As I made my way down the street today,with a lot on my mind as I headed to a doctor’s appointment, I found myself stopped at one of the many lights that separate me from my train station. While waiting, thinking that I should have checked the weather before I hit the streets in tight black jeans, I heard a mother say the following to one of the two children she was trying to give orders to. I guess he might have been calling himself having an attitude:

“Unfold your damn arms! I don’t know why the f**k you be actin’ like yo a** don’t know how to listen.”

…When I was young, most parents didn’t embarrass their children like that when at home, let alone curse them out like they stole something on the streets. They might put a finger in your face or put some bass in their voice in public, but you got yourself together just in time before they let you know you were going to get tore up when you both got home. In fact, my mother could make me feel just as guilty and bad by simply giving me the “Girl, you had better stop unless you want to see my belt when we get home” face or letting me know that she was truly disappointed in my behavior. But these days, people are talking uglier to their kids, referring to them as even uglier names and just can’t discipline them without calling them something you can find in Urban rather than Webster’s Dictionary.

Not only was this woman’s statement to the little boy embarrassing as people watched him get berated on the street, but it was unnecessarily harsh. I know that children can often be a hardheaded pain, but it always makes me cringe when I hear an adult curse like a sailor at a child who will most likely soak in that language and use it on someone else; Whether that be a classmate or a teacher who gets called everything but a child of God because they tried to keep them in check. People underestimate how much their outbursts or explicit conversations with other adults around their children can influence the language kids use with others. And sadly, using strong and unacceptable language to address children has become all too common.

Need another example? Well, just a few days ago, as I walked with a friend back to her place post-church, I heard a young mother talking to her friend while pushing around her son in a stroller. Out of nowhere, instead of calling him by the name she gave him, she chose to say, “Yeah, that little n***a tryna walk already.” As I watched my friend’s face turn up, I asked her, “Did she just call that little boy a “n***a”? She had, and after the fact, she laughed about it and went on with her day with her friend. I’m sure as the day went on she probably called him a lot more than that.

I don’t know about you, but it seems as though if folks aren’t cursing out their kids like Mo’Nique in Precious, they’re referring to them as everything from little “n***as” to “muthaf****s” and more. And they’re clearly doing it everywhere too: on the streets, in the stores (grocery AND retail), at the parks and at restaurants. A few are older parents, but many I find cursing up a storm are young parents, ones barely out of high school, maybe a few years into college who don’t seem enthusiastic about the responsibility that’s become a constant in their lives. I often wonder if these parents are the same ones who we hear about holding their babies under scalding water because they cried too much and too long, and starving them because they resent them. These stories get people’s blood boiling and remind folks of why not EVERY woman is fit to have children. I guess it’s a testament to the fact that if people aren’t ready to handle their responsibilities, and only find themselves yelling rather than talking to their kids, they might want to rethink their sexual activities and doing what’s putting them in these positions in the first place.

Maybe I’m being too judgmental, but I can’t see how cursing a child does them any kind of real good. All I know is that patience is wearing thin and the results are hurt and confused faces like the little boy I watched on the street today. And if you were wondering, after his mother’s rant, he looked like someone told him that he wasn’t and was never going to be anything. I’m not saying she was is a bad parent, but that behavior would probably rip her out of the running for “Mother of the Year.” Nowadays, both parents and kids are having the tantrums, and it seems as though it’s the parent who could use a time out…

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In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere tried to school Julia Roberts on social graces and proper etiquette. Now, everyone isn’t going to be sent to charm school on the dime of a wealthy businessman, but there are basic manners that some people like to act like they don’t have. Here are seven of those bad habits that need to be stopped.

ontd.buzznet.com

Touching A Woman’s Hair

Women are one of the most versatile creatures on earth and hair is often an expression of that. However, many take that admiration a little too far when they reach out to touch that hair without a heads up or expressed permission. People’s hands roam in so many different places during the course of the day; a woman’s hair doesn’t need to carry those germs. The unsolicited reach and touch is also crossing the boundaries of personal space.

For the most part, women have always shared dirty jokes between themselves in private but gone are the days when cursing wasn’t seen as ladylike.  With more women pushing the PC boundaries on TV, particularly reality shows, young women and girls are growing raunchier by the day, some say.

Regina Barreca, a feminist scholar and English professor at the University of Connecticut said there may be fewer filters nowadays.

“I think there is less a sense of fear of public shaming. We’ve got all kinds of other things that are permissible. In a way, those are hard-won rights that women have been able to sort of gain … where we’ve been able to speak up and be ambitious and be sexual and control parts of our lives.”

Regina says some women may view the right to be blunt and vulgar as a way of further pushing those boundaries, but when it comes to young girls, people aren’t so thrilled with this trend. A recent study by the Girl Scout Research Institute found that girls who watch reality TV expect and accept more conflict in their lives and typically focus more on outward appearance than inner beauty. Specifically:

• 72% of girls who watch reality TV say they spend a lot of time on their appearance, compared to 42% of non-viewers.
• 68% of girls who watch reality TV say that it’s in girls’ nature to be catty with one another, compared to 50% who don’t watch reality TV.
• 28% of girls who watch reality TV say that sometimes you have to be mean to get ahead, compared to 18% of the girls who don’t watch reality TV.

The problem with reality TV, says Jennifer Pozner, author of “Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV,” is that the shows are marketed to women as if they are true reflections of day-to-day life.

Reality TV is “not indicative of women in the culture. Narratives are crafted before they even find the people to cast. And then they cast with a very, very specific set of tropes and stereotypes in mind. You’ve got the Itchbay. The Slore. The good girl who cries all the time — the weepy waif. You’ve got the angry black woman,” Jennifer said.

“I see a big problem with ideas changing in ways that will encourage girls and women to think that they should expect and accept being constantly seen as competitive with other women and expect and accept if they’re not super skinny or they haven’t spent $10,000 on a pair of earrings (that) nobody will value them or that the way to get what they want is to be violent.”

That’s been the issue most black women have with Reality TV shows and that’s the influence Jennifer also says women need to pay more attention to as opposed to a simple increase in common cursing—after all we’re just using the same language that men use on a daily basis and no one bats an eye.

Do you curse regularly or do you still view it as unladylike? Have you noticed women have gotten raunchier in real life with the rise in reality TV shows?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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In your everyday moving and shaking, how many times do you see people do things they should know better not to do? If you were to tap them on the shoulder and say “COVER YOUR MOUTH” or “STOP SCRATCHING YOUR PRIVATES IN PUBLIC!” you would probably look uber bitchy, so instead, you just put your head down and give them a shake of it. We can all behave a little ratchet from time to time when it comes to having good manners, but on this list are just a few manners people are lacking that personally drive me up the wall. Whether they are happening to me or people around me, I can’t go for it, and you might catch me giving you the death face if you do these things and I’m around. Feel free to chime in below with the things you can’t stand.