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It's that time of year again: The time when the media embraces that late-December chestnut, the year-end list. Everything from movies and books and record albums to celebrity cameos and fashion photos gets its own "best of" list. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone makes a "best of 'best of' lists" for 2011. But somehow Piper Weiss of Yahoo! Shine has managed to find a fresh "year-end" list angle, coming up with a list parents really owe it to themselves to read: "The Year in Bans." Yup, she's putting the X in Xmas with a list of things that had a "great big X" in them in 2011.
"It's been a busy year for naysayers. Everyone's got an opinion they're prepared to enforce, especially when it comes to kids," Weiss writes, noting that most of the year's most outrageous bans have had to do with child-rearing. "Parents have been given an earful by the proverbial 'village' as to how their kids should dress, consume, and act in public. Or rather how they shouldn't."
There was the Maryland hospital that banned the snapping of baby photos within five minutes of a baby's birth. "The hospital explained that family photographers were causing risky distractions, though those in opposition to the policy believed it was put in place to avoid malpractice lawsuits," Weiss notes.
There were schools that banned lunches brought from home (cafeteria food was healthier, administrators said), baggy pants, skinny jeans, "unnatural" hair color and "bold" makeup, service dogs, cheerleader uniforms, and saying "bless you" after a sneeze (yeah, seriously).
And there were airlines and restaurants and hotels and movie theaters that banned babies outright. (Thanks for setting the trend, Malaysia Airlines.)
Some baby names were banned, too! (If you want to name your baby Lucifer, don't give birth in New Zealand.)
We parents know a lot about saying "no," but Weiss's list proves that we may rarely have heard it ourselves as often as we did in 2011.
Do you think the world took banning things a little too far in 2011?
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