to be completely oblivious of beauty will backfire because they won't trust our perception of the world.

Even if we don't have a particularly negative self-image, we still mutter about someone's baby that is so cute or whether we think a dress pretty.

They know, whether we acknowledge it or not, that who is pretty is the same as who is popular. By preschool, they are they are assessing who is nice and who they like in terms of who is prettiest.

We don't live in isolated bubbles. And if we did most of us would opt for one that is pretty.

Beauty matters so much, in fact, that it can affect one's job performance and their future income. To pretend that it doesn't, makes our daughters stop trusting us.

We are imperfect and that is OK, appears to be Dutch Blitz's message to her own daughter.

I think Dutch Blitz is right to believe she'll have more success with the strategy of honesty.

Hillary Clinton's message to girls:

Don't Quit.

Even when everyone keeps saying, "You'll never win, you should just quit."

Don't.

Did Danica Patrick stop in the 470th lap in the Indie 500 because it was "impossible for her to win?"

NO. She may have lost, but she raced all the way to the finish line.

Did she quit racing after years and years of losing races?

NO. Eventually she won a race.

Every girl in the world should watch Hillary's speech in West Virginia when she declared, I'm not going to quit!

More on Blog Fabulous about my need to see Hillary not quit.

You're always ignoring me. It's inappropriate. It hurts my feelings and it makes me sad and mad. You should listen to me when I talk to you, Ainsley informed me during our Mommy/Daughter Day on Saturday.

You're right. I'm sorry. You have a valid point and you have right to expect my attention. I was thinking about my work. It's hard for me to stay in the present moment. My mind wanders. I was writing in my head. It's terrible habit, I explained.

I don't have that habit, she said.

You're lucky, I told her. You never daydream? I asked.

I have. But it's easy to stop, she said.

I'll try harder. Thanks for being patient with me. I love you, I said.

I love you too, she said.

I tried my best to stay focused and only had ask her forgiveness a few times.

We went garage saling and window shopping.

We went out for Chinese food.

She got her Orange Belt in Taekwondo. She forgot her jacket. She was brave. I was proud.

We went to McDonalds.

We went walking at the big park and ate handfuls of wild blackberries we found by the pond.

We came home and colored poster-sized kittens and puppies with fresh markers on the trampoline.

She said it was her favorite day and I thought it was awesome too.

Ainsley passed her test for her Taekwondo Orange Belt on Saturday.

Of about 25 people testing for various levels of belt, there were four girls. She was the only girl her age and in her belt category.

I was extraordinarily proud of her.

We witnessed a middle-aged woman qualify for her black belt. Watching her achieve that skill level was so gratifying to both she and I. Ainsley was so excited to watch her break a board with her hand and her foot.

My family really shines on Mother's Day. Especially my husband, who always puts a lot of effort into getting the children involved in doing something creative for me.

I woke to pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries, an 8X11 photo of my children spelling out each letter of "Happy Mother's Day" in my office and "I Love You" in the kitchen.

I also got a small deep freeze!

Ainsley sang me as song called, My Mom.

I H-E-A-R-T my family.

I hope your Mother's Day was as good as mine.

If I were picking daughters off the shelf I would pick you Ainsley.

If I were picking Mommies of the shelf I would pick you Mommy.

(Idea taken from Growing a Girl: Seven Strategies for Raising a Strong, Spirited Daughter)

Do you know what "Give us this day our daily bread" means?, Daddy asked Ainsley as they were saying night-time prayers.

That God gives us what we need, like food and stuff?

Right. What do you need Ainsley?

More attention from Mommy.

That's what I love about kids, they will usually tell us exactly what they need.

I work from home, so my first instinct is to say, I'm here the whole flipping day! What more do you want? I admit, I often respond to my kids' never-ending quest for more of me like this.

Of course they are talking about Mommy's mental presence and attention with them and on them and not my physical presence.

I know this because I will sometimes say similar things to my husband when I feel neglected. I'm here every night, I never go anywhere or do anything. What do you want from me? I'm sure he thinks.

