KGOY and Character MIA. The combination presents a challenge to parents, teachers, and others who work with young people. It opens the doorway to our global society’s certain demise – and we’re racing through that open doorway at full speed.
KGOY is an acronym for “Kids Getting Older Younger” and is “market-speak” among those who target children as consumers. It expresses the idea that children are doing things that were traditionally thought suitable only for older children. This applies to every area, including television viewing and clothing, but especially the area of play.
KGOY means that 4-year old girls, who traditionally would have wanted to play with a doll that looked like a real baby, or at least like a sweet little girl, are clamoring for Barbie dolls. And how do Barbie dolls look? What does a Barbie doll teach a four-year old girl? Barbie’s sexuality is in no way subtle, but do parents really understand Barbie’s background, and how intentionally sexual she is? Revhan Harmanci writes in the San Francisco Chronicle (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/17/BARBIE.TMP): “Barbie was created by Ruth Handler in 1959 and modeled on a German doll originally created as a sexual toy for men.” But Barbie’s open sexuality is now marketed to girls aged 3 to 7.
KGOY and Character MIA will be obvious this year in homes where parents place those Barbie dolls under the Christmas tree for very young daughters. KGOY will sweep into their homes, but Character will be MIA – missing in action.
Character would cause those parents to pass up the Barbie dolls, no matter how much the little daughter has begged for one. They would buy, instead, a fictional book like Christopher Cat’s Character Club. Instead of teaching their little girls to grow older younger, this enchanting book would teach them the importance of character building.
KGOY means that 9-year old girls who, traditionally for the last 40 years, would have begged for one of those well-developed, intentionally sexual Barbie dolls are now pestering their parents for something much worse: Bratz dolls. Bratz dolls are hotly disliked by many parents. Fathers and mothers use “sluttish’ and “tart” among other descriptive words for these dolls and their gear. Yet, amazingly, they buy Bratz dolls for their pre-teen daughters.
Character would cause those parents to absolutely refuse to purchase such dolls, no matter how great their daughters’ “pester power” and to supply them with character-building books such as Mystery at Lake Cachuma.
The holidays are nearly upon us, and most people will already have Barbie or Bratz dolls under the tree by the time you read this, but I urge you to stop and think before you buy the next gift for your child.
KGOY is a shameful scheme to market immorality to our children and young people at the earliest of ages. Will your character be MIA, or will you become one of an elite group of “PGWQ” – “Parents Growing Wiser Earlier”?
KGOY and Character MIA need not be the scene in your home.
That’s the view from my chair. What’s your view?