Because of her the world is full of evil old sows.
Mr. Bear concurs
Cuddly toys are ugly monstrosities - and it's time we stopped our kids from fetishising them
Germaine Greer
Monday August 27, 2007
The Guardian
We have persuaded ourselves that children have always tended to fixate on inanimate friends. The received wisdom is that they use toys as objects of transference, developing social awareness by interacting with them, even though dolls and soft toys have only been ubiquitous since they began to be mass-produced in the mid-19th century. Before that, human effigies were used as objects of veneration or fetishes or in witchcraft, but never as children's surrogate siblings. Shakespeare uses the word "doll" only as a name, the diminutive of Dorothy. The word "toy" meant for him "a thing of no regard", not an animal effigy that slept with you. Children haven't always screamed themselves into conniptions if Teddy or Bunny or Cuddles got left behind. Nowadays, cutesy effigies of animals are apt to turn up almost anywhere; they gaze soulfully from car dashboards, loll in heaps on undergraduate beds, peep out of rucksacks and grace restaurant tables. Teddies and bunnies are taken into exams and sat on the desks, as if to be without them for three hours would induce hysteria and fainting spells. Soft toys are left along with the flowers at the scenes of fatalities. Wherever they are, they are truly hideous, beyond kitsch. By making our children fall in love with such ugliness, we are preparing them for a life without taste.
1 comment:
If she were an aunt, I'd have to lock her in the attic. For her good and the good of everyone else.
I'd let her out when she promised to behave, of course. But no unsupervised time on the computer, Auntie Germ.
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