My niece's right...

Out of the blue, my 2.5 years old niece, moved her hips, slides her little hands from her chest to her tiny butt crooning
‘Baby, baby, baby ooh
Like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ooh’


Stupefied, shell-shocked, we all stopped whatever we were doing, stood agape for a few seconds, before we all burst into laughter!


The little one was belting out Justins Bieber’s ‘Baby’ song & doing his moves.


Lily, Charlotte’s adopted kid in ‘Sex and the city’, picked up a ringing cell-phone & said, ‘Sex’ into the phone. She’d picked up the word from the conversations the adult women were having around her.


I go all warm & softy inside when the little boy Ray in Jerry Macquire movie says ‘D'you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?’ and then goes into giggling fits, apparently proud of what he just said, even though am unsure if he understood the weight of his statement.

Kids are so impressionable!                                           


They imitate us. They see what we do, hear what we say. Their mind gets a ‘validation message’ that it’s a good thing to do, right thing to say.


The news that my 16th year old cousin sister and my 11 year old niece are ‘on a new fad diet’ is a concern. The obsession with being thin or becoming reed-like thin, is not a new fad amongst teenagers and adults. But the fact that it’s becoming a trend with kids as young as 8 years is disturbing.


Advertisements like the ‘New Garnier Hair Color’ which sends messages like:


Your worth is the worth of your hair. If your hair greys-out ( bad hair, not so good looks etc)
1. your boyfriend would ignore you or leave you
2. other boys would not show interest in you
Two mutually exclusive events: grey hair and an ignoring boyfriend have been deftly molded, to make it look as if they are dependant of each other (cause-effect).


--- does not help!


The much criticized Fair and Lovely commercials too are so misguiding for young impressionable minds.
You are beautiful only if you are fair - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubbufbkbovY


You are job worthy only if you are fair and beautiful - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a1iXt1yPsk&feature=related




I love my niece and my sister.
I wish that they grow up into emotionally stable, physically confident, morally upright, wholesome individuals.


Their self esteem should not be hampered by such visual feeds.


I vote for more wholesome Dove commercials. Their campaign for real beauty , an effort towards societal change in redefining beauty is commendable.


Real juice commercial promoting ‘healthy lifestyle’ is laudable.




Cute as it is when she warbles ‘Baby, baby, baby ooh
Like baby, baby, baby noo
Like baby, baby, baby ooh’,


I pray that my niece would be arm with the right information to make the right choices.
As she grows up, life happens, she'll bid goodbye to innocence.

She might not sleep this peacefully at 30 years, but I hope she gets all that she needs to keep emotionally fit, mentally sharp, and is able to live to her fullest potential.   


It's her right.