Role Model

I had a conversation recently about Role Models.  Who do our children look up to these days? Seriously? Last year I read Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: A Slightly Tarnished Southern Belle's Words of Wisdom a rather sassy look at fashions for six year olds.  I see tiny girls at WalMart wearing Playboy bunny shirts and shirts that say "I'm hawt" and shorts with handprints on the seat.

What happened to tiny girls being tiny girls? I see some of the girls in the  hallway at school and somewhere they got a memo that dressing like a hooker is a good thing.  They want to wear stiletto shoes and clomp around school looking like hippos on toe shoes.  That is NOT attractive.  They may think that makes their legs look longer.  It just makes them look graceless and silly. 

Who are they looking to? Where are they seeking things that help them define self image?  Obviously, from popular culture.  They are watching explicit videos and think that if they look slutty enough the boys will like them.  Teenage girls take pictures of their breasts and "sext" them to a boy hoping the boy will like her.  Does she KNOW that he will forward that to everyone HE knows?  No, because she's bereft of role models.

I had to ask myself this question.  Who were my role models?  I didn't have to go looking on TV or videos.  I had the REAL DEAL right in front of my face every day.  My father died when I was small and I got shifted around a bit between relations.  (Sound familiar?)  I had a strong mother and two strong grandfathers and two stronger grandmothers and I didn't need to see any hoochie on TV to give me guidance.  My grandmothers were scary-strong.  They could face down poisonous snakes armed with only a hoe and did more than once as I recall.  They sang loud in church and they took care of people that they didn't have to.  They both dealt with HARD headed husbands for more than fifty years.  They taught me that it was BAD to lie and that it was GOOD to be kind and BETTER to be kinder to difficult people because they needed it more.  They were SMART and they taught me that learning was a good thing because the more I could learn, the better my life would be. 

I learned to love books and learned that they grow more precious with rereading.  I learned how to make things.  I learned NOT to ever say I was bored.  I did that once and got to polish every piece of silver in the house.  I don't think I've ever been bored since.  I learned to play piano because my grandmother showed me Middle C on the piano and showed me what it looked like in the hymnbook and told me to figure the rest out. It was a VERY large puzzle. 

How could I do better?  I may not be glamorous.  I don't really care as that is very superficial.  I may not be rich.  I don't measure success by dollars.  I look at the people that I see every day and I am grateful to know them and grateful to love them.  I see challenges every day and I'm grateful for that because it keeps life interesting.