Reproduced within the Link-Zone pages with the kind permission of the WFA SP24/09

Sticks and stones, pins and needles

by Melinda Tankard Reist

A company comes up with a voodoo doll for girls to stab with pins and use to curse the girls they don't like - and we wonder why girl-on-girl violence is on the rise.

The doll is just one more sign of the mainstreaming of violence at every level of society. At a time of heightened concern about bullying, companies find new and creative ways to trade in misery: real flesh and blood girls are treated as pin cushions.

Smiggle, the ultra cute stationery store popular with tweens and teen girls, had added to its line a "voodoo doll" canvas pencil case with plastic photo pocket. "Place photo here" read the helpful instruction on the face.

Corporate credibility for a product enabling girls to hex each other using an ancient occult ritual.

The company sells eco-friendly products with slogans like "nuke free". But it seemed to have given no advance thought as to how its products might blow up relationships or drop emotional acid rain on girls' heads.

The mother of a young girl subjected to bullying using a pin covered Smiggle doll with her face on it complained.

Her first two complaints went unacknowledged. The third time she was told the design team would be more "sensitive" with future designs.

Following more complaints and media attention, the company announced last week it would withdraw the product.

But the question remains: why would a company which prides itself on education and which enjoys special market share among girls, even think of coming up with a product promoting bullying, vindictiveness and hatred?

Talk to anyone working with girls and they'll tell you - bullying is on the rise, girl-on-girl violence is increasing and growing numbers of girls are suffering abuse at school. They are picked on, harassed, sent cruel text messages and subjected to debilitating gossip on social networking sites. Some suffer depression and anxiety, others even attempt suicide.

It's not hard to figure out who would be most vulnerable to the Smiggle hex treatment. Girls who are a bit different, girls who have fallen out of favour for whatever reason.
Egged on by bullying ringleaders, a girl is shown a doll full of pins with her face on it. She feels hated and excluded.

Parents and teachers work hard to convey the importance of compassion and empathy in girls (and boys) and to try to address "queen bee and wannabee' nastiness. Many schools have anti-bullying policies. But the voodoo doll is just the latest in a list of products which are advertised in ways that turn girls against each other.

Ads for Skins She sportswear, popular with young women, say: "Get a body to die for...and watch other women line up to make your funeral arrangements" and "Get the body every other woman would love. To spit on".

The Hottie and the Nottie, starring Paris Hilton, had the theme "The beauty of one girl is directly proportional to the ugliness of her best friend". This dividing of girls into the beautiful and the ugly causes great pain.

And then of course there is the violence rife more broadly in the culture. Behaving violently is too often equated with power and status. By the time a teenager reaches 18, it is estimated they will have seen around 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders.

Entertainment features graphic sex and violence. Increasing numbers of girls are playing games in which the female characters are either victims (prostituted, attacked, raped) or violent femme fatale types. Girls listen to music and watch music video clips depicting violence as sexy.

The girl power concept is increasingly associated with being aggressive; the ability to bring someone down is somehow empowering. Girls are having to compete for recognition and social status in ways that are destructive to them.

At some point in this girls gone wild culture, girls began to see ruthless violence as an extension of exhibitionism and sexual acting out. Transgression is considered empowering, liberating and thrilling.

Combine all this with a tribal generation of girls who are less connected to any nurturing adult, add alcohol, abuse, neglect, boredom and lack of hope and meaning and we can begin to understand why some girls might lash out.

As Maggie Hamilton points out in her important book What's Happening To Our Girls?, the gap between violence in boys and girls is narrowing. She writes:

"Over the last decade the numbers of girls in their mid to late teens involved in assault here has risen by 32 per cent... In 2005 over a third of the children aged 10 to 14 served with an apprehended violence order in New South Wales were girls. The same is true for girls in their mid to late teens, who have had apprehended violence orders taken out against them."

Harvard professor Deborah Prothrow-Stith says the ways boys and girls express their anger have now converged. "...We are seeing a pattern where they are more likely to act out aggressively. There is an attitude among them that they need to be like boys - you need to give it and take it just like the boys," she says.

Girls look for rules of engagement and see a culture glorifying extreme violence.

America's Next Top Model featured a photo shoot in which the aspiring models had to pretend they'd been murdered. The aim was to look sexy in death. The Pussycat Dolls video clip for I Hate This Part Right Here adapts an image from the pin ball machine gang rape scene in the Jodie Foster film The Accused. Full page glossy ads for a Melbourne shoe shop featured the image of a murdered woman in the boot of a car. Violence against women becomes something beautiful and meaningful.

This culture is encouraged with a continual media diet of ruthless elimination "reality" programs in which a zero sum game is pursued to the end and only one winner allowed. The winner is rewarded for eliminating the competition.

Girls are being shown that compassion is a sign of weakness. The fact that girls and women have been each others' best friends for millennia and often help one another out in terms of crisis, is forgotten.

Of course you can't blame it all on a canvas doll. But the voodoo doll is a symbol of so much that is wrong. It is hardly likely to make girls more peaceable. We need to teach girls how to resolve conflict in healthy ways. Where are the products teaching girls emotional intelligence and resilience?

In a time of fraying social cohesion, distrust and hostility, corporations should lead the creation of physically and emotionally healthy products for girls rather than profiting from cruelty and the further erosion of empathy.

If we allow the culture to stick pins into girls, we shouldn't be surprised when they do it to each other.

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition for Urban Renewal & Education, a 501c3 non-profit think tank that provides a national voice of reason on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy. Prior to her involvement in social activism, Star Parker was a single welfare mother in Los Angeles, California. After receiving Christ, Star returned to college, received a BS degree in marketing and launched an urban Christian magazine. The 1992 Los Angeles riots destroyed her business, yet served as a springboard for her focus on faith and market-based alternatives to empower the lives of the poor. As a social policy consultant, Star Parker gives regular testimony before the United States Congress, and is a national expert on major television and radio shows across the country. Currently, Star is a regular commentator on CNN, CNBC, CBN, FOX News, and the United Kingdom's BBC. She has debated Jesse Jackson on BET; fought for school choice on Larry King Live; defended welfare reform on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and spoke at the 1996 Republican National Convention. Star Parker’s personal transformation from welfare fraud to conservative crusader has been chronicled by ABC’s 20/20; Rush Limbaugh; Readers Digest; Dr. James Dobson; The 700 Club; Dr. George Grant; the Washington Times; Christianity Today; Charisma, and World Magazine. Articles and quotes by Star have appeared in major publications including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Star has written three books. Her autobiography "Pimps, Whores & Welfare Brats" was released in 1997 by Pocket Books, "Uncle Sam's Plantation" is released by Thomas Nelson in the fall of 2003, and "White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay" was released in 2006.  Today, in addition to heading CURE, Star is a syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, offering weekly op-eds to more than 400 newspapers worldwide, including the Boston Herald, the Dallas Morning News, The Orange County Register, San Diego Union, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Washington Times, and the Star and Stripes, the largest paper serving the men and women of our Armed Forces. http://www.urbancure.org/