It's the modern-day dilemma. We're distracted by the computer and the TV and other really important things like jobs, and even though we pretend our physical presence should be enough we know that it's not.

There are consequences to not listening when someone asks you for presence and attention. Children act out and rebel and marriages fall apart.

I'm declaring this Saturday is Mommy/Daughter Day. Ainsley says she wants to go out for Chinese, take her Taekwondo orange belt test, share ice cream at the Soda Fountain, get a manicure and go to a movie.

I don't know about all of that (cha ching, cha ching).

What she will get though is my best effort at living in the present moment with my mind and attention on her. I know, that's really what she's asking for.

Last night was the last night of the A New Earth webcast and I watched with some sadness.

I don't want it to be over. I've found the experience very enlightening, opening me up to my own spiritual self and really, finally removing a veil from my own Christian religious traditions and texts. For the first time in my life I am able to read The Bible and think back on my own religious training and see light instead of darkness. Thank you Eckhart Tolle and Oprah for that.

Some last things I want to touch on from last night's Web Cast. I really related to the woman who said she has a difficult time with what she called "global anger." These are things and situations in the world outside of her own little world that make her angry. She was angry about polygamist cults and vicious beating of teenagers for YouTube content.

I have a similar issue with the way women and girls are perceived and treated.

Oprah said, Well you're going to be angry for a very long time.

That's true enough.

Then she made another spectacular point in that it's the emotional feeling of anger that's ineffective at fighting society's ills.

Anger begets anger and always joins the same vibration of anger that causes murder, rape, discrimination, exploitation, etc.

The most effective thing you can do is to change your emotional vibrational energy from anger into acceptance and love.

To understand this you have to have gone through the epiphany that you can control your own emotions. It's a hard one to get and it take a lot of practice to be able to change your own feelings. Certainly, I'm only moderately effective at this.

Acceptance is a huge key both with the above example of global anger and with controlling our own feelings.

Eckhart says we should never do anything, a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g, unless we are in a state of acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm about it. Any action taken in anger, frustration, annoyance or denial will have a negative effect no matter what our intent. This applies even if we feel we're acting with our own life's purpose in mind.

Acceptance should not be confused with condoning something. For instance, when I write about something that is obviously wrong and negative that effects girls like a shock porn video or the fact that Google equates the word girl with porn, I need to first accept what is before I try to take action about it. I should release my indignation and anger about it or else not write about it. The last thing I want to do is negatively impact the perception about girls.

I suspect perhaps that I am not accepting the current way things are because I don't want them to be the way things are.

Our world does not respect girls.

If it did we would not have child pornography, we would not have date rape, we would not let child molesters walk around to molest more kids, we would not allow marketers to exploit girls' sexuality, we would not allow the word "girl" to be synonymous with "porn," we would not allow them to think they were their appearance, we would not allow them to starve themselves to be "perfect," we wouldn't allow 25% of kids to be infected with STDs.

I need to accept that and let go of my anger about it or my actions are fueled with negative angry energy and God can not flow through me to effect positive change.

I feel my calling, my purpose, is to allow God to flow through me to revolutionize the perception of girls. To do that I must reach a state of acceptance about where we are rather than be angry that we're not where I want us to be.

On a lighter note: can you freaking believe that Eckhart Tolle is 60 years old? Truly the entire time I thought the guy was in his 40s. I was shocked! Oprah asked him for his skin secret. Can you guess the secret to ageless beauty?

People who don't carry around a lot of past age very well, he said.
Want to look 20 years younger? Let go of the past 20 years.

I'm very proud to tell you that an essay I wrote about motherhood is being featured on Mothering Heights in Christine Fugate's 2nd Annual Mothering Heights Mother's Day Anthology.

I wrote an essay titled It's Just Not About Them about the place of men in my life pre- and post-children. There are many other fantastic entries about the journey of motherhood and the lessons we've learned along the way.

