Fred Meyer’s “Family Friendly” check out lane

Yesterday I noticed that the south Salem Fred Meyer store had added a Family Friendly check out lane. Since I was by myself, and one does not make a family, I passed it by. I’m a stickler for check out rules. Always count the items in my cart before I turn into “Ten Items or Less.”

I asked my cashier if what made the Family Friendly lane so FF was the absence of tabloids and magazines like the “National Enquirer” and “Cosmopolitan.” “Yes,” she said. She assured me that I could use the lane even if I didn’t have a couple of toddlers in tow.

“Good to know,” I told her. “But I’ll be sticking with the Un-Family Friendly lanes. I really enjoy thumbing through the tabloids.” Where else am I going to find out that Angelina flies into a rage over Brad’s secret calls to Jen?

Personally, I think kids should be exposed to this sort of stuff. It’s part of life, just like Cosmo’s “Seven Hot Bedroom Games to Play Tonight.” (Darn, the scavenger hunt is going to have to wait; we’re out of chocolate syrup!)

This country is starting to go insane. Check that: more insane.

Too many people get all aflutter about what doesn’t matter much and ignore what does. Children aren’t going to have their precious little psyches thrown for a loop by seeing a beautiful busty woman in a low-cut dress. Or even the bust itself, a la Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction.”

Lots of parents seem to want to throw an excessively dense protective cocoon over their children. This mother is happy that the Family Friendly lane is purged of magazines, but wishes that trinkets and candy bars were absent too.

Well, I’m of the opinion that just as many doctors say that exposing babies to germs helps them fight allergies and asthma later, it’s good to expose children to a generous dose of knowledge about what exists in the adult world. Reading a few tabloid headlines about sex, divorce, adultery, drugs, and plastic surgery introduces kids to the reality that, all too soon, they will be entering.

Back in the late 1950s and early 60s, the library in the small central California town where I grew up had “adult” and “children” sections. I was the only elementary school student whose mother gave him permission to read or check out any book he wanted. If my friends wanted to know what was in “Lolita,” I was their source for literary “good parts.”

My mother didn’t believe in censorship. She thought that forbidden fruit is envisioned as being sweeter than it really is. She was right. Efforts to keep children from seeing a naked body or hear a swear word won’t make them into Puritans. The opposite is more likely, Libertines.

I agree with this woman's “Family Friendly or Freakin’ Futile” post. She deplores how over-coddled American children have become.

Why is a magazine which treats sex as something healthy and enjoyable so frightening? Kids can play violent video games, and listen to music with lyrics exhorting sex and violence, but Cosmo is apparently the work of the devil.

So my contribution to ending the coddling of today's children is that I'm going to start wearing a giant badge that reads:
I have sex
Ask me how!

I'll be a one-woman sex education machine. And don't forget to take a pamphlet about the hot monkey lovin'.

Right on, sister. If I see you with your button in Fred Meyer I’ll be sure to stop you and get some learnin’. I liked what you said in your blog post about how violence is accepted in this country but sex rings all the alarm bells of the “family values” folks. They forget that without sex, they wouldn’t be alive to have their bells rung.

Europe is a lot more enlightened. While the U.S. Congress passes legislation that will multiply broadcaster indecency fines by ten times, nudity is commonplace on European television.

And while the south Salem Fred Meyer store bans the display of racy women’s magazines from its Family Friendly check out lane, in Paris an ad for a fashion magazine featuring a beautiful bare breasted model graces a busy street.

Ah, America: the land of the repressed and the home of the uptight.

Comments

[Rain]

Good blog and exactly right. I had never heard of the family friendly line but bet most kids don't look at those magazines anyway. As your blog said, it's the stuff they can beg mom to buy that catches their eye. This is all about selling parents on something. The American attitude toward sex is stuck in the Puritan ethic of hide it. Nudity is bad but blowing people up is okay-- if it's done to increase 'patriotism.' If you had grandkids, your eyes would be opened going through the toy stores. The ones for little boys are so oriented toward war and destruction that it's unbelievable. For the little girls it's a lot of sexy clothes with surgery enhanced bodies.

[torridjoe]

Back East in the Mid-Atlantic, the big local grocery is Giant Foods. Almost as far back as I can remember, they had checkout aisles dedicated to helping parents out--they'd put a big sign up that said "No Candy In This Aisle."

It's a nice option, and as a parent of two small kids I know what it's like to be constantly hounded for sweets (or anything, really!)--but I'm actually a little insulted by the whole thing. Or rather, I'm annoyed that for some parents it's come down to having stores hide their merchandise, so Mom and Dad don't have to do the heavy lifting of saying "NO." What happened to answering "can I have (X)? Please please please can I?" with a simple, "No way, Jose?" My parents acted like it was the only free word in their vocabulary, and every other word cost $20 to use! The sad truth is that we're not coddling our children; we're coddling OURSELVES. We just don't want to do the work of parenting, imparting lessons and controlling access to material.

Mrs. Joe and I try to take some of the starch out of that checkout complaint by giving each kid the opportunity to choose a food item from the shelves while we shop. It can be anything they want, generally speaking--a can of chips, bag of candy, sweet cereal--but it's for regular home consumption, not as a treat, and they only get the one. So when we get to the counter, it's a lot easier to say, "You got your choice of items already."

As for the mags, I'm afraid I don't entirely share your view. I fully support the idea that being frank and non-taboo-making about a wide variety of subjects is generally the best policy. However, it's not the sexy looking women on the cover that I want to prevent my kids from seeing; it's the painfully shallow view of sex that predominates in them. "How to lose 20lbs by July 4 so you can get a man" is entirely the wrong set of messages I want my daughter to hear. Unlike with candy, there's no suitable denying reprimand to prevent your kids from being sucked in by mainstream female culture guidelines.

In the end I think you're right--it's better just to leave them there and use them as a tool to explain what's wrong with that perspective--but while I think every parent has time in the checkout to say "No," it's a bit more of a committment to unravel the concept of physical appearance bias against women (and men, for that matter; all of the guys in those magazines are given the Ken doll treatment too) to a 6 year old before the groceries are done scanning.