Brett Berk

The Gay Uncle takes on a new role this week: expert in the Tribune Newspapers’ new parenting column The Parent ‘Hood. Parents ask questions, other parents respond, and then Gunc (or some other know-it-all) dishes out their three cents. First problem? A girl who insists on wearing her princess dress. Everywhere. (And she’s not even a real princess!) Gay Uncle to the rescue. Click here to lose the pink acetate blues.

After spending eleven summers at his house Upstate, the Gay Uncle finally broke down today and attended his town’s Fourth of July celebration. Not the parade; as you may recall, he hates parades. (All that phony pageantry, and old firetrucks. Ew.) Or the chicken barbecue. (He hates animals so much, he refuses to even eat them.) But he loves to see shit blow up, so he drove in for the fireworks. For geographical reasons too complex to get into here, the best viewing area for this display is from atop the berm on which the town’s railroad tracks run. This is a spectacular locale, overlooking the river, a field, and the setting sun, and is pretty much an ideal play area for kids, loaded as it is with lots of fun rocks to pick up, rails to hop or walk along, and tons of railroad spikes to hunt for and collect. Since these events always start about fifty minutes after you think they’re going to, Gunc is all in favor of letting the kids who attend wander around within a safe distance and engage in all of these entertaining activities. But apparently the mother who was sitting just to his right didn’t agree with this practice. Every time her two and five year olds started to do anything resembling “fun” she yelled at them. “Put those rocks down before you drop them on someone.” (?) “Don’t walk away, there are a lot of people around.” (??) “Put those railroad spikes down before you fall on one of them and cut yourself and get infected with tetanus.” (???) Stranded without anything to do, the kids began quarreling amongst themselves. Big surprise. What was surprising was her solution: she bribed the two year old to behave by giving him a can of Pepsi. Gunc is just glad he didn’t have to go home with that family and witness the ensuing caffeinated bedtime battle. Happy Birthday, America!!

The Gay Uncle read in the paper today that school districts all over the country are dropping or seriously curtailing their programs. Many are doing so because of huge budget deficits–this despite all the federal stimulus money that has become available–while others cite nonexistent issues like Swine Flu as influencing their decisions. But the effect will be the same: boredom for kids, scrambling for parents, and what educators like Gunc call Summer Skill Loss–the tendency for kids to forget about a third of what they learned during the school year. Now the G.U. is all for breaks, both for teachers and for kids. They allow time for rejuvenation and the integration of new information. But studies ( april07asrfeature.pdf) have shown conclusively that if they’re not exposed to stimulating and enriching activities that push them to use their brains (and they don’t have to be doing math drills or writing book reports) their new knowledge just dribbles down their spines, and out of their butts. What’s worse, because poorer kids tend not to be exposed to such activities–camp, field trips, vacations–during the summer at the same rates as wealthier kids, the gap only increases. The G.U. isn’t sure how he feels about universal year-round school programs–though they certainly have their benefits–but he’s definitely in favor of states and municipalities providing fun, engaging, and intellectually stimulating summer programs for whoever wants to take advantage of them, especially those folks who can’t afford other options. If yours summer school program has been canceled, do what you can to find an alternative to your child sitting in front of the TV or playing video games all summer. Even small experiences–a weekly trip to the library to find books on a topic of interest or attend storytime, keeping a daily journal with pictures and words or dictated observations, charting the growth and change of a nearby stand of trees or plants, counting and sorting dried beans–can keep those goopy brains agile. Stop the loss.

All this talk about Gays and Pride and Gay Disney Princesses (see posts below) reminded the Gay Uncle that he’s covered some of this ground before, prompting him to re-read his seminal piece “Beyond Heather Has Two Mommies”, a survey of current offerings in media portrayals of gay and lesbian characters for young kids. He thinks you should too. Here’s a teaser:

When I was a little boy growing up in the Midwest, the closest thing I had to a queer media role model ”” besides Bert and Ernie ”” was Ferdinand, the flower-sniffing, cork-tree-shade-sitting, hoop-earring-wearing, Spanish bull who refused to participate in the bullfights. Ferdy wasn’t overtly gay in any way ”” in fact, many people thought he wasn’t even a bull, but simply a pacifist metaphor, drafted in opposition to Franco’s ascendance ”” but I distinctly remember sitting on the floor of my room, reading the story, and feeling a connection with his bovine alienation.

So, what are you waiting for? Click on.

The Gay Uncle recently read a research study examining the role and prevalence of heterosexual romantic love in Disney’s top-grossing G-rated movies from 1990-2005. (Here’s a synopsis of the article, the entire piece can be downloaded by clicking the link at the bottom of this post). And he has to say, he finds this an intriguing area of inquiry. The researchers carefully examine twenty-plus popular children’s films (all grossed over $100 million), and find that heterosexual sexual desire and longing are not only very frequently portrayed””giving lie to the idea that these kids” filcks are devoid of sexual content””but are presented in a way that is exceptional and transcendent, with the power to break spells, stop war, change laws, or even save Christmas.

