"Store Wars...May the Farm be with you."Ummmm, yeah. "Darth Tater," "Obie One Canolli," "Ham Solo," "Chu Broccoli," and "Princess Lettuce."
I was skeptical at first, but caught myself laughing at the silliness. What do you think?
"Store Wars"
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
VIDEO: Funny or Just Cheesy? You Decide.
"Store Wars...May the Farm be with you."Ummmm, yeah. "Darth Tater," "Obie One Canolli," "Ham Solo," "Chu Broccoli," and "Princess Lettuce."
I was skeptical at first, but caught myself laughing at the silliness. What do you think?
"Store Wars"
Monday, March 5, 2007
chicken breasts
I got breasts in the sixth grade: real breasts, not the kind you find inside a padded bra, but rather the kind you pour into two, too-small bras in an attempt to make them appear smaller. I was slim, thirteen, and suddenly, I was the girl with the boobs. Such happenings have a formative influence on any young girl’s self identity. I know they did mine.
Growing up I was never much of a meat eater. Turkeys looked like turkeys, and hamburger bleeds in the package. I found this sort of thing repulsive. The meats I ate were those that did not proclaim their animal origins- the snipped, reconstituted, packaged and produced sort of meats, the kinds which placed a fair distance between me and their visible veins and organs. I loved donair, sausage, and sterile sandwich meats, but mostly my meat of choice was boneless skinless breasts.
Looking back at my diaries from age thirteen, I find entries lamenting the speed at which girls grow up. I wrote:
50 years ago a young girl of 12 played with dolls and her girlfriends, and ran home to her mommie. Boys were forighn, obnoxious, and had “cooties.” Now at age 13, I laugh at that…If I played with my dollies and thought the boys were yucky now, in 97, I would be considered “green”…If the grade four’s had boy friends last year, the grad three’s will this year and so more little adults are made, and I’me not saying I want to play with dollies, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE boys, but sometimes I feel to old and look at myself in the mirror with makeup on andlook fifteen, and feel about 100, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t skipped my childhood…Kids do more at age twelve now, than kids 50 years ago even knew about.
I still agree with myself at age twelve, in fact even more so in hindsight. When I was ten, I still wore sweatpants every day. Stores like La Senza girl and Dynamite (sexy little version of grown up people’s clothes) did not yet exist. I considered myself at the forefront of fashion with my kitty-cat sweatshirt purchased from Northern Getaway. Now, when I go to the mall I see a lot of little girls dressed like little women, little girls who look like woman, but are still just girls. I hear a lot of things come out of their mouths which at their age I would have blushed to even whisper.
Last summer in a conversation about organic foods a colleague of mine said, “Do you ever notice how girls these days look like they’re eighteen when they’re thirteen?” Yes, I answered, and silently exclaimed, thinking about the mall and myself at thirteen. “It’s the chicken breasts,” he said, and went on to tell me about how injections which are given to chickens, in order that they grow larger breasts have been causing the girls who eat them to also grow larger breasts and to grow breast prematurely.
Why aren’t we told these things? I thought. Is there no regulation governing the use of such hormones? Envisioning every chicken nugget I have ever eaten, I felt violated, like unbeknownst to me I had been forced to participate in this grand science experiment, the results of which are uncertain. I instantly wondered whether I would have grown such boobs if I hadn’t had a passion for chicken; whether I would have continued to be successful at track and field; whether I would have stayed a little girl for a little longer. I cannot know whether anything would have been any different, whether my preference for chicken has or has not dictated my greater life experience. Maybe none of it is true; maybe I was overreacting. I know not to believe everything I am told, after all. But, shocked, scared, and upset, it all seemed to make a lot of sense: the girls are getting bigger, the chickens are getting bigger, people in general are getting bigger. Maybe it’s not true. I hope it isn’t, but it is certainly a plausible explanation: it makes sense.
As is often the case, after this issue was first brought to my attention, it seemed to appear everywhere. In the weeks and months that followed, others have mentioned this chicken-breast correlation to me, and I in turn have mentioned it to others. Soon after the first conversation I found premature puberty addressed in the evening news. The reported listed statistics even more startling than my suspicions: the average age when girls first menstruate has decreased dramatically, as has the age when girls first begin to develop breasts. The story focused on a ten-year-old girl shopping for clothes with her mother. With breast, she looked fourteen. She should have been out playing hopscotch rather than shopping for bras with her mother. She should have been playing with dolls, but do girls at ten even play with dolls anymore? I’m not sure. I doubt it.
