Clueless Producers of Children's Media 101

I adore my kid. He's awesome. We've kept him media free for the most part, and he doesn't really know what a commercial is. Until today, when I let him watch the damn video at the back of the Gymboree store (that place makes me itch), he had no idea that other children didn't adore brocolli, either. So I had a return from his birthday. I won't go into why. It was a lovely gift. Not the right thing. At any rate, we went in to return it and my son fell in love with these butterfly wings that you strap on. I asked him if he wanted to try one on. He hid behind me and muttered that he'd do it at home. Since we play fairies at home, I just figured that he was shy. I bought him a beautiful one. It's gold with delicate pink netting, a golden bow, and jewels all over it. It looks lovely, but I digress. While he was waiting for me to try to find other things, he went back and sat with the children watching the video. I looked at it; it looked fine. Five minutes later, I see a skit where a man is saying that brocolli "is great for you, really good for you" and an entire table full of kids is making faces and a kid is saying "what if you hate how...." I yanked my kid out of there so fast that I think he missed it. I told him that I needed him RIGHT AWAY and chattered like mad while he left. In the meantime, I could have slapped someone. What is WITH these people? I realize that whenever a child does something bad or not nice, there are fifteen "creative" types around to write a little book or skit about it, but ... DUH. Folks, if it goes to little kids, you just end up TEACHING THE KID THE BAD THING. My kid loves brocolli. Thank GOODNESS I got him away from the damn video before he learned the ugly, sordid truth: every other kid out there, especially the cool ones, wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, In FACT, all those children eat is WHITE food, with the occasional foray into the bizarre boxed macaroni and cheese stuff, which I find utterly wierd. At any rate, I finally got him away from "corporate pre-cut cuteness incarnate" store itself and into the mall proper, and what does he do? Put on his fairy wings and have a wonderful, absolutely stunning time of it. Interesting thing. My child is a very pretty child. He's running around in wings. While walking through the Stanford Shopping Center, we got not ONE smile from a parent. Wierd. In downtown Palo Alto, we would have gotten all sorts of smiles. Now granted, he does need a haircut and has big curls, and he was wearing a purple t-shirt, so he looked about as "hippie" as he ever does (rare), but it was distinctly odd. I mentioned it to my husband and he said "he has certainly gotten smiles from the kids!" So my child got to pretend to be the gardenia fairy today. The gardenia fairy has a special part in today's story, which is about a mean king who doesn't like green things so he paved the kingdom and put the flower-loving princess in a tower. One day, the gardenia fairy appears. SINCE the gardenia fairy has such power, he waves his wand and "poof!" bushes begin to grow! And then "poof" flowers on the bushes! And then the most lovely smells came wafting through the village, and the people come out of their houses to see the beautiful princess waving to them from her window, and the area filled with flowers, and they said to themselves, "this has gone on long enough." So they went and got an enormous tree and used it as a battering ram to break the tower's door down, and then they carried the princess to the king and said "you are no longer king! The princess is replacing you!" And as the king's punishment, he was made to be the gardener forever...