Much needed perspective…heh. That said, as I posted above, I think EVERYthing is ‘Xtreme’ in the marketing of media messages now, so totally agree with Lyn that it’s one thing to play with gender cues and spoof one’s self (I too, am a bit of a ‘Murphy Brown’ type so it’s always hilarious when I go in the other direction as a bit of an inside joke) and another to have media/marketing pre-determine what’s ‘hot or not’ and take any humor/fun/creativity out of play and instead reposition it by selling insecurities for profit that last looooooooooooooooong after Halloween is over.

Let’s see what else was I…Oh! My martian was a fave…I’ve never been one for horror film stuff as the girl always ‘gets it’ in the end and I have WAY too vivid of an imagination, so my costumes were always more on the ‘animal-vegetable-mineral’ makeup…(The lifesize Fruit of the Loom crew from the studio set/commercial props of an undies commercial might be my fave…but that was cheating since I had access to same)

Gotta call my mom and jog my memory.

btw, Liz…Lucky Star, eh? Hail Madonna as she’s the #2 celeb pick for youth costumes NOW in that Teen Vogue voter poll I wrote about. (Lady GaGa was #1) http://rosalindwiseman.com/2009/10/29/im-not-a-prude-but-why-we-cant-let-ourselves-become-culture-sheep Le sigh.
Amy Jussel´s last blog ..Media Morsels for Lil’ Goblins: Next to New BOOks as Treats!

“”We’ve definitely seen an increase in costumes with muscles in them,” said Howard Beige, executive vice president for Rubie’s Costume Co., a leading manufacturer based in New York City. Five years ago, he said Rubie’s had 10 padded styles for children, including Superman and Batman. This year, it offers nearly 40. Batman, Clonetrooper, and Darth Vader are among top sellers, Beige said.

“We even have a toddler costume with sewn-in muscles,” he said of the superhero line. “It’s extremely cute. The kids love it. . . . You see them walking around flexing their biceps.”

UGH.

Marketers just don’t see how this is showing up in kids’ body image dissatisfaction and fouling up the works w/kids psyches…Here’s more in the article quoting us (Shaping Youth and Packaging Boyhood’s Lyn Mikel Brown) today:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/20091030_This_Halloween__boys_are_all_beefcake.html

http://www.babble.com/lyn-mikel-brown-mark-tappan

A few great examples?

Babble: How do you accommodate a boy’s natural tendencies and still adhere to some of your ideals? (I do think that there are some inherent things about boys: they usually are more high-energy, they usually do gravitate toward a ball instead of a baby doll.)

Lyn: What we’re talking about is the way that energy is translated into a very narrow stereotype. Why is action translated into violence? Action can be channeled in other ways.

Babble: So how do you try to address some of these issues of violence? Do you ban Bakugan? Say yes to Spiderman but no to X-Men? How do you decide?

Mark: There are choices parents have to make about what’s appropriate. We’d like parents to pay more attention to the ratings of movies, for one, so they don’t let their kids see PG-13 movies just because they got a Batman toy in their Happy Meal. We want parents to talk to their sons so the violence is a topic for conversation, not something that has to be banned. Ask them: “What does this mean? Why do you like it?”

Lyn: The important thing is to listen. We don’t always know why they are attracted to something, say violent video games. One of Mark’s students helped us see that boys often like these games because of the complex storylines. As parents, if we listen to them, we can help channel that in other ways, help them find other ways to get that complex storyline.

Babble: When it comes to violence — what is the difference between what kids see today and what we watched? I remember adults thinking that Wile E. Coyote trying to blow up the Road Runner was too violent.

Lyn: We have so many examples of how things are different from the way they used to be. We were totally struck by Nerf and how big the guns are now. There are also Legos now where it’s not about creatively making what you want to make, it’s about making the Transformer. We looked at racetracks; it used to be that the idea was to keep the car on the track, now the idea is to crash. We saw the word “hyper” in a lot of toys and other marketing; even the name has to be over the top.

read more on Daily Babble today here:

http://www.babble.com/lyn-mikel-brown-mark-tappan/index2.aspx