Vacation Rerun from May 2007

by Tracee Sioux

I signed my daughter up for indoor soccer this season. The coach called me to invite me to a meeting of the parents and girls to determine the team colors and discuss when and where practices would be. As an after-thought she mentioned the team's new name would be

The Bratz.

What?

Bratz, you know like the dolls.

Are you kidding?

Well, no, it's called The Bratz.

Do we have to call them the brats?

Well, we have to have a name.

Well, can't we pick something positive? I would prefer about any other name than the Bratz. I mean, do we want to be yelling to our preschoolers, "Go Brats Go, be the best little brats you can be? I mean, I don't even let my daughter play with those Bratz dolls and I certainly don't want to encourage her to act like a brat or be a brat.

Well, no one else has looked at it like that, we can discuss it at the meeting and talk to the commissioner about changing the name.

Okay, so I was a little apprehensive about going to the meeting yesterday. I even thought it might be easier to not let my daughter play soccer than face that poor coach who got an ear full of my anti-Bratz propaganda.

Really, I was concerned that this fellow mother would hate me for making such a big deal about this. I was also more than a little worried that I would handle the situation very poorly and look hysterical and crazy because they wanted to brand my daughter a brat. Then who would look like a brat? Me. And all the other parents would band against me and decide that I was just the trouble-maker who wouldn't let anyone have any fun at all.

So, I go up to this strikingly beautiful woman at the meeting and introduce myself and the baby. Of course, hoping that the cute, fat baby would endear me to her. I even start up a banal conversation about whether or not she has to wear heals to work. Stupid and awkward.

The meeting starts and she says, Okay, who here objects to the name Bratz?

I alone raised my hand high. Everyone looks around and I feel like caving to avoid this confrontation with every other parent on the team."

Look, I said. I'm very uncomfortable with this name because I don't think we should be yelling Go Brats Go, Be the best little brat you can be. Brats Rule. I try all week long to NOT encourage my daughter to be a brat. I don't want her to act like those dolls and I don't let her dress like those dolls and I don't even let her play with the dolls. I'm just very uncomfortable with the name.

I was so grateful that I avoided saying they looked like whores who grew out of their clothes, which is what I usually say about those attrocious little beasts. And I didn't get into the symbolism of why their heads are so freakishly large - to fit their self-absorbed massive egos inside. Little battles for maturity inside myself.

Several people had warned me that I had better come up with a better name to subs awkward with parents trying to think up a better name - I suggested Kickers but it wasn't cute enough. Someone suggested the Shortcakes, and I was agreeable. Then I suggested the Pink Panthers, but then it looked like there were several other teams with pink shirts and so we thought we should go with purple.

Every now and then some parent would glare at me and say, Are you sure you don't like the name Bratz?

And I would shrug and say, yeah, I just don't think that's a great name for our girls.

A few parents wanted to point out that they don't let their daughters wear the make-up or dress like that - they're "just dolls."

But, I guess that's my problem, I don't think they are just dolls. I think they're a negative message about who the girls should emulate.

In the end we settled, quite unenthusiastically on Butterflies.

Okay, nothing great about that, but nothing horrible about it either. Butterflies are nice, they embrace change and they are pretty and all the little four- and five-year-olds like butterflies.

Of course, the girls weren't as enthusiastic about butterflies as they had been about The Bratz. But, then I figure the girls are enthusiastic about what Matel, or in this case MGA Entertainment markets to them, which doesn't necessarily make it a good thing.

I did volunteer to arrange all the snacks for the season and we'll see if the other parents will hold a grudge or cooperate with my efforts.

I have to give props to the coach however. She was very nice when I went up and thanked her for volunteering to change the name. After all I am only one parent and they could have just shunned me. Hopefully the season will be a good experience for my daughter.

I do feel triumphant, if a little embarrassed, for standing up for what I believe even though it's hugely unpopular and I want my daughter to learn to do that.

Of course, later the Soccer Commission overrode our decision and guess what I did? Read No Bratz No! Tantrum or Go with the Flow?