I hope you'll stop over and read a few.

Here's the thing about daughters. They grow up.

Since 72% of women work now it seems reasonable to assume that one of the things we should be doing as parents is to improve the work environment for women so that it's an equitable and empowering environment for our daughters when they get there.

Mothers, you KNOW how it feels to choose to go back to your career or stay home with your baby during a woefully short sleep-deprived 6-12 weeks. That 12 weeks was one of the most anxiety-ridden of my life.

Why? I was torn between two unacceptable choices. Quit my dream and nosedive into poverty or Abandon Baby 50-60 hours a week. Some "choice!" Ha!

I don't want my daughter to face that devastating decision. I want America to choose to respect motherhood, by joining the rest of civilization in blessing them with maternity leave instead of blowing a bunch of hot air about "family values."

I'm done having babies. But, my daughter has yet to begin. One of the biggest changes I want to see happen is for her to have a reasonably long maternity leave that respects both her role in motherhood and her role in the workplace.

Fighting for longer paid maternity leave is one of the gifts I aim to give her future self.

Momsrising.org is a bipartisan action group made up of mothers fighting for women's rights. Mothers rights are women's rights. Women's rights are human rights.

Other issues Momsrising takes on include: fair pay, breastfeeding rights, maternity and paternity leave, after-school programs, education, healthcare, sick leave, pollutants in bottles and toys, television and advertising, and flexible work hours, everything that concerns families.

They lead the way for women, housewives and career women equally, to cast aside apathy and become active participants in the making of policy.

Becoming "politically active" with Momsrising is usually as simple as shooting a pre-prepared letter to your representative letting them know how you want them to vote on a particular bill. I do not exaggerate when I tell you this takes about 2 minutes of your time.

I often hear people discount the value of a letter. Don't - that's a mistake. If Momsrising takes on an issue then know that you will be joining thousands of other women, other moms, in writing that letter. One letter probably goes unnoticed. But 60,000 letters causes our representatives to create examination committees, write bills, and change laws.

Another way to advocate for your daughters' future is to buy one of their totally hip t-shirts that say clever things like, Changing More Than Diapers, Raising Children, Raising Consciousness, All Moms Are Working Moms, and adorable little onseys declaring, I need a Change, How Bout You?

Here's what I want for Mother's Day - Political Change. I'm going to declare my intention to seek change by wearing one of these shirts to my mommy group so the other moms, facing the same mothering issues I am, ask me "Hey, what's Momsrising?" Then I'm going to do everything in my power to politicize some Mommies.

Won't you join me in changing more than diapers?

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, isn't waiting for Election '08 to get the Healthy Americans Act passed.

* Every American will have it

* Comprehensive - comparable to Congress.

* Portable - take it when you leave your job.

* Non-discriminatory - ban on "pre-existing conditions" and everyone gets a fair price.

Affordable - under $40,000 income? Pay less than now. Under $150,000 pay $1 a day more for guaranteed coverage.

The Act, his site says also saves s1.48 trillion through wellness and prevention.

And he says he can make it reality in only one year.

Here's the real cost:

Families between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay about $81/year more - about $7 a month. Families between $50,000 and $150,000 would average between $327 and $341 per year more - about $28 a month.

In return for this modest increase these families would have guaranteed coverage that they could never lose, not if they get sick, not if they lose their jobs, not for any reason.

We'd be crazy not to take that deal. Why wait for elections? I want to see Senator Wyden deliver on this right now. Read the details by clicking this link.

Email your own representatives by visiting Congress.org and entering your zip code.

I'm profoundly disturbed by a phenomenon I witnessed yesterday on YouTube.

Apparently, there is a clip from a real porn movie called Two Girls One Finger. The clip is so sick and wrong that the above girl actually vomits.

(Please note the video above is not the porn clip, watching it is disturbing, but it is not pornographic.)

I'm not going to watch the actual video because I already have a collection of images in my brain that I wish I'd never seen and I don't want to add to that. From the reactions I saw, I gather it's nude Asian girls who vomit and defecate into each other's mouths.

