Girl... you're made a woman too soon

Many people ask me how difficult it is raising two rambunctious boys under the age of 5. My response is usually that it’s probably a lot easier than raising two girls.

Since becoming a father, my hair has thinned and there’s a lot of gray where there used to be brown. I think if I were the Dad of two kids blessed with double X chromosomes, I wouldn’t have a follicle left on my head and I would probably be heading toward my third heart attack by now because of the way we, as a society, treat our young ladies.

Girls have always had a harder time growing up because of the constant objectification of women as sex objects and old-school misogynistic views that have always lingered around in our culture. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but the 21^st century is such a confusing beast in the way it treats young females compared to times gone by, I don’t know how any of them ever gets to womanhood in one piece.

For example, a few weeks back I received my annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. It’s been a regular highlight of the winter season for me since I leafed through my Granddad’s copy with Cheryl Tiegs on the cover almost 30 years ago. On the cover for the second year in a row was the lovely Kate Upton – a girl that many men would consider the physical apex of the female species.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “this clown talks about objectification and misogyny in one breath and then talks about women in swimsuits in the next! Burn him at the stake!”  I assure you, I’m going somewhere with this.

It didn’t take long for the media to verbally start sharpshooting Miss Upton by calling her ‘chunky’ and immediately ranting about how she needs to lose some weight. If a woman who is widely renowned as being one of the most beautiful in the world is being told that she needs to drop a few pounds, what hope does the average girl have of ever measuring up to these impossibly ridiculous expectations?   Eating disorder, anyone?

Turn the page on Kate Upton for a moment and let’s examine the recent stomach-turning events that occurred in Steubenville, Ohio. Two teenaged football players raped a drunk and unconscious 16 year old girl while their friends videotaped it, tweeted about it, and sent pictures of it to all their friends who weren’t there. It’s rumored that others took part in the assault, and even urinated on the girl, but nobody would fess up about other parties involved.

Some of her female classmates turned against the victim because she was a “snitch”, and others seem to think she did something to provoke it. After the two perpetrators were found guilty and sentenced to a couple of years in juvenile detention centers, major news outlets carried the story and reported how the two young men had ruined their futures and how irresponsible use of social media was a key lesson to be learned here.

Where was the empathy for the victim?

Since we’re on a roll, I’ll let you know that Victoria’s Secret has recently announced that they are launching a line of sexy undergarments for girls in middle school – lacy and risqué with slogans like ‘Feeling Lucky?’ and ‘Call Me’ emblazoned on the rear end. A must-have for any discerning 12 year-old; undoubtedly to complement their yoga pants with ‘Juicy’ written on the behind.

If you buy these drawers for your pre-teen daughter, you have failed as a parent– just for the record.

Maybe the most disturbing fact of all came to light when I talked to a young girl I know shortly before Christmas. At 19 years of age, she was proud as a peacock of the fact that she had only been with 13 sexual partners. As I searched for a nearby defibrillator, she remarked that she was one of the most conservative of her group and her number wasn’t even half of some of her friends’.  According to her, guys know that there are plenty of girls that are willing to “give up the goods”, so if a girl wants to keep her beau she’s got to be willing to have sex or else risk losing him.

My mind is blown.

Parents have to teach their daughters to navigate all these physical and emotional landmines of today’s world while growing up; when all they should be worried about is how to become healthy and well-adjusted adults. What we’re doing as a society is trying to crush any sense of independence and self-worth these young girls have and creating an environment where they’re easy targets to be exploited to the fullest.  My hat’s off to the young ladies who manage to escape these pitfalls, because you’re certainly stronger and more capable than I ever was at your age.

I don’t know if I could handle raising little girls, but I’m trying to do my part to help those who are. My boys are being taught to respect all women as they would their very own mother – who they both adore.  It might not seem like much, but it’s building a base for the future that won’t tolerate some of the things we see today. This past weekend, my five year old put his teachings into action and brought a bouquet of flowers to his daycare sweetheart’s figure skating exhibition because she worked so hard and he “wanted to make her feel special”. I’ve since had nearly a dozen young women say that their boyfriends have never done such a thing for them.

What’s it say when a preschooler oozes more machismo than many full grown men? It says that we’ve fallen down in a big way and it’s time to bring the respect back to the fairer sex.

