Wednesday, July 4, 2012
"The Mess Behind the Glory," Indeed
Back in the day, we used to call parents who woke their kids up at 4 AM every morning to hit the skating rink, dragged their five year olds to soccer, football, baseball and gymnastics and turned them over to sadistic coaches, and made them learn every musical instrument ever invented before they reached first grade Overcompensating Assholes. Today, apparently, they are called Bring It Moms.
As near as I can tell, Bounty Paper Towels is currently celebrating Bring It Moms, those women who Couldn't Quite Achieve Success in Life Themselves Nothing to do With Them it Was Politics Plus they Grew Too Fast Despite the Asparagus Diet Mom Put Them On in Third Grade but who nowadays go Out of Their Way to Make Sure Their Kids Achieve Their Dreams ("their" meaning the kids, not the parents, and don't you dare say otherwise, Parent of a Loser Kid Who Has Fewer Trophies than Mine.)
These Moms went the Extra Mile by "letting" their kids turn their palatial suburban estates with massive living rooms into makeshift gyms- because the eight hours they forced their kids to be at the ACTUAL gyms under the iron control of aforementioned trainer wasn't always (ever) enough. After all, it's a damned tough, competitive world out there, and it's NEVER too early for kids to learn this. Mommy had to, and it did her a world of good, even though she did end up letting her parents, her Community, her Country, and God down by failing to make the Extremely Mini Olympics back in '76. Sure it cost her all of her friends and any chance at a healthy, mentally stable adulthood, but she gained an eating disorder. That's life, and you damned better get used to it.
Meanwhile, being old enough to perform gymnastics at a level that gets you considered for an Olympic slot (although "considered" is just code for "failure," honey) apparently doesn't mean being old enough to clean up your own Carnation Instant Breakfast, which yes Will Be the Only Thing You Have to Eat Today, There Will be Plenty of Time to be a Pig and eat Pig Food like the other Not Going to the Olympics kids When you Hit 14 and Your Life is Over. The "Hardest Job in the World" isn't being one of these obsessive creeps. It's being one of their kids.
Other than wiping up after their future therapy patients, I'm not exactly sure what we are supposed to be thanking these pushy pricks for. Maybe we are supposed to thank them because their kids, when they grow up and move out of the house, never will? (you don't hear "thanks for robbing me of my childhood, separating me from my non-athletic friends, and sending me to that special camp that none of my classmates went to every summer" all that often. Ungrateful little bastards, they never appreciate a Bring it Mom's sacrifice.) Are we really supposed to thank them for molding their offspring into people who will give us roughly fifteen seconds of entertainment value this summer- fifteen seconds which will be forgotten as soon as Something Else Comes on Television? For a chance to chant "USA!USA!" because some kid we don't know and couldn't really give a damn about managed to be a little faster or a little stronger than the kid from The Ukraine or the People's Republic of China whom we also don't know and couldn't give a damn about?
Does anyone really chant "USA! USA!" for any reason, ever?
Oh and BTW, do any of these kids have Fathers? Or did they cut and run from the Bring it Moms when they realized that they were married to child-abusing lunatics? If so, couldn't they have taken the poor kids with them?
One more thing- doesn't the "It" in "Bring It Moms" refer to the children? Anyone else have a problem with this?
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Aaaaand here we are talking about a form of abuse all over again. "IT" clearly isn't a person with her own hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes or anything else depressing and awful like that. "IT" is clearly a means for Mother to make her mark in the world.
ReplyDeleteMy GOD!!! I think I just described Elly Patterson.
Maybe someone can explain to me why living vicariously through your kids is something you should be celebrated for. The weepy, "sacrificing" parents in these videos make me sick, and remind me of the uber-creeps who berate their kids on America's Next Model, or whatever that abomination which endorses child abuse is called.
ReplyDeleteFirst commercial: The house should not be an "athletic training facility", and any parent who allows their child to turn it into one needs to be hit upside the head with a Clue By Four. Convert the rec room or garage or spare bedroom into somewhere for the kid to do their thing, great, but other parts of the house? Behave like the billions of other civilized human beings on this planet not involved in a sport.
