My Kids Are NOT Walking Advertisements - Dora BackPack Backlash

Call me a snobby mommy. I admit it: I refuse to let my kids wear a single fake leather smelling scrap of trademarked, tacky cartoon character tattooed gear, including Lightening McQueen Cars crap, Dora drivel and Disney debris.

As Dana Carvey used to say while spoofing the first President Bush (when SNL still ruled Saturday night), "Naw gun' duh. Stay the course. Thousand Points of Light" and all the ridiculous rest.

No character apparel. No way. No how. Not ever.

To me, character TM apparel is to kiddie fashion what Kraft Squeeze Cheese is to the fromage industry. C'est domage. Yep, I'm a snoot. Calls 'em likes I see 'em, even when I am calling my own self out on an issue that makes me look like a jerk.

While you're at it, might as well call me a mean mommy. One who just says a hearty "No!" to her kids' persistent, nasal Target shopping aisle pleas for mass marketed, decal decked out clothes, light-up Velcro shoes and mini walking billboard/movie trailer junk in general. (That's right. My trademark run-on sentences are running on and on and on again. Old habits are hard to break.)

Finally, you can call me a hypocrite because I do have one faulty exception to my snooty no-character clothes rule. I do allow my character decal deprived kids to don cartoon character pajamas and underwear. Spiderman and Disney Princess ones, actually.

That way not one suspecting soul will witness them sporting Dora, Hello Kitty and The Hulk alongside snobby mama me in public. As if I'm too sexy for their shirts.

Nice or not, I purposely keep our nighttime TM merchandise marauding our very own dark, mass appeal, sell-out secret.

And I'd like to keep it that way, although now I've totally (over)exposed our nocturnal mass market conformity by admitting it here on my blog.

Then again, aren't embarrassing confessions that humanize/humble me as a real and flawed modern mama what this blog is about in the first place?

If you're Mcmerchandise sell-out happy and you know it and you really want to show it, well, good for you.

As for slightly pretentious me, I'm sticky to the plain stuff.

Take it with a grain of schmaltz, from a thrifty mom who gets most of her clothes second-hand from generous hand-me-down sources.

Dora defying Slackstress OUT.

So, which of you mamas are with me on this? If you're not, tell me about it. I'd like to hear both sides. Do tell.

*Hopefully someone out there in the blogosphere is actually reading this. Hopefully I haven't lost all five of my dedicated regular readers thanks to my embarrassing, over-the-head panty hose pull vlog. I'm still in shock that I actually hit "publish" on that one but there's no going back. My kids ran around like panty hosed robbers half the night after watching their wacky mama on YouTube. Talk abouy cheap AND fun. (more) (less)