Potty Training

Visiting the Puppies

Christmas Morning

The Princess and the Frog

Disney's Tiana: Self-reliant, ambitious, but still a princess
Carly Weeks
From Monday's Globe and Mail

Princess Tiana came to life at theatres across the country this weekend, starring in The Princess and the Frog, a new animated movie from Disney.

Although Tiana is the latest in a long line of Disney princesses, the newest incarnation is gaining more attention for the ways she differs from her royal counterparts.

She's the first black princess in the Disney franchise, which dates back to the debut of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. Her life unfolds in New Orleans during the 1920s. She has serious career ambitions to open her own restaurant, and tries to make the dream happen by saving up tips working as a waitress.

That's considerable progress for a company whose first princess spends most of the film waiting hand and foot on seven slovenly men who only give her a place to stay because she can cook.
But does catching up to the 21st century by casting a female lead as something more than a glorified housekeeper represent much progress?

After all, the new princess still waits on others, although in this movie she gets paid for it.
The real issue, according to media and gender analysts, is that Princess Tiana has much more in common with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella than it first appears.

She might have an independent streak and a desire for more than princely romance, but those messages are diluted by promotional materials and merchandise that feature Tiana in the same stylized fashion as all the other Disney princesses, said Matthew Johnson, media education specialist with the Media Awareness Network in Ottawa.

"They are really communicating the same princess identity, the same princess message, as they have through all the other characters, and it's only in some elements of the script that they've changed anything significant," Mr. Johnson said.

He highlighted another example, Mulan, a Disney princess featured in the movie of the same name, who spends much of her screen time posing as a male warrior but wears a sparkly kimono and plenty of makeup in Disney merchandise bought for little girls.

"The overall message of the Mulan character and the Mulan franchise is very different from the message we get from the film," Mr. Johnson said.

Fairy-tale princesses have long been popular with little girls. But that popularity has hit manic proportions in the past decade, fuelled by a calculated marketing and branding push by Disney.
In 2000, the company launched the Disney Princess franchise, which "enables little girls to live the life of a princess" through products and entertainment, according to Disney Consumer Products.

The multi-billion-dollar franchise revolves around branded items featuring the nine Disney princesses and has become the top-selling line at company theme parks and stores. It has expanded from basics such as dolls, toys and DVDs to include furniture, bedding, costumes and Disney Princess magazine. Numerous items, such as playpens, are geared toward babies.
Competitors like Mattel Inc. have also jumped on the bandwagon with lines of princess-themed DVDs and toys.

Although popular, the princess push troubles some experts who say the overwhelming emphasis on good looks, thinness and beautiful clothing sends the wrong message to girls, beginning at a very young age.

"It's possible for a child's media diet to be almost exclusively princess," Mr. Johnson said. "You have to imagine these messages are being reinforced in a pretty powerful way."

While the new movie tries to strike a modern chord, the storyline is not much different than the typical "happily ever after" fairy tale, said Diane Levin, professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids.

The main plot focuses on how Tiana and the male lead, Prince Naveen, must find a way to become human again after they are both transformed into frogs. Although there are a few tweaks - Tiana doesn't simply wait to be rescued and the prince is down on his luck and broke - the overall message is the same, Prof. Levin said: Beauty will save you and appearances are important.

"It's more of the same, but it allows them to ... adapt their marketing a little bit, to be more inclusive," she said.

She added that she believes Disney cast Tiana as a poor working woman to appeal to the black working-class population of the United States.

And long after the credits roll, merchandise from the movie will remain, featuring Tiana not as a working waitress, but a princess, Mr. Johnson said.

"She works in a restaurant. Her family is poor ... but of course all of the merchandising material has her in the princess gown and tiara."

Two Weeks Old

Christmas Cookies

Frosty

Decorating the Tree

O' Christmas Tree

Family Photos

Another Birthday

Puppies Arrive!!

Congrats to Carlo and Abby! Ten puppies born today.

Pictures to come in the near future.

Can't wait to meet our first family dog.

New Moon

Not nearly as good as the book but still a great movie.

But the best part of tonight was spending time with good friends.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child worth the paper it's printed on?

By Lynda Hurst

Is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child worth the paper it's printed on?
On its 20th anniversary, the unspeakably tragic lives of so many children in the world force the question.Signed on Nov. 20, 1989, the agreement spelled out the basic human rights of those under age 18: the right to survival, full development, non-discrimination and protection from abuse and exploitation. It's been ratified by 193 nations, including Canada, but not the U.S. – a fact President Barack Obama has called "embarrassing" (it's now under review). Two subsequent amendments restrict the use of under-18s in armed conflict and ban the sale of children, child prostitution and pornography.

