Starting them off early
By Never teh BrideThey say that inside every little girl is a future bride, but how early is too early? I found this game while browsing for interesting wedding planning software:
Apparently, My Fantasy Wedding is appropriate for girls ages six to eleven. Little tykes can plan every aspect of their fantasy wedding, from the dress to the location to music. They can even design a fantasy groom…which is more than us real-life girls get to do.
But really. Do little girls need to spend their precious youth doing all the things - like tasting endless cakes and auditioning florists - that years later will cause them to develop facial tics? Personally, I think this game is marketed toward children but intended for lovelorn adults like me who fear they will never get to squeeze into that perfect wedding dress. A guilty pleasure, indeed!
December 20th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
That is wrong. If my neice decided she wanted to spend her time whiling away at the computer on this game, I would punt her out the door and require she play ball in the front yard to try and knock some sense into her.
December 20th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
It’s just as bad as that Dream Date board game that was hot a bunch of years ago. Crud like this does not build the self esteem, methinks.
December 20th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
The small girls, they need no encouragement to speculate about their someday-weddings. When the Annalucia was about five years old she and her sisters stood by the window one day to watch the young lady across the street in full, magnificent white bridal regalia, leaving her parents’ house to get into the car and drive to the wedding. This led to some discussion among the three tykes as to what they would wear at their own weddings; the Annalucia opting for a blue veil and a yellow dress if she remembers correctly, though she was rebuked by her elder sister who said that blue veils were not permissible.
Anyway, the child dreaming of a fancy wedding does not need a fantasy groom, or any groom at all. It is all about the opportunity to dress up and to be the center of attention.
December 20th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Kids at this age need to be outside running around playing with their friends…OUTSIDE. Learn how to do a cartwheel. Climb a tree…but get away from the computer. Don’t kids know that they have the rest of their lives to sit for hours on end in front of a computer? What I would give to do cartwheels in the grass right now…
When I was younger, I remember I had quite an imagination, but it was for things like creating a take-out restaurant out of my friend’s back porch (we had outfits and everything…complete with roller skates. Oh hell yeah…roller skates!) or trying to make art out of mud and leaves, not planning my future wedding. Its OK to be single. Why must little girls be brought up to think they *have* to get married? I think cultivating a child’s imagination is a good thing, but cultivating that child’s self esteem is important as well!
December 20th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
I understand where the Annalucia is coming from because I too started planning the perfect wedding really early on, but that type of behavior, especially at that age, needs to be downplayed, not marketed too, otherwise we’ll find the country backsliding to the point that women think they should go to college just to get their MRS degree, and that is wrong…
December 20th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
MRS degree! HA! I’ve never heard that before but I love it!
December 20th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
I am certainly no authority on children’s games, but I hesitate to read too much into them. Kids play at a lot of things they don’t pursue as adults.
But like JayKay, my concern is that kids have better things to do than play at the computer. Much of a woman’s bone mass is formed at a young age, and things like gymnastics and other athletics will help build it. Sitting her tuckus doesn’t. Bone mass is important for avoiding broken bones and osteoporosis. Gymnastics also helps develop balance. But more and more kids nowadays are becoming couch potatoes, even to the point of getting what used to be called adult-onset diabetes.
And if the computer had Internet access, I wouldn’t let an 11-year-old girl on it. There are too many creeps online looking for little girls.
December 20th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Lori: Are you an ex-gymnast?
I am…my bones and joints don’t like me so much these days.
Even so, I never once thought when I was a kid that I would rather be sitting in front of a TV or computer. It was FUN to tumble through the yard on summer days and evenings and even now, I can still do a back flip. Its a cool party trick…then I pay for it for a week! LOL
December 20th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
This could really confusing for a little girl who grew up and preferred other big girls to some fantasy cardboard guy. Now only if they updated the package…
December 20th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
Yeah, I was a gymnast–the neighbor girl taught me cartwheels and somersaults. That was a long time ago.
