Retailers who spit in the eye of families this Thanksgiving have been waging a bigger war against workers for much longer than just this holiday season.

Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Macy's, Michael's, Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Toys R Us and many shopping malls will open as early as 6 p.m. Thursday. I'll bet many more follow suit next year as retailers try to get a jump on the competition during this critical sales period.

Some of us remember when Macy's was known for a parade on Thanksgiving rather than asking its employees to ditch their families on a national holiday to stand behind a register all night. My mother has worked in retail for more than a decade, since before Federated Department Stores bought the May Company and the Red Apple Sales of Foley's became the One Day Sales of Macy's. She has worked every Black Friday, of course, despite long hours of Sultan family gluttony and shenanigans the day before.

She said she was spared the Thanksgiving shift because many seasonal, part-time and younger workers volunteered for the overtime work.

At least on Thanksgiving, many of these workers will earn a living wage.

There are low-wage workers in other industries who have always had to work on Thanksgiving. If you fill up your car at a gas station, grab a prescription at a drug store or watch a movie at the theater, someone is at the register to take care of business.

It's easier to get upset about an assault on what has become a symbol of The Family Meal than the larger issue of what happens to families the remaining 364 days of the year.

Consider the Canton, Ohio Wal-Mart holding a food drive among its low-wage workers for their even worse-off co-workers.

"Please donate food items here so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner," read a sign next to several bins set out for donations.

Wal-Mart's CEO, Mike Duke, makes $20.7 million a year while many of his workers rely on government subsidies -- provided by taxpayers by way of programs such as food stamps and Medicaid -- because it's nearly impossible for a family to meet its basic needs on the money from a full-time, minimum-wage job.

If this doesn't strike us as a broken model, then shame on us.

It's disingenuous to blame consumers for taking extreme measures to find a deal (after all, the stores wouldn't open if no one shopped that day, one line of justification goes) when it's harder to afford to buy goods for so many working families.

"... Corporate America as a whole has been so successful in squeezing the labor share of national income lower and lower that it's become a substantial constraint to businesses' ability to sell things to people," writes Matthew Yglesias, business and economics writer for Slate.

Shoppers willing to line up outside a big-box retailer at midnight are not to blame because they want (or need) to stay within a budget during the holidays.

Put the blame where it belongs: on our modern-day Scrooges, the top-level executives, the board members who reward themselves and their ilk with million-dollar bonuses, whose salaries are more than 300 times the average worker's. The ones who have seen their real income skyrocket while the rest of us have seen wages flatten or decline for years. And on the tight concentration of enormous wealth at the very top levels of income.

Today's Ebenezers could care less about holidays past, present or future. How many would be willing to do the work of one of their low-wage employees for one week and see how far that weekly pay stretches?

Let's remember this holiday season as the one when corporate America dropped the charade and proudly declared that profits trump family.

Let's make a play date for two rogue business executives.

Judging by their ideas about who should be buying their companies' clothes, they are bound to be besties.

Chip Wilson, co-founder of Lululemon Athletica, maker of $98 yoga pants for thighs that don't touch, meet Michael Jeffries, chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, maker of $30 black lace "bralettes" for trendy tweens and teens.

Wilson surprised a few potential customers with his recent remarks about the company's unintentionally see-through yoga pants and problematic fabric: "Some women's bodies just don't work for (our pants)," Wilson said to Bloomberg TV anchor Trish Regan. "It's about the rubbing through the thighs," Wilson said, and "how much pressure is there."

You've ruled out the female population with thighs that touch, Wilson, but you may have hit upon the exact demographic Jeffries is courting!

Jeffries admitted in a 2006 Salon interview that the brand goes after "cool" kids -- attractive and slim -- to wear their clothes, and shuns the rest: "A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely," he said.

That's putting an awful lot of stock in popular waifs, guys. And the message to girls is profoundly dangerous. Numerous news reports have documented the efforts of some girls and women wanting to achieve a "thigh gap," a space between your legs when you are standing. Pictures of underweight celebrities sporting this gap or jutting hipbones are used as "thinspiration" on message boards and Tumblrs.

I have a difficult time imagining how images associated with starving or seriously ill people can be sexy. But there is a vulnerable population for whom body image has become so warped, this is an ideal.

Both these executives can feel proud of themselves for promoting the same dangerous and unhealthy message.  

Thankfully, the skinnier market share has slimmed their stock prices. Abercrombie reported earlier this month a double-digit drop in quarterly comparable store sales and more than halved its full-year, adjusted profit forecast. Maybe there's room for Lulu to squeeze itself into that profit gap, after all. But the once red-hot, premium-priced yoga apparel has also cooled in light of the company's recall of nearly a quarter of its black Luon yoga pants. The stock price has fallen more than 8 percent in the past month.