On paper, the convention – in fact, the very idea that children have rights of their own – was a profound advance in international human values. On paper, the world cares deeply about its children.But in reality?

"It's the most ratified, least implemented convention ever," says Kathy Vandergrift, chair of the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children.

In 1989, when optimism was in the political air, the agreement was seen as visionary. Who could object? Nations rushed to sign on.

But the global context has changed, says Vandergrift: "Now we have to move from idealism to using it as a practical tool for change.

"Not that there haven't been pockets of progress. South Africa, like Canada and Russia, has set up a separate juvenile justice system. In northern Ethiopia – where half of all girls are married to strangers before age 15, two-thirds before the onset of menstruation – the Berhane Hewan Project has enabled more than 11,000 girls to delay marriage.

How? By providing the incentive of a $25 sheep to families who commit to keeping their daughters in school.But overall, say activists, the pace of recognition, let alone realization, of children's rights has been glacial.Some nations have simply ignored the paper they signed.

Iran continues to execute child criminals. India still has no ban on child labour, with 70 to 80 million workers under age 13 eking out a living for their families or themselves.

A snapshot of other key areas after 20 years:

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CHILD SOLDIERS

This spring, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon identified 56 governments and 14 armed groups that continue to use child soldiers (under age 15) in breach of the convention.

Only seven arrest warrants have been issued by the International Criminal Court, though former Liberian president Charles Taylor and a Congolese warlord are currently being tried for war crimes, including the use of child soldiers – in Taylor's case, the infamous "Small Boys Unit.

"Since 2000, the UN has deployed Child Protection Advisers on peacekeeping operations. But while the Security Council repeatedly says it will consider sanctions against violators, it has done nothing, says Georgette Gagnon, Africa specialist at Human Rights Watch in New York.

"The convention set the standards, but implementation is what counts. A few children have been returned, but there is no general improvement in the situation.

"Children caught in conflict zones are still killed, maimed, orphaned, abducted, deprived of education and medical care, and left traumatized. While boys are forced to fight, girls are routinely sexually abused.

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SEXUAL ABUSE

Child prostitution and trafficking, of both sexes, continues unabated in many regions. UNICEF says many of the 60,000 child prostitutes in the Philippines work in brothels in Angeles City, a sex-tourist mecca. But Russia has also become a destination for niche tourism with up to a quarter of all sex workers adolescent or younger.

In India, about 10,000 Nepalese girls, most aged between nine and 16 and prized for their fair skin, are trafficked in and sold to brothels every year. In the West, some 70 per cent of runaways and homeless youth end up sexually exploited.

The practice of bacha bazi – keeping adolescent boys as performers cum sex slaves – has resurfaced in Afghanistan (if indeed it ever went away). "Nobody talks about it," Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN's special representative on children and armed conflict said last year. "Everyone says 'Well, you know, it's been there for 1,000 years.' "

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PORNOGRAPHY

In ways unimaginable in 1989, the global spread of the Internet has increased the volume, accessibility, profitability and brutality of prepubescent child pornography.

The U.S. Justice Department estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 individuals are involved in organized rings worldwide, one-third operating from within the U.S.

In March, Austrian police cracked an Internet ring that stretched across 170 countries. In September, German police broke up a cyberporn network with simultaneous raids carried out in Canada, the U.S., Switzerland, Austria, Spain and Bulgaria.

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LABOUR

Perceived economic need continues to trump convention protections. UNICEF says there are about 158 million child workers globally. Children aged 5 to 14 account for 22 per cent of the labour force in Asia, 17 per cent in Latin America and 32 per cent in Africa.

This month, it was reported that Uzbekistan youngsters as young as 11 are being taken from school to pick the cotton harvest. This, despite a government child-labour ban last year after some Western firms boycotted Uzbek cotton. That was then. Uzbekistan recently signed contracts for cotton fibre to China, Russia and Iran. The kids are back in the fields.

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SEXISM

The plight of young females has come to the fore, at least, since 1989.

Consider: the majority of the world's 130 million illiterate youth are girls. In sub-Saharan Africa, 122 million girls live on less than $1 a day. Nearly half of all sexual assaults are against girls under 15. And underage marriage remains a cultural ritual in parts of southwest Asia, the Mideast and Africa. Jordan's Queen Rania recently called the oppression of half the human race "so illogical it verges on the absurd." Girls turn into women who pass on poverty and subjugation to their children "in the most interminable endurance race ever, where the end is never in sight, and no one ever wins.

"At least not yet."

Trick or Treat