Cribs stuffed with suffocating amounts of pillows, animals, and blankets? Dangly canopies and ribbons posing a strangulation risk? For bravely pointing out the safety hazards in J.Lo and M.An's People Magazine-styled Twin Cribs Of Death, the editors of Parents deserve to have their blog renamed, from Goodyblog, to Greatyblog.
But they're too nice about it. The real issue is not the safety of the Lopez Anthony twins; I'm sure they'll be as fine as they can be, being born to a couple of hyper-materialistic, narcissistic control freaks who keep them locked in their germ-free nursery wing, attended to by their round-the-clock army of color therapists, baby masseuses, and Scientology parenting experts.
No, it's the other army, the other control freaks, that are the problem: the ones from People who designed and staged and photographed an obviously unsafe nursery, and then promoted the hell out of it as some kind of idealized, dreamworld fantasy.
People spent $6 million for the photo rights of the Lopez kids. [1] The magazine's most senior editors had to be overseeing every detail of the shoot, the story, the copy, the captions, and the promotion across every possible medium. Nursery designers and professional bed stylists [seriously, one of our best friends in NYC is a "soft stylist"; she's always very busy.] pored over every detail of the set and the images. The presentation of blatantly hazardous design elements was not inadvertent, but a much-deliberated decision. Just like the total absence of safety related, "Professional drivers on closed course! Don't try this at home!" disclaimers or captions. Any such
statements after the fact are nothing but indignant ass-covering by people [or People] who consider themselves beyond account, and who are pissed at being called out for their conscious, disregard of children's safety.
As for the outraged apologists like the 90% of the commenters on Celebrity Baby Blog's J.Lo post [awesome deployment of the scandalous headline with the slight, questioning uplift at the end, btw], I'm sorry, you can have it both ways. The people who need People do include an obsessive 2% who surf out the details online and who act insulted when someone points out that this is fake and dangerous, you know. But it also includes millions of people who just tear those pages out and head to the store to outfit their own, exclusive Nursery From The Block.
A Memo to J. Lo [goodyblog]
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's twins' nursery is a death trap? [cbb]
[1] Remember when K-Fed was openly mocked as an irresponsible pimp for even considering charging $500,000 for photos of his little hillbilly child? Who'd have imagined he'd end up a front-line casualty, a martyr to the greater good of the celebrity baby photo industrial complex?
and, hello, have you ever seen anything as hideously ugly as that nursery??
[hmm, actually haven't seen it; from the descriptions, it sounds like typical, Trump-school tacky crap -ed.]/em>
My first reaction to this nursery was that it is as contrived as the photo of Jennifer and Marc running with their Silver Cross prams and coordinated pink outfits (boy is he whipped). I didn't even think of the danger of all that soft bedding (maybe because it was obvious to me that the babies don't spend any time in that room).
What I find interesting/disturbing, in my research for our safety in the nursery post (link below), is that many parents KNOW you're not supposed to use blankets or put your infant on their stomach but do it any way.
http://www.celebrity-babies.com/2008/03/nursery-safety.html
This is why I never post about celeb baby news. I do have 2 points.One, it seems like celebrities are whoring their kids out. And it seems that those on the D-list see how much press they can get, and that is influencing their decisions to have children. Was anybody paying any attention to Minnie Driver before she was pregnant?
And why do they continue to shop at stores like Petit Tresor, when the store is going to issue a press release about everything they bought before they even get all the way out the door.
So who's the dimbulb who staged the photo shoot of the Silver Cross prams with one pram apron tossed over the hood? (Check it out; it's the one on the right in the joyful run-down-the-driveway shot.)
$7,000 for prams, and nobody has a clue how to use them. Hmmm . . . maybe I need to expand my professional services and offer consulting to the consultants. Man, I shoulda had a share of that 6 mil. Me and K-Fed, out in the cold.