So, as you might have noticed, my big thing is trying to make the world a better place in whatever little ways I can. There are so many groups of people I’m worried about, not the least of which are teenage girls like two of my beloved cousins. Teenage girls have so much to deal with these days – more than I did, I think. The whole online world, with all of its dangers and complexities, is added to academic and athletic expectations, other girls, boys, pressures, fashion, looks, and everything else teenage girls have to deal with.
With all of these pressures on this demographic of our society, imagine my shock when I saw a preview one day for a new sitcom called, “I hate my teenage daughter.”
The show, which is scheduled to air for the first time on Fox on November 30, is described thusly on Wikipedia:
The series follows two mothers who fear their daughters are turning into the kind of girls who tormented them in high school. The fears would come quickly when Annie Watson (Jaime Pressly), who grew up in an ultra-strict conservative family, begins to notice that she has allowed her daughter Sophie (Kristi Lauren) to do what she wants to do, which she takes advantage of by embarrassing and mocking her mother, while best friend Nikki Miller (Katie Finneran), who grew up unpopular and overweight and has reinvented herself as a Southern Belle, begins to notice how manipulative her daughter Mackenzie (Aisha Dee) has become. Even the ex-husbands aren’t very good fathers: Annie’s ex Matt is too clueless, prompting his lawyer brother Jack to step in (and become an object of Annie’s crush) while Nikki’s ex Gary is letting their complicated relationship become more complicated in the parenting department. These situations are among the major challenges Annie and Nikki must face to keep the daughters from turning into the people they were afraid of when they were their daughters’ age.
There are so many things that are wrong and offensive about this concept it’s hard to know where to begin. However, even if the synopsis of the show was less bothersome, why, during this particular tricky time, are we going to put a television show out there called “I hate my teenage daughter?”
It’s really puzzling to me. What could Fox be thinking?
And what can we do about it?
PS, based on a suggestion from my friend Tara Markus, I’ve started a Facebook page called We Support Teenage Girls. Because we do, don’t we?
It was my eighth grade year. The teachers had a fantastic idea. In order to teach us young punks about racism, they were going to try the “brown eye/blue eye” experiment. Essentially, this meant that in the morning, everyone who had brown eyes would be treated really well. In the afternoon, people with blue eyes would be the “preferred class.” Being a brown-eyed girl, the morning went by rather smoothly for me. I thought the experiment was a mixture of cheesy and interesting. Then, at lunch, as we segued into blue-eyed supremacy, a person stuck a sign to my back that said, “I’m too sexy for my height” (a play off a song that was popular at the time). My face got hot. I felt like I was sinking to the floor. People thought it was pretty funny.
Ways to transform cruelty into kindness
I found out about Mark Horvath and his organization, 
The online world stands firmly behind 
I’ve already told you about Luma Mufleh and her amazing story, but in case you missed it, let me repeat it (because it’s worth it!). Luma Mufleh was born in Jordan and moved to the US to go to college. She got a job in a town outside Atlanta. One day, she took a wrong turn and came upon an apartment complex where shoeless children were playing soccer. After winning her way into the game by providing a new soccer ball, Luma discovered that the children were all refugees. They were extremely poor, some were nearly starving, and the educational system was letting them down. Luma took it upon herself to start a Fugee School, and now she is raising money to create a 
Here is what happens when you are on the path that you are meant to be on. I have become, how can I say, addicted to Breaking Bad, the television show, so as I tend to do these days, I decided to look for the actors and actresses on Twitter so that I could fangirl at them and say, “OMG I LOVE YOU!” Well, as fate would have it, Aaron Paul, the fella who plays Jesse Pinkman, is on Twitter. As fate would also have it, he was tweeting on behalf of a fundraiser for a group called the Kind Campaign (#BeKind). Intrigued, I checked out what this was all about, and it is really stunning. Watching the 
When I was still a pretty little kid, the big Live Aid fundraiser happened. I didn’t really understand a whole lot about this place called Ethiopia, but I understood the pictures of the little kids, about my age, with distended bellies, vacant eyes, covered in flies. Rock band, rock band, rock band, starving children. Rock band, rock band, rock band, starving children. I sat there and started to get antsy. Sure, I could have figured out that donating money would have been doing something, but it felt like I needed to do more. My big answer was to start making those tiny little potholders on the plastic loom in an attempt to make blankets for those kids.