So, last week? Not my favorite week.  Here I was, living my quiet liberal life in my funky progressive town, while all political hell broke loose around me. Not only did Scott Brown (whom my friend Julie will only refer to as “that porn guy”) become my new junior senator, but the Supreme Court decided to grant Citibank the same Constitutional rights that my crazy neighbor down the street enjoys.  Sometimes it feels to me like the only difference between Citibank and my crazy neighbor is about thirty-five gazillion dollars. Oh, and the ability to bankrupt me.  But I digress.

The good news, I think, is this new case pending in California: Perry vs. Schwarzenegger.  A lesbian couple is suing the state of California to reinstate marriage equality, which the state had for about five minutes. I wish my that porn guy would take a closer look at that case, as it is really inspiring in a number of ways.  For one thing, did you know the case is being argued by the two lawyers who were on opposing sides in Bush v. Gore, some ten years ago? Political differences notwithstanding, these guys are on the same side here; they both recognize the inherent unfairness in denying marriage rights to certain citizens based on sexual orientation.  The case is almost sure to appear before the Supremes eventually, and once it does, there’s potential to create marriage equality for the entire country in one fell swoop.

The main argument that the opposing side has, it seems, is that gay marriage somehow damages children.  Back in 2008, commercials for Prop 8 mostly focused on how marriage equality might addle young minds. Luckily, here in Massachusetts we’ve been acting as guinea pigs for the last six years or so, and the preliminary data is out.  Abbie Goldberg, a researcher at Clark University in Worcester, MA, has written a book that’s received a lot of press in a recent months for saying, basically, what people here in MA could have told you already: Children of gay parents have it no better or worse than children of straight parents.  We’ve all got our mishegas, and we’re all essentially okay. (Well, almost all of us. Some of us try to offer up our daughters during our acceptance speeches in a really creepy way.  I’m not saying . . . I’m just saying.)

Will somebody please tell that porn guy — I mean, my new senator — about Goldberg’s research? Even though he’s right here in Massachusetts himself, he seems to be operating under some misinformation. Perhaps he needs to get out of his truck and get a little fresh air?

Photo by edgeboston.com

Despite being a former Disney “cast member” (I used to work for the magazine group), I’m not much of a fan. In fact, I tend to look askance at Disney products, most especially the princess characters. However, I’m raising two young girls, so the Disney Princess franchise is a constant, if somewhat unwelcome, presence in my house. Those movies are girly-girl crack: the songs, the outfits, the hair, the general mood. And I understand why. I loved that stuff, too, when I was a little girly-girl. Now, however, I cringe at the characters’ passivity (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty —I’m looking at you, ladies), their willingness to be subjugated (Snow White, why exactly are you doing those dwarves’ laundry?), their general simpering (that’s you, Little Mermaid—when you’ve got your voice, anyway).

The only Disney chick I really like is the powerful, independent Mulan. And have you noticed that she’s never hanging out with the rest of the pantheon? I have yet to see a single Mulan dress-up outfit at my local Target. Moreover (and you knew this was coming) I take issue with the body images. My girls have beautiful, strong, healthy, sturdy little physiques. The thought that they might compare themselves to those Barbie-like figures (Ariel’s waspish waist is fully exposed beneath that clam-shell bikini) and find themselves lacking fills me with dread.
Which is why I was particularly intrigued by a new study, published in the latest issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, called “Am I Too Fat to Be a Princess? Examining the Effect of Popular Children’s Media on Young Girls’ Body Image.” It’s as if they were speaking directly to me.

These researchers measured the effects on very young girls—3 to 6 years old—by showing them scenes from movies that contained “appearance-related clips” (most were Disney movies, but Barbie in the Nutcracker was thrown in for good measure). What constituted an appearance-related clip? A scene that focused on the main character’s looks: the clothes-changing scene in Cinderella, for example, or the bit in Beauty & the Beast where Gaston says Belle is the most beautiful girl in town, “which makes her the best.” Meanwhile, a control group was watching shows considered neutral, like Dora the Explorer. (God bless Dora and her mind-numbingly boring adventures.) Before viewing the movies, each child was shown digitized pictures of herself with two different body sizes, and asked to select the picture that looked most like herself. Then each child was shown pictures of other girls and women, and told that one was a “real” princess; it was the child’s task to identify who it was. And after movie time was over, researchers observed the girls’ imaginary play.

