Two Book Reviews

Book Review #1
I recently read Cinderella Ate My Daughter:  Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Girly Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein.  I was reluctant to read this book after reading an excerpt of it on msnbc.com several months ago, but my friend Ann recommended it to me so I thought I would give it a go. I'm glad that I did.

There are many things in the book that I disagree with.  Part of the reason that I didn't want to read it after reading the excerpt was the whole idea that girls playing with, say, Thomas the Tank Engine, was preferred over them playing with princesses.  I think that is a feminist ruse that exalts the male while diminishing the female, which ironically is what feminists are supposedly fighting against.  As the mother of a girly girl who is not one herself, it has been a struggle at times to accept all of the pink and obsession with princesses.  I certainly don't need a feminist telling me that my daughter needs to play with boy toys!  However, my initial impression of the book was incorrect.  It was less of a railing against pink and girly than an examination of our culture and the impact that it is having on young girls, particularly the sexualization of girls at a younger and younger age.

Though I fundamentally disagree with her sexual ethics, I do agree with her observation that girls are being encouraged to act, dress, and pretend to be older than they are.  I see this when I go shopping and see Disney Princess lip balm, eyeshadow, and nail polish.  I see this when I see ads for Toddlers and Tiaras (a show that I purposefully boycotted, even when we did have cable).  I see this when I walk down the clothing aisles for 6-10 year old girls and am appalled that they look like mini versions of clothes for 21 year olds.  I see this when I read stories about men arrested for possessing child pornography.  I see this when I hear the horror stories of 3 and 4 year old girls around the world being sold into sexual slavery to assuage the appetites of pedophiles, many from western countries.  It's a slippery slope.

If you have a girl, it's worth the read.

Book Review #2
Over the weekend I finished Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.  This was one of the most amazing books I've ever read.  Demick uses her interviews from six North Korean defectors to piece together what life was like in the 80s and 90s in the northern town of Chongjin, which is in the northeast corner of North Korea.

We have all heard the figures -- approximately 600,000 to 2 million people died during the famine in the late 90's after the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped subsidizing the North Korean government.  However, reading the stories behind the famine makes it almost unbearable to contemplate the horrors that were going on at the time, and the government's unwillingness to acknowledge it, much less help.  Instead of food for its people, all of the country's meager resources were going into the production of nuclear weapons.  The people have been so indoctrinated (read:  brainwashed) into thinking that a strike by the US or its "puppet government" in South Korea was imminent that they were willing to accept this.  Further, the government would tell them to persevere while they and their children were starving.  The deification of the Kim family, the propoganda and the blindness of the government would almost be funny if it weren't so tragic.

I could not possibly do this book justice in this review.  Read it.