“Generally speaking, real life uniformed female police officers do not wear short skirts and low-cut shirts,” a furious mother has fumed on Facebook in an open letter to Party City that’s going viral.
Urging the store to stop selling “sexualized” Halloween costumes for young girls, Lin Kramer’s Sept. 14 post explained that she was “appalled” by the options available to her 3-year-old daughter on Party City’s website when she browsed their Toddler Costumes category.
“While Halloween costumes are undoubtedly about ‘make-believe,’ it is unfathomable that toddler girls and boys who might be interested in dressing up as police officers are seeking to imagine themselves in the incongruent way your business apparently imagines them,” she blasted. “Toddler girls are not imagining and hoping that they will grow up to become a ‘sexy cop’…Please, Party City, open up your view of the world and redesign your marketing scheme to let kids be kids, without imposing on them antiquated views of gender roles.”
Party City responded to the note, but not in the way Kramer had hoped. The company deleted her letter, as well as the comments on it, and blocked her from posting on their page in the future.
Not that the mom is deterred. “In so doing,” she noted in a follow-up comment on Facebook, “they ignited the passion of people who already had an interest in seeing *this* particular change happen.” (Party City did not respond to request for comment from Yahoo Parenting, nor did Kramer). Kramer’s hope in sharing her concern, she told The Huffington Post, is that “others will be encouraged to pause and critically think about what they are seeing — and accepting — from retailers.” This retailer, however, is standing by its merchandise — and the manner in which they market it. “Nothing we carry is meant to be offensive,” reads a statement from Party City issued to the Huffington Post on Sept. 25, the same day that the company explained in a Facebook comment that Kramer’s original note was deleted against their corporate policy by an employee since let go. “We expect parents to be as involved in their children’s costume selections as they are in selecting their everyday wardrobe, and we encourage parents to shop with their children. We supply the types of products that our customers, and specifically parents, demand.”
The policewoman costume that Kramer calls out, they noted, is “one of our most popular costumes.”
But do Halloween duds really matter all that much in the end? Child development specialist Dr. Robyn Silverman tells Yahoo Parenting that a limited, sexist range of costume options does impact kids’ ideas, if only for that one day.
“When girls are repeatedly shown ‘girls costumes’ that provide short skirts, tight tops, and fishnets, they can begin to believe that this is the only acceptable way for a girl to dress on Halloween,” explains the body image expert and author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls And How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It. “Girls should have a range of choices and choose whatever feels right to them whether it’s more traditionally ‘girly’ or more gender neutral. A greater range of choices that are marketed towards both girls and boys would make it easier for parents who are trying to get their girls to see that they can be whatever they want to be.”
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/party-city-at-center-of-controversy-over-halloween-202502864.html
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/party-city-at-center-of-controversy-over-halloween-202502864.html
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Three more women have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault.
That brings the total to 513 ..........., or 620! (I'm not sure anymore, I lost count.)
Meanwhile, Jian Ghomeshi has pleaded 'not guilty' to his sexual assault charges against a bunch of other women!
And on top of all that: Another Porn star has accused Josh Duggar had rough sex with her!
Jesus Christ folks, doesn't anyone just cuddle, or hold hands and go for long walks anymore?
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Discount airline WOW Air has unveiled a plan to fly from Montreal or Toronto to Iceland for $99 one way.
Only trouble is that it will cost you $2375 to get back. (Or stay in Iceland!)
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Here's a headline that makes no sense what-so-ever: Jan Schakowsky says Boehner exit signals GOP move 'to the more extreme!' Oh come on folks, how much more extreme can ya get?
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Here's a headline that should draw some attention: Millions of dollars wasted on nearly empty prisons built twice as large as planned, watchdog says!
That’s what the Justice Department’s watchdog found in a report released Wednesday that shows how $70.3 million in economic stimulus grants turned a crucial need in Indian country to incarcerate and rehabilitate adult offenders into two white elephants.
“The excessive size of both facilities creates increased costs for operations and maintenance staff,” auditors wrote.
Right now, that office can pay for just 40 percent of the corrections officers needed to staff the new, larger-than-planned jails. As a result, “there is an increased risk that the [facilities] will not become fully operational due to a lack of funding,” says the report, which also found sloppy accounting and financial controls over the construction and inadequate vetting of the builders.
MEANWHILE, LOCAL POLICE FORCES HAVE BEEN DOING DOUBLE DUTY OVER THE PAST MONTH IN AN ATTEMPT TO ROUND UP MORE PRISONERS TO FILL THE JAILS.
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While we're on the subject of cops and robbers folks, this is one of the reasons I wouldn't do any wide spread traveling in the United States of America!
Civil asset forfeiture is a controversial but legal practice that allows police to seize cash and property from people without charging them with a crime. If police simply suspect that you acquired something as a result of illegal activity, they can take it from you. If you want to get it back, the onus is on you to prove you got it legally.
As you might imagine, a lot of folks are up in arms about this. But reform has been slow. New Mexico and Montana are the only two states that have placed significant limits on the process. A similar effort in California recently died in the state legislature.
One possible reason? Most Americans aren't even aware that civil asset forfeiture is happening.
According to a recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll, nearly three-quarters of Americans haven't even heard of the term "civil asset forfeiture." So pollsters got around this by asking a specific question: “To the best of your knowledge, when can law enforcement permanently seize money or other property from a person?”
Only 30 percent of Americans correctly answered that property could be seized on the basis of suspicion alone. A much larger plurality -- 40 percent -- think that police need a conviction in order to permanently seize goods. But that is not true.
When asked when police should be able to seize property from citizens, an overwhelming majority -- 71 percent -- say this should happen only after a conviction.
The amazing thing about this finding is how much agreement there is across political and demographic groups. Seventy-two percent of Democrats say a conviction should be necessary, as do 77 percent of Republicans. Sixty-eight percent of blacks and 73 percent of whites agree.
Part of the reason why so few people are worked up about civil asset forfeiture, even though many oppose it on principle, may have something to do with the term itself. "Civil asset forfeiture" is a bland, starchy phrase. You can feel your eyes start to glaze over as you read it. It is a perfect piece of bureaucratic language -- it obscures its true meaning behind a thicket of legalese.
If we called civil asset forfeiture "cops taking your stuff" or "the government seizing your cash" or "drug cops raiding your house, taking your daughter's birthday money, and stringing your lingerie up from a ceiling fan," perhaps people would pay more attention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/01/most-americans-dont-realize-its-this-easy-for-police-to-take-your-cash/
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