The good balance has stayed with me, but I did have some joint problems a few years ago: two pinched nerves in my spine that put me in agony. So I started doing yoga for about 10 minutes every morning (neck and back stretches), and it solved the problem. I have almost as much flexibility as I did when I was a kid.
December 20th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
Thanks Never Teh Bride. I wish I could say that was an original but that’s been kicking around the southwest where I grew up for years. You’re free to steal it if you want. I think my grandmother actually used that exact phrase when asking what I would be doing when I went off to college. If I was a more impressionable child at the time, it might have affected me…
December 20th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
I agree with you all about kids and computers. I have a metric load of brothers and sisters and you don’t have to be in my family’s house to hear a parent or aunt or uncle yelling, “Go play outside!” They’re allowed on the internet now and then, but my dad has that machine so stocked with parental controls…which means no chatting or chat sites. Basically, they have access to neo pets or something like that.
December 21st, 2005 at 5:17 pm
The “MRS” was floating around the Northeast, too, many years gone by. I don’t remember planning the perfect wedding when I was a sprout, but I certainly made wedding dresses for Barbie. It didn’t interfere with playing soldiers and digging foxholes in the backyard, or coming back from the brook with minnows, or going to the swamp to bring back tadpoles and to look for cottonmouths (the last is really not a good choice, BTW).
At the age of 48, I can sit here in my chair and touch either foot to either shoulder without stretching first, and I still have chronic pain. C’est la guerre. And weightlifting, which I still do, also helps ward off osteoporosis (and I wish that my parents hadn’t fought so much against my having my own weights these many years gone by). Part of the problem, though, is a LOT of kids don’t have any place where they can GO to do cartwheels, backflips, or even somersaults. They may not have backyards, or even an accessible safe playground. (That doesn’t keep my stomach from knotting when I see ads for VIDEOGAMES for playing football, baseball, etc., when it was something people actually DID when I was growing up.)
I’m actually in favor of software being designed specifically to appeal to GIRLS. Why is it worse for them to learn managerial skills planning weddings while their brothers hone theirs building sportsteams or universes on male-oriented software? Maybe the girls will hone their CEO skills with that kind of practice. Maybe they’ll grow up to be accountants. I would like to see MORE specific games: Frankenhusband! Build your ideal! Like Mr. Potatohead … only you can’t fry him when you get bored with him. Let them do some kind of SIMS activity with it, so they can then see how Frankenhusband behaves in different situations; it might give them a chance to re-think what they find important.
December 21st, 2005 at 6:17 pm
Mmmm, crispy fried husband…
December 22nd, 2005 at 5:37 pm
Good eatin’!
[Aaaaaghhh! I SO did not say that!]
December 22nd, 2005 at 7:31 pm
La BellaDonna, do I detect a little resentment against the despicable ex, Mme. Nightshade?
Here is another acronym: RAIDS, or Recently Acquired Income Deficiency Syndrome. It afflicts businesses whose owner is going through a divorce. Lesser forms of RAIDS include one party (usually the male) closing joint accounts or working for cash. An MRS is no defense against RAIDS or any of its variants. To treat symptoms, you need CDs (cash); curing RAIDS requires an attorney and a CPA. Severe cases, however, cannot be cured. So regardless of how much money her husband makes, a woman needs the ability to get a J-O-B.
December 27th, 2005 at 11:32 am
Heh. The Lori, she has picked up on the truth of La BellaDonna, who is actually not suffering from delusions of singular beauty (and “atropine” was just too medical).
And while I have MORE than a little resentment against the despicable ex, who made it abundantly clear he did not care if I lived or died (hence the “ex”), my comment didn’t need to be viewed in the, er, negative …
And I refuse to explain more than that!
February 11th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
My younger sister got the game for Christmas in “Games for Girls” set along with Nancy Drew and Hello Kitty games. I admit, the game was strangely addicting, with its bright colors, endless possibilities for ugly dresses, and the presence of an Elvis style suit available for young children to dress their electronic fiance in.