I love the Frowning Girl meme. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Here is the latest one, sent via Dave Itzkoff’s twitter:

Frowning Girl seems to be always saying: make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. She shot to fame by photo bombing the royal kiss between Kate Middleton and Prince William. Since many of us out there were already sick to death of the royal wedding — I am embarrassed to be a woman the way women fawn all over weddings — the Frowning Girl seemed to say it all, with one expression: STFU.

Here are more Frowning Girl photos.

I don’t even know what to say about this poor mom. But I suggest she get herself a computer and learn how to use google and Youtube.

You have, no doubt, heard about the latest YouTube sensation of poor little kerligirl, aka Jessi Slaughter aka Jessica Leonhardt. The last one is her real name. Her videos are completely sad and bizarre. But it goes along with what I’ve been wanting to impart onto parents for, like, ever.

A little bit of history: I’ve been online for almost fifteen years, I’m embarrassed to say. I found this world after a kind of painful breakup and I never came out of it. I live a regular life, too. But in the first few years, I didn’t. I was completely submerged in the online community, the global world of cybergeeks, as they were known then. This is even before there was a World Wide Web. If there is one thing I know it’s internet culture. And I can tell you, without question, that the best and the worst of human nature is exhibited here. As great and supportive as people can be, as kind and flattering as they often are, there are mean people out there. There are REALLY REALLY mean people whose shadow lives are lived out online. Because they can’t call their boss a “fat bitch” out loud they use that hate and put it all online.

There are some people to genuinely fear.

Here’s the thing, parents. WAKE UP. Your kids cannot be online without your being educated on what the internet is all about so that you can monitor what they are doing. That means, get yourself a Facebook account stat. Start looking at the kinds of things tweens are putting on YouTube. And know this. If you let your child, up to age 14, put stuff on YouTube? They are either going to be cyberbullied or stalked by pedophiles. That is just the fact of the matter. I shudder to think what this 11 year-old girl, Jessica Leonhardt has been saying to grown men who are trying to sleep with her. And you can bet that they are.

You ever wonder how it is those sleazoid dudes make dates with sad tweens? Here it is, playing out.

Here are some guidelines for parents who know nothing about the internet. To Jessica’s parent, there is only one way out of this mess: the computer is gone. Your daughter has now revoked her right to use the computer and she will not be left alone anyway. The computer is GONE. No email, no chatting, no YouTube. Nothing. Gone, gone, gone or pay the price later. Your daughter is in deep, deep trouble. However, when a year passes and it’s time to give her back some rights, this is the way to go about it.

1) Your child must be monitored. You can’t pop your head in their room and ask them what they’re doing because they will lie to you. Jessica’s mother was fooled by the dumb girl’s lies that she was just “video chatting with friends.” Tweens DO video chat. But you must know whom they are video chatting with.

2) That means, you put the fricking computer in the living room if you can’t trust your dumb girl tween.

3) Video chatting is a loud and obnoxious practice. But train yourself to know the friends your child chats with. You will know when it’s someone they don’t know.

4) Give them as much freedom as your trust allows. They violate that trust, their freedom is limited. Go all the way, parents. Don’t be afraid. They lose nothing by being banned from the computer. If they do something they’re not allowed to do, the computer is gone.

5) The only places your tween should be allowed online is: Facebook (if you are one of their friends — but make yourself a fake identity and friend them as well, because they will block you from seeing or reading certain things….and again, if you fully trust your child this isn’t necessary. But spy on them and stalk them until you can be sure they are learning proper boundaries and not “friending” any older men — remember, the more educated YOU ARE about the internet, the more protective you can be), google chat or video chat, provided you know whom they’re chatting with. And research sites for school. Make sure your browsers are set to the safest possible setting. Check your child’s computer often to make sure they maintain this setting.

Unfortunately, you have to accept that times have changed. Our kids don’t hang out on the street corner anymore. They used to do all sorts of boundary-pushing things there. They learned about sex, drugs and rock n’ roll back in my day and we all had to develop our own lines of defense. Some of us did not make it out. Some of us did The internet is now the place where kids “hang out.” Nothing has changed about kid behavior except that there is GLOBAL ACCESS to your child at all times. Anyone who wants to get to them can get to them. You must be honest with them about this. They have to know it’s coming. They have to know about bullies and perverts. They have to know that GLOBAL ACCESS means anyone can say anything anytime with no recourse whatsoever.

Other things to know:

Pedophiles know, by now, how to hide their identity via something like an website that gives you an anonymous IP address. That means they can’t be traced. Most people who want to leave mean comments (and I get them all the time) will do so using an anonymous IP. If they really do try to “hook up” with your daughter the FBI can get involved. But no one is going to care about mean comments. If you can trace their IP or their service provider (Google might do something if there is true abuse involved) you can send them a letter alerting them to this and they will warn the user or remove their account entirely.

Youtube might strip the account and the comments but for the part, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR CHILD’S BEHAVIOR ONLINE. If you give them access, you have to watch them like a hawk.

Good luck.

This came from Howard Stern’s radio show, posted by someone over at ONTD:

While listening to Rosie Radio this morning Howard Stern popped in for a little surprise talk and they got on the subject of Brad and Angelina. Howard said that they are no longer together and Rosie asked Howard if he actually knew that or was just going off of the tabloids and Howard said the he knows that. Rosie asked how and he said that he knows people and knows things and that he can pretty much say for sure that they are no longer together.

