Look, world!  Here’s the “real” Angelina Jolie. She’s in her own clothes! She’s not wearing makeup! She is carrying her own six year old handbag!

Translation: Wow, this is how good she looks when she really should look like hell. Why don’t you look like this, too?

Yes, this afternoon springs upon us yet another deceptive, patronizing ad campaign aimed at women who will then believe that if only they carried a Louis Vuitton bag, they, too, could end up sitting on a bridge in Cambodia getting photographed by Annie Leibovitz looking ethereal!  Who needs a shower! Who needs coffee! Who needs makeup!

Except, not bloody likely.

Do you really think she’s makeup-free?  Are we really meant to believe that a woman who has six children and a thriving career  miraculously does NOT have some kind of quick-dry cement-style undereye concealer to hide the gigantic bags under her eyes?  Do you really think that they’d ship Annie Leibovitz to Cambodia to take a photo of Angelina Jolie and NOT have an incredibly expensive coat of Bobbi Brown Sandwash Pink coating those famous lips?

My feelings about The Jolie notwithstanding (and for the record, they are not positive ones), it slays me, SLAYS ME that this ad campaign is meant to illustrate “core values”. Apparently, the “core values” of the people both in and behind this ad is to pay an actress $10 million go to one of the poorest countries in the world to take a photo that will be used to sell insanely overpriced handbags – and then to lie about it.

When I get out of bed and put on my own clothes and go makeup free, (and by the way, nobody miraculously pays me $10M to do so), I call it “Tuesday”. I get up to take care of my child and clean the house and figure out what to do with my life. Those are my “core values”, Louis Vuitton.  You want to sell handbags to Moms of six, or moms of any amount of kids? Then don’t make your ads full of shit. Just make the bags stainproof, reliable, and big. Big enough to hold my smartphone, a snack pack of cheerios, and that gigantic tub of undereye concealer. Because trust me: we all need it.

Cross-posted from ThreeSeven…

There’s a pedophilia guide for sale on Amazon.

Today, many, many people heard about it. And many, many people complained to Amazon, Amazon responded by refusing to pull the book and stating that they believe that to refuse to sell material they feel is objectionable is censorship.

And therefore the book stays available on Amazon.

And I?

Call absolute bullshit. To claim “censorship” is nothing but a cop-out.

Amazon is not a government body.

Amazon is not telling anyone what they can and cannot say.

Amazon flatters itself by saying it is capable of censoring anything at all.

Amazon is simply a vehicle between the creator (writer/publisher/whatever) of a book, and the reader of the book. It is a method for the book to reach the reader.

For Amazon to not carry that book, or any book, is not censorship.

Censorship is when you are told that you cannot express your opinion, or you will face consequences.

By not selling a specific book, Amazon is not saying the book cannot be written, that the opinions stated therein must not be stated. That would be censoring it. By refusing to carry a book, it’s not suppressing anyone’s freedom of speech. The book would be available elsewhere, after all.

By refusing to carry it, Amazon would, however, be saying we don’t allow our services to be used as the stage to peddle evil. It would be taking a stand. It would be drawing a line in the sand of what kind of company it wants to be – a company with a moral code, or a company without one.

Instead, Amazon is holding its nose and hiding behind a claim of not wanting to “censor” a book to avoid taking a stand against pedophilia.

Censorship my ass.

Here’s the reality.

This is a how-to manual for pedophiles. For people who sexually abuse children.

And it’s easily available on Amazon.com for the low low price of $4.79.

For $4.79, Amazon is selling its soul. And it’s a guarantee: By this book being available, children will directly, directly be harmed.

I realize this will hurt me more than it hurts Amazon, but I have no other alternative. I cannot support a company with no moral code. I cannot support a company that cannot take a stand and see how horribly wrong it is to say it’s ok for anyone to use our service to offer up anything, anything at all, for sale.

I am terminating my affiliate relationship with Amazon, removing all my Amazon affiliate ads and will not be purchasing from Amazon again.

Because fundamentally, a company that thinks it’s A-OK to profit from the sales of how-to guides for pedophiles is not a company that will be getting my money.

Ed. Note: BOYCOTT AMAZON, because, what she said.

