Pulp friction

Yesterday I got my hairs cut. (The lovely middle-aged Italian woman who does my hair refers to it in the plural — "Oh, they long!" Yes, they certainly is.) While I waited for my turn, out of anthropological interest I leafed through a parenting magazine.

Okay, wait. "Leafed through" suggests a casual breeziness. More accurately, I pored over it. I scrutinized it. In fact, I stared at it so hard that the infrared power of my unwavering gaze melted the clay coating on the pages, rendering it a useless slab of gooey pulp.

Of course, it was that before I even picked it up.

As best I can tell, the magazine seemed to address five main areas of inquiry:

• How to discipline your children without tipping them off to the fact that they are being disciplined. Apparently asserting one's parental authority must be done with the strategic cunning and the catlike stealth of a midnight ninja raid. "No" is to be avoided; rather than invalidating the initial impulse, redirecting it to more socially acceptable channels is strongly preferred. "You may not set fire to the dog" therefore becomes, "Wouldn't it be more fun to set fire to this nice heap of oily rags instead?" Got it.

• Your baby might die. The editors would probably call this motif something mealy-mouthed like "safety tips," but they might as well print it in giant red letters across the top of every page: Your Baby Might Die!!! Because that's what they're telling you. Unless you buy this product / employ this technique / adhere to this fashionable trend, you are jeopardizing your child's safety, sanity, and future earning potential. Enroll your child in a water safety class before she reaches six weeks of age, or your baby might die. Buy the safest automobile on the market without delay, or your baby might die. Eradicate all traces of peanut products from your home and a surrounding radius of at least three miles, or your baby might die. Keep your child in a car seat until she reaches puberty, or your baby might die. Are you getting the message, you monstrous, craven baby-killer, you?

• Relationship maintenance for dumbasses. "My husband won't change diapers! Help!" I trust you will be as shocked as I was to learn that the editors did not suggest chasing your husband gleefully around the house, brandishing a runny diaperload of excrement and threatening all manner of smeary mayhem, as a solution to this problem. No. Instead we are to seek out a division of labor we can all live with. "If changing diapers disgusts your husband, have him do a chore you don't like but that he doesn't mind." Brilliant. I get to hose down the nursery when the kid has fingerpainted the wall with natural by-products, and he gets to take the car to get its snow tires taken off. Thanks for the help, Madam Editrix.

• Shiny, happy things to buy. This particular issue focused on ways to keep your kids occupied on long car trips. This is a goal I can relate to, as I enjoy a good road trip and hope to continue taking them after I become a parent. But since word games, "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and "Do I have to stop this car?" are in the public domain and carry no lucrative sponsorship opportunities, I quickly found myself out of my depth. DVD players for the car! Tiny MP3 players in alluring primary colors, molded in the shape of your children's favorite licensed characters! I'm surprised no one's making a portable cone of silence that descends from the roof above the back seat of your minivan, securing itself with a reassuring whisper, rendering inaudible the cries of "When will we be there?" and "No, I really have to go this time!"

• Food that looks like anything but. Every other page was an ad for some sort of convenience food, each more revolting and preservative-laden than the last. But it wasn't enough to hawk those products in their, ah, natural state. No, they had to be manipulated into looking like...things. Packaged pound cake and frosting from a can become...a "grilled cheese sandwich"! Cookies from a bag and frosting from a can become...wee little Easter bonnets, complete with a fetching bow! Breakfast cereal that looks like jewel-toned gravel, marshmallow fluff, and (you guessed it) frosting from a can become...well, I couldn't say, exactly, but it wasn't anything you'd ever accidentally mistake for food. Surely I am missing something, because it seems to me that if you're busy enough to resort to serving these disgusting processed "foods," you're also too busy to hone the delicate craft of edible millinery. Even the articles, which make an embarrassed effort to promote healthier choices, assume that a busy parent has nothing more pressing to do than to manufacture tiny umbrellas out of yellow bell peppers (cut hemisphere, cut scallops along the edge, et voilà), using a carrot stick for the umbrella shaft and piping ranch dressing raindrops all around the plate. I'm supposed to get out my pastry bag and my #2 Ateco tip to bamboozle a picky toddler into eating a goddamn vegetable?!

Reading this magazine convinced me that I simply do not have what it takes to be the best possible parent, if only because my tolerance for chauvinism, alarmism, consumerism, and playing-with-Lunchable-ism is entirely too low to make the cut.