Read the outcome at Happy Feet Beats Bratz

And you should watch this hilarious YouTube film, Slutz, Bratz Parody, which is so not appropriate for children - but then neither are those dolls.

by Tracee Sioux

Completely violating my goal to say no to good things as I vowed to do in my column Priorities, I am the new coach of Ainsley's soccer team.

Perhaps you recall my protest last fall when my five-year-old daughter, Ainsley's, soccer coach informed me that her team was being named The Bratz. If you missed it, you should check out Go Bratz Go! where I reported how I was the only parent against naming a little girls' soccer team after vapid dolls that dress like hookers. I convinced the parents to change the name to Butterflies.

The soccer commissioners refused to be flexible about their deadline and wouldn't allow the name change. After a lot of consideration in, No Bratz No! Tantrum or Go With The Flow?, she played on the team. She was wearing an unempowering uniform which declared her a brat in bold black letters.

Playing sports is a huge confidence builder and seriously empowering for girls. Girls must have exercise, let's not forget the BMI Red Zone. Soccer beats cheerleading, in my opinion, as I said in Give Me an "A". I didn't see how anything empowering would be accomplished by yanking her off the soccer team in protest of the name. I certainly didn't want the message to be - if you don't get your way, pick up your toys and go home.

My protest, I do think, made some people think about the issue of what kind of influences their expose their daughters are exposed to. So, it wasn't a complete waste.

This season they needed a coach. I volunteered because I, as the coach, get to name the team. I also think it's important to be involved in my kids' education, activities and sports.

We'll be making a fashion statement in black shirts with pink script, pink shorts and pink socks (hopefully). I know penguins are black and white, but I didn't want to try to keep white clean.

I'm the new coach of Happy Feet.

If I thought I could get away with it, I wouldn't have told her she had the option of cheerleading. She's too smart to fall for that kind of crap. Instead, I listed the options.

She gave me a sly smile, knowing I would disapprove, and said, I want to do the cheerleading.

Have you ever wondered why girls should be cheering for boys, but boys don't cheer for girls? Do you think that's okay?

Mama, when I went to watch Eric play basketball Emma was cheering for a girls' basketball team.

Are you sure?

Well, you weren't there, but they had girls playing basketball and I think Emma was cheering for that team.

Do you think it's fair that only boys are allowed to play football but girls stand on the side and cheer for them?

I don't even want to play football, she pointed out.

When Emma took cheerleading, she informed me, they didn't wear belly shirts, they wore long ones and I don't think they did anything imapropriate.

My husband didn't think it was a big deal. My friend thought I was being too extreme. Both pointed out that boys cheer these days too. The difference is, there are not entire scantily clad gangs of boys cheering for the girls' teams.

In the end, neither argument swayed me in favor of cheerleading. What did sway me is that my particular girl wants to try it. She thinks it will be fun.

I decided it would be more empowering for her to be able to make her own decision about which sport to try than it would be for me to forbid cheerleading on a feminist principle.

She's just a different kind of girl than I was. She's more of a girly kind and I was more of a tom-boy. But, I don't think it would be empowering to make her feel bad about being a girly-girl.

The more I thought about it, I could trace my negative feelings about cheerleading back to the time my parents told me we were moving again to a town with a small enough high school, where I could make it as a cheerleader.

Upset about the umpteenth move, there I stood dressed head-to-toe in black, pale skin, red lipstick totally Mod screaming, "Why would I want to be a cheerleader?" What I really wanted to articulate was, "Have we met? Do you know anything about me at all?"

So, to avoid a similar episode with my daughter, I'll acknowledge that she is the kind of girl who thinks being a cheerleader is fun. And I'm going to get okay with that.

I did some research and according to the Official Cheerleader's Handbook, cheerleading was invented at Princeton in the 1860s by men. They didn't let girls do it until the 1920s when they added gymnastics and tumbling at the University of Minnesota. It was World War II, and no boys being available, that transitioned the sport to where 90% of cheerleaders became female.