Quote:
Originally posted by featheralley
I actually made a reference to your post. Anyway, to your other comment about condition what woman should be like... The thing is, if she dressed Suri up wearing big clothing (or "tomboy"), she would have been criticized for it.
Example: Angelina Jolie went through this process, and she actually had to defend herself to the media on why she is dressing her daughter like a tomboy.
Another example is Gwen Stefani and her son Kingston.
bigger/HQer picture here
She let her son wear nail polish and the media gave her crap for it. |
I don't agree with
always and
purposely dressing your girl up as a "tomboy," either. The painting of the toenails and fingernails on a boy... that gets a
small pass if you're with mommy and it happens very
rarely because kids, naturally, want to do what mommy or daddy is doing at the time. Whether they admit or not, all guys (well,
most), at one point in their childhood, hopped in daddy's shoes when he was hanging with dad in the bedroom, and then hopped in mommy's heels when he was hanging with mom in the bedroom and probably colored his nails with markers at school a few times. I believe that's "normal" behaviour for a boy (or girl), again, if it doesn't happen often. Children don't know any better and only absorb what you give them, and what you should be giving them is a variety of choices -- from food to clothing to movies, television and music. But when you're limiting your little girl to
only dress in tomboy clothing or
constantly putting makeup on your little boy and performing "Burlesque" in front of a video camera, then you've, literally, conditioned your child in the way they will dress and behave for the rest of their lives without giving them a choice... and that's horrible parenting -- you've stolen their choice to be who or what they want on their
own terms. And this brings us back to Katie Holmes consistently dressing Suri in heels and mature clothing. With little women, the stakes are higher because not only is it a parenting issue, it's also, for me, a feminist issue. As I've said earlier, Katie should be providing Suri with a variety a choices -- from sophisticated to playful to tomboy to cutesy -- but by limiting Suri to heels and, essentially, a businessgirl wardrobe, she's playing a dangerous game and conditioning her child with the notion that this "how women should be." Suri, at this very young age, is associating heels with "looking good." That's a gamble, because she can easily go off the deep end with that ideology as she gets older because that's what she's "always known" since childhood. Will Suri be another Lindsay Lohan because she's wearing heels at five? With parents like Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise... probably not, but the possibility would be lower if she was exposed to a variety of styles. A good example would be Willow Smith.
...Vin