Posted by Julie at 10:44:19 AM in I've learned a lot...but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Comments

Pulp friction

Yesterday I got my hairs cut. (The lovely middle-aged Italian woman who does my hair refers to it in the plural — "Oh, they long!" Yes, they certainly is.) While I waited for my turn, out of anthropological interest I leafed through a parenting magazine.

Okay, wait. "Leafed through" suggests a casual breeziness. More accurately, I pored over it. I scrutinized it. In fact, I stared at it so hard that the infrared power of my unwavering gaze melted the clay coating on the pages, rendering it a useless slab of gooey pulp.

Of course, it was that before I even picked it up.

As best I can tell, the magazine seemed to address five main areas of inquiry:

• How to discipline your children without tipping them off to the fact that they are being disciplined. Apparently asserting one's parental authority must be done with the strategic cunning and the catlike stealth of a midnight ninja raid. "No" is to be avoided; rather than invalidating the initial impulse, redirecting it to more socially acceptable channels is strongly preferred. "You may not set fire to the dog" therefore becomes, "Wouldn't it be more fun to set fire to this nice heap of oily rags instead?" Got it.

• Your baby might die. The editors would probably call this motif something mealy-mouthed like "safety tips," but they might as well print it in giant red letters across the top of every page: Your Baby Might Die!!! Because that's what they're telling you. Unless you buy this product / employ this technique / adhere to this fashionable trend, you are jeopardizing your child's safety, sanity, and future earning potential. Enroll your child in a water safety class before she reaches six weeks of age, or your baby might die. Buy the safest automobile on the market without delay, or your baby might die. Eradicate all traces of peanut products from your home and a surrounding radius of at least three miles, or your baby might die. Keep your child in a car seat until she reaches puberty, or your baby might die. Are you getting the message, you monstrous, craven baby-killer, you?

• Relationship maintenance for dumbasses. "My husband won't change diapers! Help!" I trust you will be as shocked as I was to learn that the editors did not suggest chasing your husband gleefully around the house, brandishing a runny diaperload of excrement and threatening all manner of smeary mayhem, as a solution to this problem. No. Instead we are to seek out a division of labor we can all live with. "If changing diapers disgusts your husband, have him do a chore you don't like but that he doesn't mind." Brilliant. I get to hose down the nursery when the kid has fingerpainted the wall with natural by-products, and he gets to take the car to get its snow tires taken off. Thanks for the help, Madam Editrix.

• Shiny, happy things to buy. This particular issue focused on ways to keep your kids occupied on long car trips. This is a goal I can relate to, as I enjoy a good road trip and hope to continue taking them after I become a parent. But since word games, "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and "Do I have to stop this car?" are in the public domain and carry no lucrative sponsorship opportunities, I quickly found myself out of my depth. DVD players for the car! Tiny MP3 players in alluring primary colors, molded in the shape of your children's favorite licensed characters! I'm surprised no one's making a portable cone of silence that descends from the roof above the back seat of your minivan, securing itself with a reassuring whisper, rendering inaudible the cries of "When will we be there?" and "No, I really have to go this time!"

• Food that looks like anything but. Every other page was an ad for some sort of convenience food, each more revolting and preservative-laden than the last. But it wasn't enough to hawk those products in their, ah, natural state. No, they had to be manipulated into looking like...things. Packaged pound cake and frosting from a can become...a "grilled cheese sandwich"! Cookies from a bag and frosting from a can become...wee little Easter bonnets, complete with a fetching bow! Breakfast cereal that looks like jewel-toned gravel, marshmallow fluff, and (you guessed it) frosting from a can become...well, I couldn't say, exactly, but it wasn't anything you'd ever accidentally mistake for food. Surely I am missing something, because it seems to me that if you're busy enough to resort to serving these disgusting processed "foods," you're also too busy to hone the delicate craft of edible millinery. Even the articles, which make an embarrassed effort to promote healthier choices, assume that a busy parent has nothing more pressing to do than to manufacture tiny umbrellas out of yellow bell peppers (cut hemisphere, cut scallops along the edge, et voilà), using a carrot stick for the umbrella shaft and piping ranch dressing raindrops all around the plate. I'm supposed to get out my pastry bag and my #2 Ateco tip to bamboozle a picky toddler into eating a goddamn vegetable?!

Reading this magazine convinced me that I simply do not have what it takes to be the best possible parent, if only because my tolerance for chauvinism, alarmism, consumerism, and playing-with-Lunchable-ism is entirely too low to make the cut.