Yellow Wallpaper Optional

I have just seen the most disturbing fucking thing on television. I come home, and JFJ is watching the Ken Burns documentary on WWII. But once he hears me coming up the stairs, he quickly flips to the E! special, "100 Greatest SNL Moments." So, it's 10:30pm at night and we're watching Adam Sandler clips, and an ad comes on for something called "Rose Petal Cottage." I wish there was a clip of the ad on YouTube, but there's not, so you'll just have to watch E! at after 10pm to see it. Anyway, this is the most fucked-up commercial I've ever seen, and I grew up when pet turtles were throwing down martial arts in the sewers with rats (who thinks this stuff up?).

So, Rose Petal Cottage. The ad shows this little girl, baking and doing laundry in her little cloth cottage, with the most disturbing voice-ever, encouraging parents to buy this cloth-covered prison of the mind where your little girl can "live out her dreams" (that's a direct quote) by baking and doing laundry. I know that's my dream. And that's what I would want for my kid. No fancy education, profession, or means of providing for herself. Just laundry. 40 years of feminism, and this is what we've got. My Little Laundry Center.

Optional pieces of the Cottage: a lounge chair ("Where you can park your fat ass when you're done with the laundry." -JFJ), and a nursery (which is really just a crib) where you can park the kid in between loads of whites.

Here's what the Hasbro site has to say about this product:

"Give your little girl a place of her own, with this fabric-covered playhouse that gives little imaginations a place to roam free. Standing just over four feet tall, this cottage has double-sided fabric walls to help little homemakers feel right at home, complete with windows, a Dutch door and chimney. When it’s time to prepare pretend meals, the durable fiberboard stove has knobs that really turn and an oven door that opens! Playing “house” in the ROSE PETAL Cottage lets your little girl build her very own home – and her imagination! – right in your living room!"

What kind of fucked-up message do we want to send to little American girls? I mean, Barbies, ok. I played with Barbies as a kid and I still managed to become a professional adult female with only the usual self-image drama, nothing I had to stick my finger down my throat about. I'm very much about let the kid play with what they want to play with. And yeah, it seems like little girls like to play princess and dress up,a nd little boys like to... destroy... things.... But this shit? This is outright brainwashing. There's no "imagination" being used in the Rose Petal Cottage. There's just baking and cleaning and popping out babies (did I mention the nursery?) because, basically, sweetie, that's what you're here for. You cook, you clean and you pop out some munchkins. Want to drive a tractor? Want to play with the ant farm or the chem set? Well, that's just too fucking bad, sweetie, because that's not what little girls do, now get back into that cottage and make me my goddamn dinner 'afore I have to backhand you.


I am now convinced that Hasbro is being operated by the crazy right wingers and it's all part of a plot to turn the nation's little girls into Stepford Wives. Get 'em while they're young, brainwash them into subservience before they get any crazy ideas about growing up to become financial analysts or engineers or (GOD HELP US), Presidential candidates!

I had to blog about this before I compose my sternly-worded email to Hasbro Toy Company and Obedience School. We'll see what they have to say about this. If you never hear from me again, the Southern Baptists came for me in the night. Tell the world my story.