Guys, if you’re not sure where to begin, my boy has plenty of swag to go around. 

New Brunswick is sinking... and I don't wanna swim.

I am not a native New Brunswicker.

I was born and raised on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, and aside from a couple years of work and my University education I spent the majority of my life there. Cape Breton Island is a place I love dearly and I saw myself living there until retirement, but the economic reality of the Island is that it’s a dying place that has nothing to offer to young individuals or families looking for a future there.

In the summer of 2004, my girlfriend at the time (now my lovely wife) and I decided that Cape Breton was no longer for us. Despite our love affair with my home and native land, we realized that what ‘The Cape’ had to offer us didn’t exactly gel with our future aspirations.  My lady had fallen in love with the east coast way of life after moving here from Ontario, so we decided that we wanted to take our respective skillsets and try to carve out a life somewhere amid the Atlantic Provinces.

We chose the rapidly growing city of Moncton, New Brunswick and moved in the middle of a freak blizzard in November of 2004. We married, bought a home, had two beautiful children and nailed down stable careers. We have made this wonderful city and beautiful province our home for the better part of a decade.  Moncton is where we want to be.

So why do I feel as though the sentiment toward my family and I isn’t mutual as it pertains to the leadership of the province of New Brunswick?

The government of this fair province doesn’t seem to be in line with my family’s priorities as of late. Every day I see news of another bilingualism brouhaha, more essential services like health care being axed, questionable use of our education dollars, and suspect judgment from our elected officials that makes my head spin worse than the Tilt-A-Whirl at the old Bill Lynch Shows.

We have the debates over shale gas and the proposed pipeline that would bring oil from the western oil sands to be refined in St. John. With these two endeavors we’re promised a land of milk and honey where jobs are plentiful and well-paying, and everyone will live in a gumdrop house on lollipop lane. Good paying, stable jobs are something this province needs to bolster its sagging economy but one would be insane to ignore the possible environmental risks involved with both of these projects. 

What a sensible governing body would do might be to commission studies from both financial and environmental experts impartial to an outcome and actually pay attention to the findings. What’s our government doing, though? They’re playing the part of the political eunuch and having their strings pulled by every business and special interest group with a stake in the outcome. The province needs to get with the program and realize it’s not the business community or the environmentalists with the most at stake here, it’s the people of New Brunswick that call this province our home who will have to live with the decisions surrounding these endeavors for the next century.

I think the last straw for me was the budget that was just released by the powerful folks in Fredericton. As a preface to the document being drawn up, our esteemed Premier was bandying about the idea of holding a referendum to ask the plebiscite whether or not to raise taxes – a somewhat comical gesture after building a cornerstone of his election platform on the promise of no tax hikes.  You see, I have two University degrees, but neither one of them has anything to do with taxation. So why, pray tell, is the elected leader of my province asking me what to do?  I don’t ask the mailman how to fix my leaky faucet, so when it comes to how you’re going to fix our suffocating deficit problem the ball is in your court, sir. That’s what I thought we paid you for.

Regarding our budget, it would seem as though the best solution to our ever- growing debt in this province is to reach in and take more money from the already light pockets of ‘we the people.’ It looks like my wife and I will increase our contribution to our province’s coffers by way of personal income tax by roughly 25 per cent each. As if my bi-weekly deductions weren’t enough to make me nauseous to begin with, these new amounts are sure to contribute to my lifelong dream of a bleeding ulcer.

Believe me, folks, I want to “Be…In this place” but the events of the last few years are making it really difficult. We have a government with no direction, a population that is so used to being beaten down that they accept it as normal, millions of dollars being spent ridiculously trying to dictate what language we should be speaking when there are much bigger fish to fry, and what seems like a concerted effort to take every dollar of our hard-earned money to fund an ineffective group of elected officials that probably shouldn’t be managing a lemonade stand – let alone an entire province.

As someone relatively new to New Brunswick, I implore you all to take back control of this province. Voice your concerns loud and often and remind your government that they work for you and not the other way around.  If you don’t, this beautiful province will die; believe me. I’ve got a whole Island that’s proof of what happens when people become complacent and let poor decisions by government dictate their situation.

I’ve left one place that I love already because I couldn’t see a future there. I’d prefer not to have to do it again.