Oh, New York City. Today I ventured into a lovely local bookstore, thinking I might pick up some Zoe nap reading. I was glancing over the magazine section (I was also considering buying a Vogue because it featured an interview with Marisa Mayer) when I found Zoe sitting on the floor leafing through a very colorfull magazine with artfully photographed, but also very naked, people. The reason I even noticed was because she pointed at a particular place on a particular girl and said "mommy also have that one". Mommy indeed also has such one, as have all other women. I could have panicked and yanked the magazine out of her hands but I decided to take the situation with my head held high. I know there is a cultural difference here and my Scandinavian background definitely colored my approach here but I have also given these kind of things a lot of thought because no matter how much you want to shield your children from adult images (and I'm using the word adult to include images that most often need an adult person's interpretation), they will pop up here and there. Besides, these images needed an adult's interpretation to make anything more out of these unclothed people. Which is all they were to Zoe. So as she continued looking through them she asked about completely different things than what I had expected. Why was she dressed like that? Why was the picture orange striped? Was that a boy? To her, nakedness is still normal and I think it is very important to make sure she continue to think that for a long long time.
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