little consumers

I'm reading Born to Buy (Juliet B. Schor) about the mass marketing of products to children. It's not that it's so incredibly shocking but it's opening my eyes a little wider to smaller details and trends. It's highly relevant to me because my 16-month old is already recognizing various cartoon characters and Ivy (3) is very concerned about things being "girlish" enough for her (that makes my skin crawl). The kids do obviously watch some tv, but not hours and hours and not every day. In the CBC kids programming there is about a 5 second spot that says "brought to you by xxx" and Ivy picked up on that yesterday. I can imagine the chaos if there were toy commercials on. It's all pretty disturbing and makes we aware how steeped I am in this culture, nevermind the little ones just growing into it.