It started with me being both old and, evidently out of touch as the mom of boys, asking:
Who in the word is Justin Bieber anyways?Fascinating thing happened next. Caleb, who is in second grade, knew he was a singer. Noah, the first grader, hadn't a clue (which I think puts my knowledge of current pop culture somewhere around the first grade level).
I asked Caleb how he knew who he was:
I don't know. A bunch of the girls in my class all have "I Love JB" shirts. They really don't know who he is either. But their parents got them for them and the other girls have them, so they all wear them anyway.
I may be the mom of only boys. And while I was (still am, actually) a girl, I realize I may be out of touch with the current realities of raising them.
But this bothered me.
It's hard enough to be a girl. Heck, I did it 25-30 years ago. There are pressures to be cute. To be thin. To have the right friends. To say the right things. To walk and talk the right way. To like the right boys. And there are certainly pressures to wear the right clothes. And the older you get, the worse it gets.
And let me be the first to say, I wore some pretty ridiculous clothes in my day. (Those of you who know me will recall the Madonna days.) Some I chose myself and some, I am sure, were influenced by others.
But these girls are seven and eight. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they aren't buying their own clothes.
And, in my humble opinion, when you are eight you should love bikes and playgrounds and friends and families. Not 16-year-old pop stars.
What bothered me most was his comment that they didn't really seem to know who he was, but they all had the shirts already, so they wore them.
Do we really need to put them on that path already? I know I am probably over-thinking it.
But maybe not.
But maybe not.
They'll be dealing with crushes and getting crushed soon enough.
