I saw you in some awful pain…It made your mom & me insane Here’s an example from my own child’s memory box: (no question about my editorial point of view today, not a smidge) Up until now, Tooth Fairy storytelling has been as diverse and individual as the families themselves, so back off marketers, you’re messing with our personal narratives here. Reading through my handmade rhymes and reflecting upon what was happening in our lives at the time makes me realize just how intrusive, disturbing, and unethical it is for brands to try to co-opt family history and iconic rites of passage.
I have a gazillion critical thinking points on the duplicitous marketing tactics to callout (not to mention the pop star princessification and gender narrowcasting), but I’ll start with “proof of concept” by sharing a few of our Tooth Fairy notes and traditions that capture the poignant, highly personal milestones no commercialized ‘brand’ has the right to elbow out of the forefront of child-raising. Tressed, crowned and bejeweled in identical body types that might as well be uniforms, they descend upon us batting their eyes and crooning idiocy like, “This is awesome-ous, be a hero for kindness and change the world.” (Oh, how that makes my teeth hurt)
The pompous header, “They have arrived” heralds the flitting in of a half-dozen formulaic doe-eyed stereotypes. “The REAL Tooth Fairies” ®undermines parental authority and authenticity in a one-two punch, sending children the cue that this commercialized fabrication is the ‘real’ deal and family’s expressions of the tooth fairy are lesser in value. The name of the new brand alone is irksome from the get go: (I swear, if I see one more ‘kindness, change the world’ product ploy, I’ll barf…and yes, The Real Tooth Fairies ® use that smarmy tactic in shades of Mattel/Monster High manipulative marketing.) Money minions are now mowing down what’s left of our play yards of imagination…swiping unbranded icons and turning developmental milestones and moments into ‘brand experiences” through cloying cliché tactics like goodwashing. Your family narrative is now up for sale.Ĭheap. Parents, this should jolt you awake like a taser.
#Creative tooth fairy names free
In short…heads up… The Tooth Fairy has been jacked.Ĭhildren’s rights advocates at Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) are leading the charge to “Save the Tooth Fairy” and I’m on board 200% (take action here) I pick and choose my battles carefully, and this is clearly one of them… a tent-pole in the media and marketing circus worthy of a rallying cry from ALL stakeholders. The imaginative and beloved traditions that WE create as families, on our own, customized to our varied and vast cultures, regions, socio-economics and parenting styles are being infiltrated and ‘monetized’ as marketing execs go after childhood icons to homogenize, corporatize, sexualize and enslave them into ‘ownership’ as a “branded marketing opportunity.” My point in sharing my personal history and background is multi-fold… Today I’m sharing with you a few notes from The Tooth Fairy that my daughter received, now time-worn and yellowing in a keepsake memory box along with a few clunky baby molars, which I wistfully stumbled upon in writing this piece the actual week of her 18th birthday. JIt’s rebel yell time, and this time it’s VERY personal. Keep at it, families…save our traditions and narratives from marketing greed! 6, 2013 Update! Honored to be accurately quoted in this pithy parenting prose by Heidi Stevens in The Chicago Tribune’sthrilled to see all the parenting pushback on Twitter that CCFC put together in this ‘Storify’ synopsis! (New York Times also covered CCFC’s efforts here)
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