The Title is the Best Thing About this Book ~ A Book Review of ‘Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank’ by Celia Rivenbark

It wasn’t as if I didn’t appreciate the humor in Celia Rivenbark’s book it was just that I found it not as funny as I first imagined (which might be a regional thing since I am a native Midwesterner) and the fact that ‘Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom’ was published in 2006 and dealt a lot with pop culture thus seemed like ancient history in some ways.  I found it at the discount area of Barnes & Nobel and after thumbing through it I thought it was worth six bucks.

                ‘Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank’ is a series of essays in which Rivenbark takes on such topics as a visit to Disney World, celebrity mothers, and most importantly preteen fashions that damns still little girls to slutdom before they ever have a chance to wake up drunk from the night before with eyes smeared with mascara.  Rivenbark is a thriving writer who has a blog, a column with the McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and has a new book ‘You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Mornin’ which was released on September 1^st.

I think that Rivenbank’s best work was when she wrote about going to Disney World and how apparently the House of the Mouse expects that mothers (and some fathers) prep for the visit months beforehand in order to reserve seating with various Disney characters at breakfast.  If you don’t call ninety days before your trip you might not be able to sit and feast with Cinderella or Snow White and if you wait too long you might even get to know how Pluto takes his pancakes. 

Where I felt the book fell down, which was no fault of Rivenbark’s but shows how quickly pop relevance lasts, was when she wrote about Britney Spears and her marriage to Kevin Federline (think back for a moment before her Circus tour, past her breakdown, yes even before Brit-Brit was flashing her lady flower with Cesarean scar).  Rivenbark also penned something about Denise Richards and for a moment I thought she was going to skewer Richards’ show ‘Denise Richards, Colon, It’s Complicated’ but it was just about how thin she became after giving birth. 

                Although I was all in with Rivenbark when she talked about children’s clothing being appropriate for a porn starlet, it wasn’t the type of humorous riff I haven’t heard before.  I suppose I was once again hoping for something more along the lines of dogging the participants in that show ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’, which features the next generation of Republican governors and Vegas strippers.  No such luck, primarily I suppose because that particular TLC show wasn’t on at the time the book was written – heck, Jon and Kate Gosselin were still married and Jon was yet unaware of the Ed Hardy t-shirts in his future. 

I think writing a good essay book such as this is difficult to pull off, especially one that deals with current pop culture events.  David Sedaris doesn’t always hit homeruns every time he is at bat either, but a lot of his essays are reflections of growing up in North Carolina, the same state Rivenbark resides.  As far as comparisons, Sedaris often writes about southern oppression (or oppression in general) whereas Rivenback loves her southern roots, which is where I suppose I got off track with the book beyond the pop culture stuff.  She makes references to her lousy cooking and her love for her child but annoyance with hyper active Type A mothers – all of which have no bearing on my life (I have no children and am a good cook).  I swear her lumpy gravy references made me think she was a modern day Minnie Pearl.  Also her references to men such as her husband almost seemed too ‘I Love Lucy’ to me – the whole husbands have to buy feminine products humor was sort of done in the late 80’s.  I would hope we have all evolved socially enough to understand if a man is buying tampons it isn’t for himself and besides the mass selection it should be no more difficult for him than women buying underwear for men. 

      Overall, if a female Dave Barry sounds appealing then you should check out Celia Rivenbark’s books, if not I’m sure between TLC and the E network there will be some mind numbing programming in which to take your mind off your troubles. 

Westerfield © 2009