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This little jerk bit me on Thursday night because Charity just haaaaad to save it. He’s now at animal control being monitored and will most likely go to the Champaign Humane Society to get adopted out when he and his brother get cleared from having anything bad.

In other news, my internet in my home has gone byebyes. I have a bad feeling I will be out of internet until late July, when I get into my new place. We shall see.

Green Day does Keyboard Cat ontd

it’s freaky and cute at the same time. like a monkey.

it’s old, but has not been posted here before.

Newsweek: Are We Turning Our Kids into Generation Diva?

Okay, even Newsweek is talking about it: female American kids being super duper obsessed with the way they look and getting treatments to look more attractive is the norm. Apparently it is now standard for little kids to get haircuts that cost the same as 20 comic books. That’s 50$ to normal people. That is lunch for a work week spent on getting your ten-year-old’s hair did.

Consider this: according to a NEWSWEEK examination of the most common beauty trends, by the time your 10-year-old is 50, she’ll have spent nearly $300,000 on just her hair and face. …today’s girls are getting caught up in the beauty maintenance game at ages when they should be learning how to read—and long before their beauty needs enhancing. Twenty years ago, a second grader might have played clumsily with her mother’s lipstick, but she probably didn’t insist on carrying her own lip gloss to school.

Is it really that bad now? Just in the big cities or everywhere?

I admit I was totes intrigued by the idea of keeping lip-covering substances on my person at all times, but I didn’t actually put it on because it tasted bad and rubbed off in a few minutes time. When kids go beyond the comfort of being okay with their own body into the world of never being good enough before their bodies are developed — mentally as well as physically — how do they create a stable self-image? Appearance continues to change over time, and when something isn’t “right,” when something happens to tip the little microcosm in their brain to instability, how are they going to react? Is this a simple case of retail therapy training, or are we going to push the kiddles into the brain meds a bit more quickly due to the incomplete feeling created by the ideal image? How are people managing their bodies? How attainable are their beauty or health goals? Is health even part of the equation?

MANY QUESTIONS THAT I CANNOT ANSWER.

Both men and women have enough body issues and insecurities without the addition of a huge body inferiority complex. It’s called being a teenager — wanting to fit into society. There are those who pointedly go the opposite of mainstream acceptance and end up being put into the category of (extreme) counterculture or (lightly) going through a phase. Either way, we all fit somewhere. As far as I experience, that’s what normal is. It can be an active or passive process.

Being okay with the way oneself appears is an indirectly learned thing. Idk if it’s being taught well if at all. I’m guessing it’s becoming a “do as I say, not as I do” type of lesson. Saying everyone should like their own body sounds great, but when the same people saying it spend an hour on makeup in the morning, or covering their graying hair with color while making a fuss about it, it sounds a tad disingenuous.

This other part of the article makes me wonder how much is amped up anti-media propaganda and how much is real. But what if it is real… this sucks.

these days, body dissatisfaction begins in grammar school. According to a 2004 study by the Dove Real Beauty campaign, 42 percent of first- to third-grade girls want to be thinner, while 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of getting fat. “When you have tweens putting on firming cream”—as was revealed by 1 percent of girls in an NPD study—”it’s clear they’re looking for imaginary flaws,” says Harvard psychologist Nancy Etcoff. [link added]

I want to know how big these studies are and where they happened because I refuse to think it’s actually going on. Da Nile. I’m in it. This commercial, however, continues to rock.

Further digging reveals some fun articles on body image and how little girls are learning how to interpret body hair. This article on MSNBC talks about ten-year-olds getting bikini waxes and one salon’s “virgin” wax deal. People are getting their kids dehaired early on to “permanently” remove pubic hair because their mothers tell them it is ugly. It becomes considered a deformity. Half the time the kids probably aren’t fully developed or aware of how their body acts in adult form.

Isn’t it enough to accept a body as being imperfect, and the imperfections give it interesting parts to learn and explore? Telling her the way her body grows is gross seems like an awful lot of stress to put on a kid. Idk. I’m throwing a lot of loaded questions out here.

Shit like this is easier said than done when kids really do have a lot of body hair early in life. Any time in life really… additional hair can give people complexes. Me and my full face of hair know that. I keep it in check. I pluck, shave, and wax random parts of my body so that I look good according to the accepted concept of attractive. I’ve had laser facial hair removal six times only to have it grow back with a vengeance. Really the only hair that bugs me is on my face. The rest I leave alone half the time. My body was programmed to have it. But then, my ovaries are programmed to create multiple large cysts that create their own painfests of inconsistent popping, literally making my body sick until it passes. Maybe the programming isn’t always right.

Who am I to tell an eight-year-old to not worry about the hair on her legs when she’s as middle eastern as I am and getting made fun of for looking different? Besides somebody speaking from experience, just another adult trying to fight the good fight. While waxing my tummy.

There’s an in between somewhere in all of this.

I have room for one diva in my life, and she is covered in hair.

Are We Turning Our Kids into Generation Diva? newsweek
dove campaign for real beauty
Bikini Babies: Preteens and Summer Body Image recipestoday.com
Too young? Preteen girls get leg, bikini waxes msnbc

DID YOU KNOW: Fiona thinks she is a bracelet.

DID YOU KNOW: She is not a bracelet.

omg greggle showed me the kittles being narrated by the wittle girl.

Soooooo my friend’s sister’s cat likes to walk with her butt. they try to move next to her — like her back legs try to wander away from her body. It reminded me of this little condition some cats have, called cerebellar hypoplasia. It’s seen in both cats and dogs. I saw it on tv a few years ago. Animals are actually put down because their wonky walking is a sign of brain damage. Causes include the mom being infected by feline leukemia and being exposed to ringworm medication. The wibble wobbles aren’t that big of a deal most of the time — the cats look a big drunk, and they learn to move a different way than the norm.

ps: munchkin cat