f*ck you, ParentsCanada magazine

My Grammy bought Sauce jr a subscription to 'Chirp' magazine and he has really been enjoying it. Crafts, jokes, poems and tidbits of information to set the preschool mind a wandering. This month's issue came with a free 'gift' of an issue of ParentsCanada magazine which has really chapped my ass, if you couldn't tell from the title of this blog.

The magazine didn't look so terrible, pretty standard crap but then I saw this article entitled 'mirror, mirror on the wall' and in smaller print "understand what is possible. understand your potential". Huh? it gets better: "Finding a woman who likes her own face and body is like finding a pearl in an oyster. Women are hard on themselves - and that negativity is helped along by what we see in television, magazines and on billboards, all of which perpetuate the myth that anyone can be beautiful." This of course is right above a photo of a very thin, tanned woman wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, sitting cross legged and facing away so you can see all of her long beautiful back. On the next page is a guide to how to apply make up correctly. Underneath that is a Tupac Shakur quote "Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real." I'm sure moms feeling fugly is exactly what Tupac was referring to.

All I want to say is that I don't need any more of this. I get it. I am a frumpy fugly mom who should understand 'what is really posible' and stop believing the myth that everyone can be beautiful. Time to accept my 'limitations' and buy a new blush. Thanks ParentsCanada for re enforcing this idea for me, hitting me when I wasn't expecting it. If I picked up an issue of Vogue I would expect to feel like crap about my body, but I was vulnerable reading this magazine because I wasn't prepared for the groin punch that I got. Imagine if we talked to our children like this. "Honey, just accept that not everyone can be beautiful". Yeah I don't think so. Because when we look at our kids, the truth hits us on the face. We are all beautiful. We are all amazingly perfectly stunning exactly how we are and if some billboard wants to tell us differently, we are fools for listening.

anyway, fuck off ParentsCanada. I don't want a free subscription.