For more on the story, check out the #amazonfail or #boycottamazon tweetstreams, and this article at ParentDish (yeah, that outraged mom is me.) And high-mom-five to Cool Mom Picks for declaring their site and newsletters and gift guides to be an Amazon-free zone.

I’m just going to go right and call this one: it’s stupid. It’s really, really stupid.

It’s an Australian PSA that equates feeding your children hamburgers with giving them heroin. That’s right. HEROIN. I’ll bet you didn’t know that giving kids heroin was okay now.

Seriously: we all know that regular trips with the kids to the Golden Arches is – understatement alert – not exactly optimal, health-wise. But even if this kind of ad targeted McDonald’s directly – which it doesn’t – it would still be absurd. Giving your kid a cheeseburger from a fast food joint is not like giving them heroin. I’ve worked in the addictions field. I’ve met heroin-addicted kids. It’s tragic and terrible and ugly and CHEESEBURGERS ARE NOT LIKE THAT. Even if McDonalds fried their Happy Meal burgers in lard and coated them in chocolate they would still not be comparable TO HEROIN. Comparing hamburgers, even fast food hamburgers, to heroin is like comparing watching Hannah Montana to watching pornography training videos, and even though I’m certain that someone, somewhere, has almost certainly made that comparison, it is nonetheless absurd. And in this case, comparing kids eating hamburgers to kids doing heroin, offensively dismissive of what’s involved in real addiction.

I’ll set aside, too, the classist and mother-shaming character of campaigns like this, although note for the record that if I had hours to rant this morning I would be exploring those issues in shrieking detail. For now, have a gander, and let us know what you think:

Yeah. What I said before: STUPID. Fear-mongering, mother-shaming, fact-distorting, offensive nonsense. Somebody should force these people to visit a youth methadone clinic in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and THEN sit down down for a talk about effing CHEESEBURGERS.

via Jezebel.

It’s true, here at the Bad Moms Club we have picked on advertisers before. One time we made an ad agency in South Korea beg us to take down our critique of their diaper ad campaign.

(For the record, we didn’t take it down. But we liked being asked.)

So, based on that past reaction, are we going to pick on this ad campaign that pairs getting intoxicated with babies? No, I’m going to laugh at it then share it with you because this? This is some funny sh*t.

Everyone has at least one picture of their baby looking inebriated — when (hopefully) they aren’t — and a Brazilian ad agency put together those kind of photos for L’Univers de Chocolat liquor filled chocolates.

Behold what one could possibly get when mixing chocolate with whisky and babies.

I know laughing is highly inappropriate because drunk babies aren’t funny but … well… they are funny when they aren’t really drunk, right? RIGHT?

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There’s an infomercial that’s currently making its way around the Internet – one that claims a product called The Better Marriage Blanket can solve “the problem in the marriage bed that nobody likes to talk about”.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s probably not the problem you’re thinking it might be.

Your husband’s noxious gas is fixin’ to ruin your marriage, but never fear! The Better Marriage Blanket is here to save the day…and your marriage!

It looks like a regular (read: tacky) comforter on the outside, but it’s one tough mutha blanket on the inside, with a layer of carbon fabric cut from the same cloth the military uses to protect against chemical weapons. Ain’t no stink gonna tread on the sanctity of marriage – this blanket eats chili farts for breakfast, bitches.

The Better Marriage Blanket an ACTUAL PRODUCT, people. This thing is the real deal, and you know there are people out there who are reading this going, FINALLY (I have to admit, while I laughed at the commercial, there was a little voice in the back of my head that piped up and said, Oooh, you gotta buy that, girl!).

For just $29.95 you too can be on your way to a stink-free marital bed! It comes in all sizes, in white or beige. But for Chrissake, do NOT, as the commercial suggests, give this as a wedding or anniversary gift…unless it’s to your own husband. Or your ex, on his wedding day.

[source]

Because a $2,500 computer workstation built into a durable, easy-to-clean plastic molded surface that can take the rough and tumble ways of the next generation of Miltons and Dilberts is exactly what the world needs.

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No, really. It’s never to early to prep the kids for a long life in the cube farm and mediocrity. After all, regardless of whether Apple or Google win the war for world domination, the future remains the same: DESK JOBS.

Hey Timmy. We're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!

