Small children have something special about them that they use to teach, “big kids” about society. I was working in a nursery this week with 1-2 year olds and they wanted to play with the classic toy, Mr. Potato head. When I was playing with the children I noticed something distinctive about the way that they were playing, THEIR Mr. Potato heads did not have perfect features. The toys would consist of something along the lines of having two eyes, one where the eyes typically go and one where the nose should go, one long arm and one short arm, and the hat and shoes did not match. With these toddlers they were not trying to make the perfect body to fit societies view of beauty.
If this toy was given to an age a little bit older they most likely would have tried to achieve the “perfect Mr. Potato head” that he is typically advertised as. At what age does society try to make the perfect ideals achievable? These young kids don’t care if whoever is watching them isn’t “beautiful, thin, or cool” by societies standards. If these kids don’t care, why does it all change at a certain point in life? Socially, the world would be in a different place if we stopped believing stereotypes about “ugly people” and started seeing them for who they are inwardly, not outwardly.
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