Executive Summary by Kristen Crane and Ian Huckabee
Are Bratz Dolls a Negative Influence on Little Girls?
I remember when I was a little girl, oh about 11 years old, I had a really good friend named Chris. My family was poor and my mom didn't really dress up much, but Chris' mom did! She had the feather boas, the high heel slides with the feather puffs and tassels, along with the most glamorous dresses. Boy did her mom have some sexy dresses! We would try to dress up as sexy and as glamorous as we possibly could. We would put on make-up, jewelry, fishnet stockings, heels, boas, sequined, silk, taffeta or other fancy dresses, put up our hair and just have a ball! When my daughter was a little girl, I used to let her dress up in my clothes, but I didn't have any fancy or sexy dresses for her to play with. The question is: "Are Bratz Girls a Negative Influence on Little Girls?" The key here is parents need to instill morals in their children and let them know that characters like Bratz Girls are only make believe; and that girls their age really don't dress that way or wear make-up unless they are "playing" dress-up. Did you know that playing dress-up is a natural part of a young girl's life?
Bratz Forever? Green Building is Coming, But Slowly
I spoke with a builder this week who let me go on for about 4 or 5 minutes about two homes I'm starting which received the Bronze rating of my local home builders association's Green Calculator. When I paused from my excitement to catch my breath, the builder asked, "What's green building?"
Green building is expensive, and it takes much longer than the life of an average mortgage for the technologies and products used in building a green home to pay for themselves. At a green gathering I attended recently, we went around the room introducing ourselves. The room was fled with green specialists of various sorts, including the builder of Americ'a second greenest home in 2005. When it was my turn, with tongue in cheek I said I was a spec builder who's trying to build green competitive.
Green products and technologies are expensive, in part because they're still in the early stages of acceptance. Applying what's called S-curve theory -- which says that the amount of time it takes a product to gain 10% acceptance is the same amount of time it'll take that product to go from 10% to 90% acceptance -- it could be at least another 15 years before we see 90% acceptance of the products and technologies that will green our homes. We won't be brats forever, but we've got to stay the course and stem the tide.
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