Essay #2: Reading & Writing

I was away at writing camp when I thought my laptop was going to die. As I sat underneath the oak tree and typed away about theatre and the stage romance justification, my cursor began to "spaz out" across the screen––at least I thought it was my cursor. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a baby black ant. I watched as it crawled linearly down the edge of the screen, then zig-zagged and crawled over the edge so I could no longer see it.

"How cool it must be," I thought, "to crawl across words." He is only the size of a capital “I,” a lowercase “L.” How cool it must be to crawl and read. How frustrating, too. To be spoon-fed the letters and have to remember which one came before, and which one came before that. It was like the game my brother and I used to play, tracing letters on each other’s back to spell a word. I was never very good at it unless I had a pen and paper, but he said that was cheating.

Then I got to thinking: That must be like how it is learning to read, although of course I wouldn’t remember because it was so long ago. Children have to crawl over the letters with their eyes. When I have a child, I will make giant Scrabble tiles, and my baby will crawl over the letters, feel them with her feet and hands, until they are imprinted in her body, not just her brain. And when she gets to the end of the word, she will be tired. But she will remember it because of the hard work it took to get there. She will not be able to skim, like so many people have become accustomed to. She will know the language, feel the language. She will curve with the C’s, the D’s, the G’s, the J’s, the O’s, the P’s, the R’s, the S’s. She will raise her arms to the sky like the Y. She will open her legs wide and touch the floor with her hands, her tiny bum the top of the A. When she sits with her legs straight out in front, she will be the L’s.

For my second essay, I'm thinking about writing about how children learn to read and write. I was flipping through my kindergarten journal the other day, and I was appalled by the spelling. I also found the spelling rather priceless, though. It was fascinating to read the progression of the entries, as they advanced from one sentence entries that took up the whole page, to longer and more detailed entries with neater handwriting and better sentence structure. For my essay, I plan to analyze my own journal, as well as research the minds of children to learn about how and when reading and writing clicks for them. Additionally, I think it might be interesting to investigate the difference between children learning to read with electronic books versus physical books . Are there positive and/or negative consequences to learning to read with electronic books?

What I need to do is develop a unique question that makes my essay different from the countless articles and books there are out there about language, reading, and writing. Although I expect it will be a research-driven essay, I want to make sure it is not just a research paper. I need to bring myself into the essay. 

If you have any prompting suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Barbie Research

I am still looking to possibly incorporate some feedback I get about readers' personal experience with dolls. Based on the research I did online, here are some of the research components I added to my essay:

          Stephanie Hoskins, a contributor of Divine Caroline, strongly asserts that Barbies lead women to developing a dysmorphic disorder. A dysmorphic disorder is a disease where one fixates on a perceived “flaw” in their bodies. This, she continues, can lead women to surgically alter their bodies to match the Barbie image (“The Negative Effects…”). While there are some women who spend millions of dollars to get their “perfect body,” I don’t believe Barbie has gotten the credit she deserves (“The Barbie Effect”). 

          Before Barbie (B.B.), the only kind of doll was the baby doll. “Khabibo,” owner of the blog “Ms.Goodie2shoes,” may argue that the baby doll stereotyped women into becoming mothers. After all, that was historically what the majority of women went on to become. The invention of the Barbie doll, however, gave children the opportunity to role play and picture themselves as adult women with careers (“A Barbie World”). (Google “Barbie professions” and you will find hundreds of links with hundreds of different jobs.) Khabibo, an African-American, references the day her grandmother bought her an African-American Barbie doll as the day she finally believed she could do anything. “Growing up, listening to Barbie's fairy tale, she had it all. The dream house, the dream car, as many careers as you could imagine, and the dream boyfriend. But for me, it seemed like only a Caucasian girls lifestyle...But that day my grandmother put that African-American Barbie in my hand, I knew that I could really accomplish it.” While it may be plausible to argue that Barbie has restricted a girl’s image, she certainly did not limit a girl’s identity––she has broadened a girl’s identity. 

          At age five, I was too young to think about “identity” and “body image.” Sure, I liked the “pretty” dolls and the ones that could sing, but I played with Barbies because it was fun. We played "House," sometimes, but it never entertained us for as long as "Barbies" did. By voicing the dolls, we ourselves did not have to be a part of the game, so we could explore those things and say those things that made us uneasy in real life. It wasn't really us saying it, after all. Looking back, I realize that I played Barbies to try and make sense of the world around me. There were so many questions I had about the world that I was not yet old enough to explore myself.

Survey

For my Barbie essay, I'm hoping to possibly include some research components. In my last post, I started writing about how playing Barbies perhaps had some psychological benefits, in terms of helping me deal with my fears and exploring the world around me at a time when I was too young to explore it myself. In the sidebar of my blog, I posted a survey asking if you played with dolls when you were younger (Barbies, action figures, baby dolls, etc.). The survey itself is completely anonymous. For those of you who are willing, I was wondering if you could also answer any of these questions for me:

1. How old were you when you started playing with dolls? Why did you start?
2. How old were you when you stopped playing with dolls? Why did you stop? 
3. Why did you play with dolls? (Maybe it's just because it was fun, but maybe looking back, you find some underlying meaning as to why you played with them.)
4. Some sources say that playing with dolls is beneficial to a child's childhood. It allows them to role play and experiment with what it feels like to be an adult. Others say that dolls–Barbies specifically–make children believe they need to look a certain way to achieve the "perfect image." Where do you stand? 
5. Is there a difference between the psychological effects of playing with Barbies compared to baby dolls? (When playing with Barbies, usually the child is just making them talk. When playing with baby dolls, the child is more directly involved in the game, because he/she is having to act and be in the make-believe world.) 

I would love to hear your responses. For anyone who would rather post "Anonymously," just set your profile as "Anonymous."

Thank you!