Rather than “food in the news,” what is news to me is the absence of food in the news. For instead of drawing the obvious connection- that the extreme changes in our diet which have occurred in recent years (genetic modification, increased pesticide use, hormone experimentation, etc.) could in fact be causing girls to go through puberty prematurely, the reporter chose not to ask why. Instead she told parents those young daughters were going through puberty that there were people that they could talk to; she provided contact information for centers which have been set up in each of the Canadian provinces, to help ease parents and their daughters through the difficult process of premature adolescence. This scared me even more than the chicken hormones. The fact that a band aid is applied, rather than inquiry into the cause of the injury, the fact that what solves one problem causes another, and is again patched over, worries me a great deal.
Growing up I was never much of a meat eater. Turkeys looked like turkeys, and hamburger bleeds in the package. I found this sort of thing repulsive. The meats I ate were those that did not proclaim their animal origins- the snipped, reconstituted, packaged and produced sort of meats, the kinds which placed a fair distance between me and their visible veins and organs. I loved donair, sausage, and sterile sandwich meats, but mostly my meat of choice was boneless skinless breasts.
Looking back at my diaries from age thirteen, I find entries lamenting the speed at which girls grow up. I wrote:
50 years ago a young girl of 12 played with dolls and her girlfriends, and ran home to her mommie. Boys were forighn, obnoxious, and had “cooties.” Now at age 13, I laugh at that…If I played with my dollies and thought the boys were yucky now, in 97, I would be considered “green”…If the grade four’s had boy friends last year, the grad three’s will this year and so more little adults are made, and I’me not saying I want to play with dollies, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE boys, but sometimes I feel to old and look at myself in the mirror with makeup on andlook fifteen, and feel about 100, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t skipped my childhood…Kids do more at age twelve now, than kids 50 years ago even knew about.
I still agree with myself at age twelve, in fact even more so in hindsight. When I was ten, I still wore sweatpants every day. Stores like La Senza girl and Dynamite (sexy little version of grown up people’s clothes) did not yet exist. I considered myself at the forefront of fashion with my kitty-cat sweatshirt purchased from Northern Getaway. Now, when I go to the mall I see a lot of little girls dressed like little women, little girls who look like woman, but are still just girls. I hear a lot of things come out of their mouths which at their age I would have blushed to even whisper.
Last summer in a conversation about organic foods a colleague of mine said, “Do you ever notice how girls these days look like they’re eighteen when they’re thirteen?” Yes, I answered, and silently exclaimed, thinking about the mall and myself at thirteen. “It’s the chicken breasts,” he said, and went on to tell me about how injections which are given to chickens, in order that they grow larger breasts have been causing the girls who eat them to also grow larger breasts and to grow breast prematurely.
Why aren’t we told these things? I thought. Is there no regulation governing the use of such hormones? Envisioning every chicken nugget I have ever eaten, I felt violated, like unbeknownst to me I had been forced to participate in this grand science experiment, the results of which are uncertain. I instantly wondered whether I would have grown such boobs if I hadn’t had a passion for chicken; whether I would have continued to be successful at track and field; whether I would have stayed a little girl for a little longer. I cannot know whether anything would have been any different, whether my preference for chicken has or has not dictated my greater life experience. Maybe none of it is true; maybe I was overreacting. I know not to believe everything I am told, after all. But, shocked, scared, and upset, it all seemed to make a lot of sense: the girls are getting bigger, the chickens are getting bigger, people in general are getting bigger. Maybe it’s not true. I hope it isn’t, but it is certainly a plausible explanation: it makes sense.
As is often the case, after this issue was first brought to my attention, it seemed to appear everywhere. In the weeks and months that followed, others have mentioned this chicken-breast correlation to me, and I in turn have mentioned it to others. Soon after the first conversation I found premature puberty addressed in the evening news. The reported listed statistics even more startling than my suspicions: the average age when girls first menstruate has decreased dramatically, as has the age when girls first begin to develop breasts. The story focused on a ten-year-old girl shopping for clothes with her mother. With breast, she looked fourteen. She should have been out playing hopscotch rather than shopping for bras with her mother. She should have been playing with dolls, but do girls at ten even play with dolls anymore? I’m not sure. I doubt it.
Rather than “food in the news,” what is news to me is the absence of food in the news. For instead of drawing the obvious connection- that the extreme changes in our diet which have occurred in recent years (genetic modification, increased pesticide use, hormone experimentation, etc.) could in fact be causing girls to go through puberty prematurely, the reporter chose not to ask why. Instead she told parents those young daughters were going through puberty that there were people that they could talk to; she provided contact information for centers which have been set up in each of the Canadian provinces, to help ease parents and their daughters through the difficult process of premature adolescence. This scared me even more than the chicken hormones. The fact that a band aid is applied, rather than inquiry into the cause of the injury, the fact that what solves one problem causes another, and is again patched over, worries me a great deal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