ReplyDeleteSecond commercial: Parents who support their kids who are committed to going all the way in a sport definitely do deserve a round of applause, but only the sane ones, and by 'sane ones', I mean the ones who know how batshit crazy it is to be waking your preschool- and early elementary-aged child(ren) at dawn or earlier to go to practice/lessons. Is it too much to call that kind of behavior child abuse? At that age, kids are just starting to figure out what they like and want, and sports should be something fun they do after school and/or on weekends. They need to learn how to play the sport before it's possible to tell if they're any good at it and if it's something they want to do, not to mention training too intensively is going to mess up their growing bodies.
My father lived vicariously through me when I was growing up. As I was rather intelligent and stuck on the idea of being a vet from second grade on, my dad saw in me the opportunity to make something of himself he'd never had, or at least never been encouraged to make the most of (his parents were, to say the least, critical and un-supportive). He leaned on me hard to excel in school and was single-minded about me becoming a vet, even when I decided in tenth grade I wanted to pursue a career on Broadway instead, and, later, when theatre didn't work out, being a veterinary technician. He was okay with my being a vet tech but getting through to him that I *did not* want to go on to vet school took years, and when it did finally register, he was Shocked. For reasons that weren't identified until I was twenty-three, forgetting to do homework, losing homework, daydreaming, and reading during class were ongoing problems and affected my grades, and my dad (and teachers) was constantly on my case about them. By the time I graduated high school, I felt like a loser, a screw-up, and a disappointment. I still do, to a degree, and issues I've had as an adult have only exasterbated it.
Thanks for sharing, Rogue. I suspect that parents who have their kids use living rooms as training facilities do so either to show off for passing neighbors or through an obsessive need to be on top of the kids every minute of the day. Mommy needs to be on the computer, so Daughter needs to be training right there, right now.
ReplyDeleteI've got nothing against kids starting early to train for a serious career in athletics or music or whatever it is they want, so long as they are the ones sincerely motivated to do so and it's not just fulfilling the frustrated wishes of Mom or Dad or whoever. And in some cases, it's truly not. There are examples of kids who got THEMSELVES up and made THEMSELVES breakfast and walked THEMSELVES over to the training facility at some ungodly hour every morning because that's how strongly they wanted their dream. When parents support a kid with that kind of motivation, I say go for it.
ReplyDeleteBut these ads...I know the second one's supposed to tug at the heartstrings, but all I see is poor Mom, slave to her child's every whim, doing all the housework and carrying the full load to help the kid achieve, while where is Dad? Oh, I guess he's out making the money to pay the coach. Because that's how it's supposed to work, you know. Dad is the breadwinner, Mom is a housewife doing all the cooking and cleaning solo. Wait, you said this is 2012? Let me check my calendar again...Nope. Not in P&G's world. There, it's still 1952.
As for the first ad, for the "Bring It Moms" contest, it's just obnoxious. Combines the assumptions of the second ad with the preposterous idea that we should encourage kids in training to do Great Things to realize that they are too Special to have to clean up after their own selves. No, they get a free pass to mess up the house as they please because they are such Special Snowflakes, and it is Mom's job to follow after them with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of cleaner, wiping up every mess they make, not to mention cooking their meals, doing their laundry and never complaining about any of it, because someday these kids are going to do Something Great, and when they do, who are they gonna thank? Not their coaches. Not their dads who earned all the money for their training. But good old sweet, self-sacrificing Mom.
Pardon me while I vomit.
Maybe someday P&G will come into the 21st century with the rest of us...you know, that place where it's no longer considered a woman's job to clean up after everyone else in her life. But I'm not holding my breath.
"Snowflakes" is just too perfect. You just KNOW that these are the kind of parents who regularly berate teachers who simply "don't understand" that little Sarah CAN'T do that stupid, pointless history research project because The Junior Nationals are coming up, why can't you understand like all her teachers at her LAST school did?
ReplyDelete