Big deal, right? Straight people fall in love and it affects them””and by extension, the world””all the time. Well, not exactly. One of the points is that by privileging these male/female bonds as imbued with transformative power, the movies not only normalize heterosexuality, but enforce in children a notion of its magical capabilities. It”s not just normal; it”s special. And the bludgeoning flip side of this message is, if you don”t fit into this paradigm, you”re not normal and not special. Little gay and lesbian kids hear this message (trust Gunc, he was one) and take it to heart. Now the G.U. is not in any way advocating for the avoidance of depicting love in kids” media, but he does think it”s fair to examine what we”re saying on the opic. (And he doesn”t think things have changed much since 2005. Think about the love storylines in Cars or Wall-E.)

Beyond this, it was found that the films all avoid dealing with homosexual love in any similarly overt way. Gunc’s guessing that many people wouldn”t take issue with this, imagining that this is a topic beyond the comprehension of young kids. But he”d like to point out that homosexuality is no more or less complex a topic than heterosexuality, and if we”re conspicuously feeding young kids mega-doses of overblown messages on straight loving, why isn”t there room for some like “education”¯ on the queer side? Disney”s just now bringing out their first African American princess, so far be it from The Gay Uncle to dictate when they should introduce their first gay or lesbian princess! But the sooner we stop treating homosexuality as an “adult”¯ issue, the sooner we”ll be capable of finding ways to discuss and depict it rationally with our kids.

Gunc invites people to look at two of his recent Babble articles, The Gender Spectrum, and Beyond Heather Has Two Mommies, for additional and more in-depth insights on this topic.

This is a link that will allow you to download the whole study.
315.pdf

The Gay Uncle, while gay, does not love parades; they sadden him. Neither does he love the claustrophobic feeling of being pressed up against a bunch of defeated, suburban queens, walking up the vomit-stained sidewalks of his neighborhood in blazing hot summer sun (or torrential downpour) while said invaders take cell phone photos of plastic men in rainbow underpants. Neither does he enjoy parties at which he encounters belligerent drunks in tight tank tops who try to shame him for not being “in the spirit”. And he’s frankly kind of sick of the the Lady Bunny. So, no, he will not be attending the New York Pride “celebrations”. But he is pleased to be gay, in his own way. Which is why he would like to share this piece with you, the gayest ever of his gay car columns, all about the tragic and uplifting tale of FagBug. Check it out.

To memorialize the death of Farrah Fawcett, the Gay Uncle presents you with his homage to the transformative power of her image as read through the lens of 1970’s adolescent queer sexuality: his first published short story from back in 1996, “Farrah”. Check it out.

It’s a movie that’s at least peripherally for kids, which the Gay Uncle believes affords him the opportunity to cross-promote his humorous review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at Vanity Fair.com. Check it out.

Some lesbian friends recently came to visit the Gay Uncle and his boyfriend at their house Upstate. And guess what? They’re trying to get pregnant! This is good news for Gunc, as it means at least one more guaranteed sale of his book. But instead of adopting an unwanted American child, or trying to steal one from the arms of its family in Malawi, they’re going the donor route. The G.U. is down with this too. But he has to admit that when they started talking about the specifics of why they chose a particular dude from the list of tens of thousands of cum shots that the Sperm Bank had in their deposit accounts, he got a little…creeped out. “He’s Italian like me, but he’s not one of those short Italians because his mother was from Denmark or Norway or something, so he’s tall. And everyone on both sides of his family has good teeth. And he has eyes like her [her partner]. And no history of heart disease or cancer. And I found out on line that they have an attractiveness scale that they use internally at the Sperm Bank to rate the donors when they come in. It ranges from two to eight point five, and when I asked the lady where he rated, she said, Eight. And when I asked how many eight point fives they’d ever seen, she said, One. So he’s our guy.” Now Gunc is down with giving your kid all the proper advantages. And he supposes when offered choices on stuff like this, he’d tend toward ticking off some of the same checkboxes. But there’s just something borderline…Eugenicist about the whole process: picking out a kid–like a handbag or sweater–who’ll match your skin and eyes, selecting a donor based on his similarity in appearance to an idealized version of yourself. It just seems like a set up for an even worse form of narcissism than the one normally derived from participating in what Gunc likes to call “The Ultimate Vanity Project”. Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: they’ll breed well? Or maybe the G.U. is the only one who finds it odd. Let him know what you think in COMMENTS below.

The Gay Uncle’s second favorite newspaper journalist, Heidi Stevens, is starting up a new feature in the Sunday Tribune newspapers. It’s a column where parents write in with questions, and then other parents chime in with advice. (And then an expert–like Gunc–comes in and provides two more cents.) To get the ball rolling, Heidi has some starter topics, but is looking for parents who are interested in dishing out tips. Here are the first few queries:

*Your preschooler wants to wear her princess nightgown everywhere””summer camp, grocery store, the airport. How do you get her to shed the pink uniform and don some real clothes?

*Your 5-year-old refuses to pick up his room. Time-outs don”t work and you”ve tried taking away everything he cherishes””toys, TV shows, dessert. What now?

*Your heretofore loving, sweet-natured 3-year-old has started saying “I hate you”¯ whenever she doesn”t get her way. How should you respond?

*Your 6-year-old pretends everything is a gun. How do you nip that in the bud?

If you’re interested in garnering fifteen lines of fame, and have practical ideas for remedying any of these, you can email your info and solutions directly to Heidi: hstevens@tribune.com