On 8 July I wrote a blog post asking Why is Pop Culture so Anti-Women? Danielle usually comments on my blog posts, but she also doesn’t always have time for that because of Scarlett. So we discussed it at the dinner table. What she told me was that “you get used to it. You just figure -that’s the way the world is.” Hearing that response was one of those times where I felt two opposing feelings. I felt sad that the response is getting used to it. Although, given the power of the media in our youth and its continued (yet hopefully diminishing) power today - I could see that feeling angry and hoping for change would be a lost cause. At the same time, I felt hopeful for Scarlett and for the ~150 million women and girls in America because Danielle transcended those images, tropes, and stereotypes. She does not feel the need to dress or act how society supposes she should. She does as she wishes and is a successful woman. She was an extremely successful worker in the workplace - always getting the highest accolades. She is completely interdependent with me rather than dependent on me. That’s what I need to impart onto Scarlett and she’ll be fine. Pop culture will still suck, but she’ll be fine.

When you’re part of a dominant class you don’t realize how differently you see the world. Sure, I’m ethnically Hispanic and have suffered humiliation and financial consequences over one overt racist incident. But by and large the world is my oyster. I’m a man and racially I’m white. In fact I’ve had coworkers come to me and disparage Hispanics (all-to-often a codeword for Mexicans - especially Illegal Mexicans - in the USA) and then say, “they’re not like us white guys.” So for the most part I never saw anything awry with pop culture. In fact, one of the few times I realized consciously that I wasn’t actually represented on TV was when I did see myself represented on TV in the form of reruns of the TV show ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?. The show was exactly about me - it was about kids (although I think they were high school age or older) who were born in the USA to Cuban immigrants and whose grandparents only spoke Spanish. It was odd and fascinating and I couldn’t get enough of it. But other than that one year or so when I saw those reruns, I was able to identify with virtually any TV show. I could see myself as Chandler, Ross, or Joey in Friends. (Or as a character on Full House or Home Improvement) Now, I loved showed with African Americans like Hangin’ with Mr Cooper, Family Matters, The Cosby Show, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air so it’s not as though I needed to see myself in TV. But until I started poking around on the Internet as an adult I never realized that for people like African Americans, those four shows were almost the only opportunity they had to see themselves on TV (especially in a positive sense). And forget it if you’re Asian! (including Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis) I came to realize that I had been as naive about the entertainment landscape as those white couples from the 1920s who use to take trips to Harlem on the weekend to experience the Jazz and other aspects of African American culture. At the end of the trip they could retreat to their comfortable lives while the African Americans were stuck there.