Howard said that even though Angelina Jolie is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen that Brad should have known better since Billy Bob Thorton, a man who has a fear of antiques and only eats orange food, said that she had too many problems for him.

So there ya go. Howard Stern is a pretty honest guy and I believe pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth.

I hope it isn’t true. Maybe they’re just taking a break from each other. But all those kids – relationships have a hard time staying healthy when just one kid comes along, but that many kids in that many years?

Their relationship, as lived through our eyes, moment by moment, picture by picture, detail by details, seemed like a fantasy. The births in Africa, the flying lessons, the international adoptions, the twins, the animal-noises sex, the big house in France, the sexy photos for W magazines, the red carpet displays of affection – that yellow dress at Cannes. It was a moment for our time – and why is it poor old Brad Pitt is always the guy who has the girl and they become the couple that defines our time?

A trip down memory lane:

We held one of our biggest fundraisers so far yesterday at a location near Emma’s school. We had a garage sale on one end and a cookies and lemonade stand on the other. I was dispatched to the lemonade stand with my friend Karen and several of our kids. It became a celebrity magnet. First, an actress none of us recognized gave the girls a hundred dollar bill, which made their day. Then Scarlett Johansson walked up to the booth with a friend. She asked them what they were raising money for (Washington, D.C. trip) and how much they had to raise ($15,000) and that it was “to see Barack Obama,” we all hope. And Scarlett and her friend gave some money and walked on.

They were so nice, so laid back – the only weird thing was that Scarlett had dyed her hair dark red, maybe so as not to be recognized. She was stunningly beautiful, more so than she looks on screen. She had skin the color and luster of milk and long legs. Very nice person.

By contrast, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale drove by and though Gwen waved she did not stop nor give any money to the fundraiser. She also visited our yard sale to ask about the preschool they have there — and the paparazzi popped out of cars and started snapping photos of them. Perhaps they were being chased, which maybe explains why they didn’t help out with the school fundraiser.

Then they drove back by our fundraiser and once again didn’t stop. I can only assume they didn’t want to have a million pictures of them in their new neighborhood – I don’t know.

All’s well that ends well as our fundraiser made our single highest total so far for any fundraiser, $4,000.

Every once in a while something profound finds its way out of the cesspool that is the internet. This recent meditation on the dumb rise and fall of Lindsay and Britney and others made me think twice about my own role in the manufactured drama. I’ve been thinking about it one step removed because I got in an argument with some people on this blog. When I was a teenager Jodie Foster was working her way out of being a child star by going to Yale where she went through a drug and skank phase, as all good women do. She was arrested for coke possession and that was the end of it. There wasn’t this unified gossip give and take with everyone chiming in on the fate of Lindsay or Britney. Why are we so interested in it? This commentary comes fairly close, I think, to nailing it:

So it’s a nasty shock for reactionaries to see Lindsay Lohan’s latest police mugshot, in which she sends a fabulous look of “Yeah, I’ve been arrested. So what?” straight through the camera into the miasma of prurient dreck that is pop culture. So Lohan likes a drink. What’s the problem? Women get drunk, fall over and hit the double standard face first. Further proof that womankind is pushing things a step too far is the news that Britney Spears acted brattishly at a recent photoshoot, wiping her hands on one dress and letting her pooch defecate on another.

Again, so what? Male power players have been abusing subordinates ever since they created the first hierarchies. Nobody points out that male violence is destroying the world. A drunk young rich guy is a crazed creative genius and cultural messiah who lives on the edge; his female counterpart is a sad strumpet. Or, in Britney’s case, it’s all put down to her ongoing “meltdown”.

That is not to say that I want to even things up by watching talented women sabotage themselves with as much dedication as men. There is no glory in substance abuse or depression. They are debilitating conditions, deeply saddening for any friend, family or fan who must watch, wondering how they might help. But the avid readers of What Lindsay/Britney Did Next are not wondering that. The people who like to see a good girl go bad do so not because it provides young women with a vicarious means of joyful rebellion, but because they like watching a gifted woman get destroyed.

The strategy is the same whether we’re talking pop princesses or actual ones. First, the target is goaded, speculated about. She is said to be too fat, too thin, unstable, unprofessional, a bad mother. Then, understandably, she begins to freak out and unwittingly vindicates the gossip. Then she is hounded some more until something – an arrest, an accident, a scandal, an eating disorder, a suicide – degrades her so much that the public finally sits back, satisfied that another promising female has been taken out of action.

The media that deal in pop freakouts don’t report these stories so much as create them. If Britney Spears has had any kind of meltdown, who can blame her? She is followed wherever she goes by stalker-violators: some have cameras and call themselves paparazzi; some have notebooks and call themselves journalists; some have vaginas and call themselves concerned women of the world. All relish the harassment that they perpetrate. It is women (writers and readers) who are enjoying and encouraging the exposure of Lohan’s drink and drugs hell or Spears’s identity crisis, while saving space for a snide comment about their outfits. It is women who are getting off on other women’s difficulties, while men in power carouse, abuse (and self-abuse) with impunity.

Who are the real “bad girls”? Not Lohan or Spears. The gossip magazines may be as punchy as a dose of Splenda, but they offer evidence that women have obediently taken on the values of a woman-hating world. We must recognise the part women play in the degradation of women: the ultimate betrayal.

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