Before you scream out ‘Say it ain’t so, Bad Moms!‘, let’s review the features:

Yup. Sounds exactly like the last cube farm I escaped back in the early 2000s.

Sorry kids. Reality really does bite. Get used to it.

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Barbie. She’s a household name. I had a whole mess of Barbies; I dressed them up, brushed their hair and created lives for them when I was a kid, and I’ll bet that many of you did, too. I always dressed mine in a fancy silver ball gown with red velour hearts on the sleeves, and she usually drove around in her honkin’ yellow Barbie Camper, the one that my mother got me for Christmas one year.

Every time I played Barbies, I envisioned mine a horse trainer. Funnily enough, of the 125 job titles Barbie has had in the 50 years she’s been kickin’ around, a horse trainer has never been one of them. She’s been a pet stylist, a dentist and a Mountie, a McDonald’s cashier (I bet she lasted ten minutes working drive-thru during a dinner rush. Just sayin’.) and even a NASCAR driver. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; Barbie’s resume is pretty stacked.

Barbie’s career came up for renewal recently, and for the first time ever, the public was invited to to vote for her newest position. Out of five titles – a surgeon, an environmentalist, a news anchor, architect or a computer engineer – two were chosen, news anchor and computer engineer. News Anchor Barbie comes with a wireless microphone, a B News clipboard and a surprisingly smart-looking skirt and blazer ensemble (and – I can’t believe I’m saying this, but – a cute pair of heels, too). Computer Engineer Barbie sports a pair of chunky-framed glasses and a laptop, of course. And you know, I’m diggin’ her outfit, too.

The message is obvious: Barbie can be anything she wants to be, and you can be, too! It’s an upbeat, positive message…yet it’s one that, with even the slightest of grammatical errors, can be horribly misconstrued very, very easily.

Perhaps the powers that be should consider ‘Proofreader’ for Barbie’s next career.

[source/source]

I’m a child of the 80s, which means I spent the better half of the decade drinking my fair share of Tab, aspiring to grow up and be as cool as Jem (please tell me that some of you remember Jem and the Holograms and loved it as much as I do did) and, of course, tuning in to as many ABC After School Specials as I could. The acting was mediocre, but the topics were always a bit controversial – dyslexia (Backwards: The Riddle of Dyslexia), divorce (My Dad Lives in a Downtown Hotel), sexuality (Am I Gay?), teen pregnancy (Two Teens and a Baby) – and I was hooked.

But somewhere along the line, I must have missed this episode:

I wonder what the Nelsons did when their kid showed up at the breakfast table with a Mohawk, a studded bracelet and a new rock n’ roll attitude. This picture takes me back to when I was sixteen and dyed my hair purple, traded in my sneakers and button fly’s for steel-toed boots and fishnets, and plastered my room with Sex Pistols posters. My mother certainly didn’t love my sudden new style, but she never made me feel bad about my chosen forms of self-expression (my first tattoo, however? Another story entirely). Looking back, that’s something I really appreciate, and I hope I can handle myself similarly with my own children, when the time comes – because I’m sure it probably will.

What about you? What would your reaction be if your teenager made a sudden ‘genre’ change?

[source]

Did Don Draper come up with these ads? Because, seriously. Putting a hat on the Marlboro baby is just overkill, and I expect better of him:

And this one, too, just demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of how parenting is supposed to work:

See? Terrible latch on that bottle, which probably isn't even certified BPA-free. They'd never get away with that today. 

Both are an improvement on this one, though, which is from an even earlier era, but still:

That said, at least no-one stuck a stupid hat on the gun-toting kid, because, you know, that's just wrong.

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So you remember the other day, when I was explaining about how Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that babies are hard-wired to try to make us their bitches and that the keys to surviving baby tyranny are to a) educate them, such that their tyrannical impulses are reprogrammed in such a manner that they can learn to become good people and good citizens and, you know, share stuff (the argument of Rousseau's great work on education, Emile), or, b) make their tyrannical impulses work for you (HBM's argument, per her master class, Make Your Tyrant Baby Work For You)? Well, there's another option: you could always train them to be day traders.

This, I suppose, falls into the category of making your tyrant baby work for you, but really, clearly, they get so much of it, too.