Innoculation or: My Day At The Mall

For various reasons, I went to the mall today. Not really to buy anything but you know, the mall! Yeah!

The homeland.

We wandered around in one toy store. Chiquita caused havoc with the little toy animals that turn on and bark and jump around. Whatever those are called. A swarm of kids arrived and the manager had to intervene.

My favorite moment was when she went into the window and stood there like a mannikin and said "I want to show everyone my style" and posed there for a moment.

One of my foibles as a mother is that I get bored easily so I always want to move on. I convinced her that there was an even better toy store somewhere else. Not that I knew if there was but isn't there always a better toy store, somewhere else? Isn't there always a toy store better than the toy store you are in?

As we sought this better toy store, she was drawn to the most disturbing store imaginable. It was a 'tween' clothing store called 'Justice.' What the store had to do with Justice I'll never know.

One thing that I love about Chiquita is that she saunters. She sauntered in and said in this adult way she has of speaking sometimes: "Let's go in here. Not that I'm going to buy clothes or anything. Just to look."

Hanging from the ceiling were these flat screen TVs with videos of tween stars intermixed with truly bizarre commercials of tween girls in bathing suits. (The camera lingered on their bare stomachs in a way that made me shudder in horror.) Then there would be a kind of cartoon news story about the store itself. It was very 1984 in its way.

(God, there were TVs all throughout the mall. Is this a new development in mall design?)

A girl walked by, a tween who had been fully colonized by the store. She had on what I think are the style for tween girls--a flowery shirt, the jeans just so, a tank top under the flower shirt, lip gloss, her hair done. It was chilling. I looked at my little girl and wanted to cry. Would I lose her to such things? God, one more reason to never go to the suburbs. Or the mall.

Of course, I wore lip gloss in sixth grade. But my idea of a cool store was Woolworth's. I kid you not. I bought my lipgloss at Woolworth's. Oh, the innocence. Except, in fact, I usually stole my lipgloss from Woolworth's. But I innocently stole it.

I ran a shoplifting ring in the 6th grade. It was actually founded on quasi-Marxist principles. I think I didn't read the Communist Manifesto until the 7th grade but even before that, I thought it permissible to steal from any corporation. Hallmark was a particularly favorite target. I even stole lucite crosses from Hallmark. And I was a religious kid. My shoplifting ring/girl's mayhem club actually had a Bible study component.

The most heartbreaking thing about the tween store was the little display of stuffed animals. The cartoons were also heartbreaking. As if the tween girls were still allowed to buy and play with toys but the only toys that could be sanctioned must occur within the space licensed by Miley Cyrus. Kind of like those toy dogs they sold at Victoria's Secret. Something to love. Training in the accoutrements of sexual attraction but a little something to love in that sad, sad quest.

Chiquita is helpless in the face of a display of stuffed animals. And I am helpless because I can never get her away from those goddamn displays of stuffed animals. My consolation prize for not buying much is to let her play with toys wherever she sees them, risking the ire of managers all over town. For her, stores are not places where you go to buy things but places where you go to play with things.

We got a couple of fishes to play with. I told her my name was 'Blue Fish.'  She had a pink fish with pink undertones and silver metallic patterns.

So she says to blue fish 'You aren't only blue. You have some other colors.'

I was impressed by this, in my role as blue fish. If Pink Fish were hitting on Blue Fish, I realized, Blue Fish would probably start to like Pink Fish.

Then I decided this was a great moment to innoculate her from 'the neg.'

The neg' is a pickup technique where a man both insults and compliments an attractive woman. For example, "I like your haircut. Why do you wear it so short?" "Interesting shirt. What's with the buttons?" I'm no expert on the neg, but I think it has to be ambiguous and yet undermine the woman's sense of herself. It is supposed to be used on beautiful women. I'm not sure if it only works on them.

The neg is described in this book by a pickup artist named 'Mystery' who started some kind of pickup society for dorks who could not get women and then, through the techniques of neurolinguistic programming, found they could.

Neurolinguistic programming! I must confess, when I heard about the neg I briefly considered learning neurolinguistic programming in order to manipulate others and bend them to my will. But it has that whiff of chicanery and Scientology-like pseudoscience and this deterred me.

So this is how things went

A bit of 'Hi Pink Fish!' "Hi Blue Fish" ensued then

Me as mommy: What do you say when someone insults you?

Me as blue fish: Your tail is too big!

Chiquita as pink fish: No, your tail is too big!

Then I realize that this wasn't the neg. So I try a different approach.

Me as blue fish: You have great silver spots. But why are they so shiny?

I bring in a third fish, in order to test.

Spotted (non-jerk) fish: Hey, he just insulted you. Shouldn't you refuse to talk to him now?

Chiquita as pink fish: No, I really like him. He's nice.

Spotted fish: But you shouldn't talk to someone who implies your spots are too shiny.

Pink fish: It's you I don't like.

Me as mommy: No, now when someone tries to imply there is something wrong with you and that you should change who you are, you should avoid them.

Pink fish (to spotted fish): Stop picking on blue fish!

Me as mommy: I'm not being the spotted fish right now, I'm being the narrator.

Pink fish (did she say this dreamily or was I just projecting)?: I really, really like the blue fish.

Then the sharks came and the fish had to swim away. Except there weren't any sharks so we had to pretend that the stuffed birds were sharks.

Anyway, that experiment failed. My technique needs work.

Like all my days with Chiquita, I thought this was the most glorious day ever. I said "Did you have fun at the mall today with mommy?" She said "No, not SO much fun."

God, I work too much. I never get to see my own kid.

According to this person, Jane Austen knew about the neg.

Comments

[slouching mom]

I love you. That is all.

[Jo]

Yes. Me too.

I mean, Your blog is great! Why are your stories so manhating?

Did it work? Do you love me too?

[ozma]

Ha ha ha ha. I wonder if this works woman to woman?

Actually, Slouching Mom's worked better which suggests not.

But I'm always interested in the person who insults me and so maybe that's the first step.

If you read the Jane Austen post you'll see that the neg is fairly hard to pull off well.

[Rbelle]

Hm. I find the Jane Austen post a little suspect, considering that Elizabeth basically rips Darcy's balls off when he eventually goes in for the kill. After all, his proposal is the ultimate neg - I can't stop thinking about you despite the fact the you and your entire family suck. Perhaps overuse caused a backfire?

[ozma]

Yeah but she looooooves him. That's what counts.

I guess.

[amy]

"Like all my days with Chiquita, I thought this was the most glorious day ever. I said "Did you have fun at the mall today with mommy?" She said "No, not SO much fun."

God, I work too much. I never get to see my own kid."

Oof, that made me cry. I (think I) know exactly how you feel.