Okay, now that that’s over with, let’s get to the point of this discussion. Some of you may remember about 2 years ago a story broke of a young Yemen girl who wanted to divorce her husband. Sounds normal enough until you dig deeper and see that the young girl was only 10 years old at the time and that her husband was more than 4 times her senior. As it turns out, Nujood Ali was sold into marriage by her impoverished father who could no longer afford to keep her in the family. He sold her to a man under the premise that he not try anything sexual with her until she reached puberty. Not surprisinginly, the man did not keep his promise to Nujood’s father and soon he was forcing her to have sex and sleep with him even when she begged not to.

In the wake of her divorce hearings, Nujood was honored and plastered all over the TV screens and the media. She was honored as a Woman of the Year in 2008 by Glamour magainze and interviewed by countless numbers of media outlets.

Two years later however, Nujood is not attending the private school that foreign benefactors are paying for and she is not doing much of anything. Instead, she’s refusing to see a psychiatrist and staying very, very angry at the whole situation.

Don’t get me wrong, this young girl has every right to be mad. What angers me is that instead of quietly getting this girl help behind the scenes, society chose to exploit her and put her story on as many cover pages as possible. Something that instead of helping, seems to only have hurt the child.  Sure, she’s no longer married to a man four times her senior, but her life is forever changed and she’s changed. She claims she can’t go to school because every where she goes she’s taunted and treated badly. She claims she’s angry because she can’t live a normal life. This story and so many other stories of children who are abused and then exploited absolutely breaks my heart.

At what point do we stop hurting those we’re trying to help and start helping? Nujood Ali didn’t need to be a Woman of the Year to get a divorce. And she didn’t need to do 1,000 TV interviews.  She needed some quiet saviors to come in and help and not ask for recognition of their good deeds. We all want the pat on the back that lets us know someone else thinks we did the right thing, but in the end, what message are we sending to people like Nujood Ali and others who end up in her situation and then are forgotten when the cameras are off?

So, I’m watching TV with the wife. Everything is going just fine, I had a pretty good day at work and I have very little to complain about. The commercials start and I’m still doing well. Car ad, kitchen cleaner, weed killer, and I’m copasetic. Then comes the Toaster Strudel commercial. I watch it silently, in awe. When it’s over, I look over at my wife and say “You know what??” She looks at me politely. “Fuck Toaster Strudel!!”

Now, understand, this outburst was not directed at my lovely wife Sarah in any way. She just happened to be the only one present at my declaration to the world. And why the vulgarity you might ask? My reply would be that my vulgarity is nothing compared to Toaster Strudel’s cold and relentless attacks on the Pop Tart. I’m not really sure if there is a good comparison to how TS has dragged its breakfast pastry companion through the mud. We are talking about more than a decade of Pop Tart hate spreading.

Remember the commercial where the kid hid his Pop Tarts in his locker out of embarrassment. Its sad really, when you think about it. What kind of emotional turmoil are you going through that you would hide your breakfast. What about the one where the two kids are comparing the breakfast pastries their parents had purchased for them. The kid with the strudel says something like, “I know my parents love me because they bought me this sexy pastry”. Then Pop Tart kid says, “I hate my life. I like eating Pop Tarts and dirt”.

All I’m saying is that Toaster Strudel needs to lay off the Pop Tart bashing. Base their advertising on the good qualities of their own product. Maybe then, they won’t look like a bunch of assholes. And maybe they’ll sell a few more Strudels. Not to me, of course. I hate them.