have you seen the bigger piggies, in their starched white shirts?

I got a comment on the milk post this morning from PJ, and she said something that rings true for most of us in some way.  She said that she would "love to write something funny, but the subject is really close to my heart.  When I was a kid, most girls were 12 or 13 before they got their periods and about the same age before they wore their first training bras. Now girls are 9 when they menstruate and 9 when they wear their first bras - and many of those are not the training variety! Why? Because of all the freakin' hormones given to animals, cows in particular...and because of all the freakin' fast food places that serve the crap and all of the overbooked children and parents who don't have time to sit down to dinner at home and eat healthy food.
The milk issue is part of that.  And of course that's just one example of what hormones will do for you. As people begin to drop dead from new and more virulent strains of cancer, maybe then we'll wise up?
Where does the buck stop? With the consumer. I wish people would think of the long term ramifications to their daily actions."
I wrote back to her, telling her something about that the only reason that I can say something remotely funny about it is so I don't cry.  It's how I deal.  We are doing something terrible to our children.

I'm not sure how old my mom was when she started her period, and honestly, I don't even know how old I was.  It was a rough time for me during those years.  I've blocked most of it out.  I think I was about 13.  Normal, I guess, but it was the end of that normal.  I remember most of my friends had it for years before I had mine.  I remember our mothers and teachers and doctors being shocked that girls were starting their periods at 11 and 12 years old.  There was some talk that it might be the food.  The air.  The way we danced.  The rocking and the rolling we were doing, that our mothers did.  I remember feeling left out.  I also remember feeling like the other kids were lucky because they got to eat lots of junk for lunch.  And me and my brown bread and peanut butter sandwiches and thermoses full of tomato soup and juiceboxes of 100% orange juice and baggies of carrot sticks were so damned geeky compareds to their Lunchables and pink meat on white bread.  Now I want to send an embossed thank you note to my dad who was probably wholly responsible for my "delayed" menses.

My body doesn't look anything like my mom's body.  My mom is what they call in the business "a string bean".  I'm what is affectionately known as "a brick shithouse".  That doesn't happen by accident.  There is nothing about my silouette that looks like her silouette.
I'm not complaining about my body now.  What's to complain about, really?  That it's hard to find a shirt that fits both my waspish waist and my giant breasts?  That I have to shop for hours to find pants that both go all the way down to my ankles and keep the men's eyes off my hypnotic midsection?  Poor me. 
But I've looked like this since I was a child. 
Garanimals doesn't market overalls for this type of thing. 
How my father must have felt sending me to seventh grade with a women's sized bra I have no idea.  I was 5'7 and weighed 105 pounds.  Luckily I was ugly as sin or there might have been trouble.
I have three neices, two on Dave's side and my brother's daughter.  Extreme obesity runs in those little girl's families.  Extreme What's Eating Gilbert Grape kinda fatness.  What of that?  What happens when you mix obesity and hormones and today's societal eating habits and the pressure to be thin and the outward expression of sexuality and the drive to suceed in school and business and life and eventually motherhood or adulthood?  Are these girls going to be okay?  I grew up wondering if I'd ever fill out or if I'd be damned to be as skinny as my mom and dad for the rest of my life and if anyone would ever love a girl that looks like a boy with big boobs.  What will their struggle be?  What will any child born today's struggle be?  How will the human body cope with something it isn't designed to battle?

I said to PJ no wonder girls are getting pregnant at 10 years old.  First of all they can.  They have their periods.  Their bodies are developed.  Breasts are large and pubics are hairy and penises are bigger and the stuff that comes out of them is potent.  Hormones are out of control thanks to the hormones pumped into the foods that thse kids are eating every day.  Foods that are being placed on the table by the mothers and fathers that love their families.  It is scary.  It is real.  When there are hormones in your body, and your body is developed, you are hormonal.  Can you say that, class?  Hor-mon-al.  Good. 
Remember how you felt in high school?  This is the way children are feeling in middle school.  Elementary school.  Fifth graders who are hormonal.  Ovulating.  Developed.  Horny.  Ready.  Willing.  Able.

Add to that there are 12 and 13 year olds in fifth grade classrooms.  There because they got a late start in school, or who may have been held back a grade or two.  There are 9 and 10 year olds who skipped grades because they are so smart or because their birthdays fall right on the cut off date for early enrollment.  Mary Menses who belongs to Mensa is in the fifth grade at 9 years old.  Her neighbor Timmy Testosterone is a bit Thickskulled and is in the fifth grade at 13.  That's like a recipe for disaster.  It's happening everywhere.  The age where it used to be okay to play doctor is now the age of useful erections and vaginal lubrication and the knowledge that "this" can go in "there" is wide-spread but not wide-educated.  In some schools, sex education doesn't start until seventh grade.  In some homes, it never starts. 

This all comes together, folks.  The food we are feeding our children (yes we.  I don't do organic or hormone free- there can be a difference- shopping other than milk, eggs, and random stuff like nuts and spices and rice.  I don't buy any meat to fix at home.  We eat out a lot.  A lot a lot.  In the summer I do as much produce shopping at farmers markets and the Reading Terminal but in the winter it's anything goes.) is changing their bodies at an alarming rate.  It's fucking with their genetics.  The family traits aren't being passed down correctly anymore.  Everything is mutating.  Things we can see, things we can't.  Things we can measure, things we can't.  Think about it.
Your special Sunday morning omelet might be making your daughter pregnant.
That secret recipe casserole might be giving your son a boner. 
And acne. 
And cancer.

PJ mentioned the phrase "where does the buck stop?".   Where does it stop indeed.  Start speaking with your wallets.  If you have a problem with something, stop buying it.
Don't like what goes in the food?  Don't buy it.  Don't eat it. 
It's not rocket science. 
We all have the choice.
Make the right one.
The smart one.
The informed one.

In that same vein:
Don't like gas prices?  Stop filling your tank.  Stop driving everywhere.  Stop buying vehicles that use lots of gasoline.
Dave and I share a car.  Granted that's very do-able here in the city where we can walk or take public trans most places, but we save hundreds of dollars a month.  Thousands a year.  That's money we can use to...  Dammit!  Dammit all.  That's money we can use to buy food that is slowly killing our boy.  Gah!  We are the worst frigging parents EVER!  We should just buy another stupid car and allow the emissions to go out over the world and into the lungs of babies and kill everyone's kids instead of just killing our own.

Don't like how McDonald's makes you feel/targets a certain ethnicity/raises beef/uses a clown as its mascot? Don't buy it.
Not happy with how expensive ____ is getting?  Don't buy it until prices go down.
Not happy with how ____ is advertising?  Don't buy it until they stop.
Not happy with how _____ is treating it's workers?  Don't shop there until they change their practices.
Not happy with how _____ is killing African children in the mining of it's products?  Find a new way to show the world you are getting married.
Not happy with how _____ is _____.  Don't buy it.
Get it?
Speak with your wallet.
Until you do, you are killing babies and exploiting workers and mistreating animals and targeting blacks and using clowns and importing oil and supporting terrorists and polluting streams and and and.
You.  Me.  You and I.  You and I are doing all these things with our dollars.
Where does the buck stop?

There is nothing that most of us need so much that we have to go out and buy it.  Most of us have running water, a decent roof, enough clothes to get us through til laundry day, a way to get to work, something to eat.  The rest is fringe. 
Sparkley, tassley, glittery, yummy, status symbolly, garlandy, fuzzy, wonderful, i love it, i want it, i'm addicted, i really want more, please just a little bit, i promise to be good, shiny, pretty, precious, fringe.

That's how they get us.

Lets get them back.