Like an extreme truth or dare kids are recording their own video reaction to the sick and depraved activities depicted.

Knowing what I know about the human trafficking of girls in Asian countries (UNICEF estimates that one million children are forced into prostitution or used to produce pornography each year) - it makes me wonder if viewers of Two Girls 1 Finger and it's predecessor Two Girls One Cup are participating in both the human sex slave trade and child pornography. Certainly it's not out of the realm of possibility that the girls in the video were both under duress (who would WANT to do that?) and under the age of 18.

I keep hearing the argument that parents should be monitoring their kids Internet use and making sure their children have no access to bad influences. It appears to be an argument that it's parents' sole responsibility to protect their kids and the marketplace bears no ethical or moral responsibility to society or its' children.

Okay.

HOW?

I wrote about this yesterday on Blog Fabulous and one woman said she had accidentally seen it by innocently following a blind link.

I emailed Jace Shoemaker-Galloway over at InternetSafetyAdvisor.info to find out if parents really do have the tools available to protect their kids from pornography and other forms of inappropriate content on the Internet.

"I have personally watched several of these types of videos. When I watched them, I had no idea what the content was or what they were about. I just knew they were disturbing yet popular. Words can not adequately describe or convey my thoughts. Those videos were not only disgusting and vile, they saddened me to watch. I asked my teenager children if they knew of these videos, and both did. Neither had personally viewed them, but they were being heavily discussed amongst their peers," Jace said.

"Unfortunately, we're seeing more and more of these 'shock-type' viral videos, Jace said. Other content includes vicious beatings of other children and throwing puppies off cliffs. Adults too are participating, Jace warned. Jace added that the average age of first-exposure to pornography is 11 years old and she fears the age will become younger.

Will monitoring or ratings software filter out this type of video? I wanted to know.

It is important to note that filters or parental controls are not fail-safe. Similar to anti-virus software, no matter how often we update our anti-virus software, new viruses and computer threats occur on a daily basis. Also equally important, many computer-savvy children find ways to circumvent parental controls at home and at school, Jace explained.

Are good and responsible parents expected to monitor every second of Internet use in person? I asked her.
Jacer answers to the heart of my concern with the same questions I have:

Whose responsibility is it? Parents or educators? Internet Service Providers or individual websites? That is the question, isn’t it? Parents can not possibly monitor every child, every moment of the day. Even if they could, what happens when the child accesses the Internet from the Library or from a friend’s house? The values and the information MUST be instilled in our children.

Though Jace encourages communication she cautions against going into the details about viral videos with children, especially younger children. You don't really want to pollute their brains with the same information you don't want to pollute their brains with.

This type of information commonly causes parents to want to isolate their children in the name of protection, cutting off computer use all together.

Jace cautions against this strategy.

This is the main reason why children do NOT tell an adult when something has happened. If children think their computer or wireless device will be taken from them, they will not tell. It is crucial we tell our children they MUST come to us if they see something online that is upsetting or disturbing. Banning computers or electronic devices is not the answer, in fact, that approach will backfire.

Internet Safety Advisor has tons of information about the alarming prevalence of child pornography (increased 1500% since 1988) and exposure of children to pornography on the Internet (and moving to the cell phone).

I loath feeling powerless, both as a parent and a human being.
I want to know if there is legislation that protects my family's right NOT to watch this type of material as equally as free speech of pornographers is protected.

There are 9 bills before the Senate and 13 before the House of Representatives according to Congress.org.
Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton have co-sponsored the SAFE Act of 2007. The Senate and House bill sit in a Judiciary Committee. To send a letter to your representatives follow this link to Congress.org and enter your zip code.

The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection has a list of resources to help parents keep their kids safe online.

GetNetWise recommends making a contract between parent and child about Internet use. Follow this link to view a sample contract.
GetNetWise also has a search tool that will allow you to find the right filters for your computer, software and content filters. Follow this link for that.