The results? Kind of surprising, I must admit: “Results failed to reveal any direct negative effect on girls’ body dissatisfaction.” A majority of the children believed that they themselves could be princesses, regardless of their self-perceived body sizes. (Do I want my kids to believe they can be princesses?) A third of the girls did report that they would “change something about their physical appearance,” given the opportunity, and half reported worrying about being fat at least some of the time—but this was true whether they watched Belle or Dora.

Age was a more predictive factor than media imagery for girls’ answers to the researcher’s questions. The 5- and 6-year-olds consistently chose significantly thinner women as the “real” princess than did the 3- and 4-year-olds.

What to make of this? The authors say this is the first empirical study of its kind, so no sweeping judgments can be drawn just yet. It’s clear to me as a parent that there’s something afoot in this culture; this is not the first study to show that the older girls are, the more likely they are to equate thinness with desirability. It’s too easy, of course, to pin this on one source, such as princess imagery; this study underscores that.

In the end, regardless of the research, Disney princesses will remain a fixture in our home — until the High School Musical kids or Hannah Montana displace them (later to be dethroned by the Twilight characters, no doubt). But as long as they’re here, I’ll continue to make my mildly snarky, hopefully thought-provoking comments to my daughters. (And Mulan? You’re welcome here anytime, honey.)

Little Mermaid photo by robotnine.com

Princess Photo by Jon Rawlinson

I have worked hard to repress the exquistely painful self-consciousness I dealt with as a teenager, but occasionally a fuzzy memory comes slipping through: the time I tripped and fell on the steps at the school dance, the time I burped audibly during a very quiet study hall session. I was pretty sure everyone was watching me, and that most of the time, they didn’t like what they see.

What? You, too, were a painfully self-conscious teenage girl? You don’t say. It’s a pretty wide-reaching phenomenon, discussed in now-classic child development books like Reviving Ophelia and The Mother-Daughter Project. Researchers at Georgia State are now tackling it from the brain-science perspective.  A new study, which appears in the latest issue of Child Development, offers a “fresh perspective on how changes in the brain relate to changes in the way young people think and feel about how their peers view them,” says the lead author. The subjects, kids ages 9 to 17, were asked to look at photos of other kids their age, and to guess — based on the photos alone — what they would think of them if they met. Then researchers asked the subjects to speculate what the kids in the photos would think of them. At this point, older girls (as compared to younger girls) showed marked chemical shifts in sections of the brain dealing with emotion and social memory. And interestingly, boys turn out not to have these brain reactions at any age (duh!).  It’s almost as if boys don’t care what others think of them. Which explains so very, very much of my romantic history. But I digress…

Photo by Ed Yourdon

The authors of the study believe they are the first to make a direct link between depression and asthma with this outcome, and for all I know they are right, but it certainly makes intuitive sense. It also may point to why children who are already identified as “at risk” for a variety of reasons — low socioeconomic status chief among them — are more likely to be asthma sufferers on top of everything else.

So, as for my own kids, I’m keeping the hypoallergenic covers on their pillows, avoiding the pollen in the spring, and deleting the death scene from E.T. Seems like a plan, right? Oh wait, there’s more. Turns out MY stress affects their asthma, too. More than a year ago, researchers at the University of Manitoba found that maternal stress during a child’s early years has a causal effect in that child developing asthma when s/he reaches school age.

I guess that means no E.T. for them, and no Fox News for me. (No problem.)

Photo by telegraph.co.uk

There’s a flurry of debate around what causes autism, with few real leads. A new autism study out of Cambridge University offers a first: It links 27 different genes with Asperger syndrome, a condition that falls on the autism spectrum. Published in a recent issue of Autism Research, the study, led partly by Simon Baron Cohen (yes, cousin to Brüno), examined 68 genes for their roles in social growth or sex-steroid behavior. Asperger’s syndrome is far more likely to occur in boys than in girls, and Baron Cohen has in the past posited the theory that autism is the result of a kind of hypermale brain; now there’s a strong genetic link. Twenty-seven of the 68 genes examined were at least nominally associated with Asperger’s or with autism traits, and 10 of those 27 genes were associated with sex steroid function. According to Science Daily, Baron Cohen explained that “these new results represent a significant advance over our previous work in showing that the sex steroid hormones (e.g. testosterone and oestrogen) influence social development and autistic traits.”

Of course, autism does occur in girls, if less often, and previous research has suggested that the genes causing it in girls differ from the genes that cause it in boys — and on top of that, there may be different genes for early onset vs late onset. The autism puzzle is enormous, and the research thus far is only beginning to piece it together, but this latest study seems to me to be an important step. The harder work is yet to come: “We now need to test models of how these genes interact,” Baron Cohen told reporters.  Long road ahead.

Photo by dallasnews.com