It's questionable the extent to which CEO foot-in-mouth disease affects the bottom line. But it doesn't take an official boycott to tarnish a brand. A continuous drip of offensive and absurd comments from the leaders of a company can be enough to change that intangible perception of "exclusive" to "ew" in consumers' minds.

And as parents who care about the way companies market to our children, we can embrace the power of our pocketbooks.

Wilson's latest remarks may have further alienated a core constituency.

DeAnna Shires, a yoga instructor in the Dallas area, used to partner with the local Lulu store when it opened in her area in 2008. The studio she then owned served a diverse population, with many larger clients and those with injuries, she said.

"I was told from someone within (Lulu) that they didn't think my clientele was who they were looking for," she said. Shires stopped buying their clothes after that, and recently started speaking out for others in the yoga community to quit the brand, as well.

"If you are teaching acceptance and community ... are you OK with finding another pair of pants that are more in line with what you're teaching?" she said.

Oh, those pesky yogis with their "yoga values" and "community building," blah blah blah.

Ignore her, guys.

You carry on with your unabashed marketing to the "right" body type in the "right" crowd.

Jeffries, after all, made no apologies when his stores carried thong underwear with "eye candy" written across them for 10-year-old girls.

Not to be outdone, Wilson has blogged that "In the early 1970s, 'the pill' came into being ... Women's lives changed immediately. Men's lives didn't change however and they continued to search for a stay-at-home wife like their mothers. Men did not know how to relate to the new female. Thus came the era of divorces."

That's some interesting marketing.

Do let us know how you get along. We can't imagine a pair more deserving of one another.

When a student fires shots in a school or commits suicide, the search for a bully is close behind.

Nearly everyone who has attended a school can recall someone being teased or picked on, but technology now gives bullies a way to inflict their torment into every part of a victim's personal life beyond the schoolyard.

It's as if the person who calls you names and makes fun of you at school is able to to follow you home, harassing you through texts and continuing to humiliate you in front of your peers on social networks. There are no longer any safe spaces to escape the threat of a determined and technologically armed mean girl or ruthless teen.

There isn't longitudinal data to answer the question of whether bullying is more pervasive now than it was in previous generations. But when it happens, it can be more relentless than before, and the awareness of the severity of damage that bullies can inflict has changed.

Stories like this are more often reported than when we were children:

Last month, seventh-grader Jose Reyes of Sparks, Nev. shot and injured two student and killed a teacher before killing himself. His parents said he had been teased about a speech problem. Students who knew him reportedly said sometimes he would cry and say people were calling him names, according to the L.A. Times. The paper reported that one witness to the shootings recalled Jose saying, "You guys ruined my life, so I'm going to ruin yours."

In September, 12-year-old Rebecca Ann Sedwick of Winter Haven, Fla. committed suicide after she was harassed in person and online by two other girls. The girls, ages 14 and 12, have since been charged with aggravated stalking.

In October, Jordan Lewis, 15, a sophomore at Carterville High School in Illinois, shot himself in the chest and left behind a note, which according to his father, said: "Bullying has caused me to do this. Those of you know who you are."

Nearly one-third of all school-age children are bullied every year, according to PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center. The vast majority find ways to cope, regardless of what emotional or physical scars are left behind. But that statistic is still an indictment.

Several anti-bullying organizations cite the statistic that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75 percent of school shooting incidents. Beyond the risk for violence and self-harm, students who are bullied are more likely to miss school or drop out altogether. Those who bully other children are more likely to have criminal records and a higher suicide risk as adults.

So, how can schools and families more effectively address the issue? After all, there will always be some form of social hierarchies and cliques in institutional settings like schools, prisons and corporations.

First of all, any adult should take reports of bullying seriously. Don't tell a victim to "just ignore it." Most students hide their troubles when they are being bullied, so if a child speaks up, listen and take action.

Keep an eye on your kids' digital worlds. Some school districts have resorted to hiring companies to monitor students' online activities and look for public threats and harassment. While this may invoke fears of Big Brother, students must be held accountable if they are cyberbullying a peer outside of school hours.

Schools should also be careful about the unintended consequences of some anti-bullying videos or programs. Brad Lewis, father of Jordan who committed suicide, has spoken out about an anti-bullying video shown at his son's school shortly before his death. It depicted a bullying victim's suicide, and he feels it may have influenced Jordan's actions.

Dr. Christine Moutier, medical director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, says she absolutely agrees that this is a valid concern. Research and studies have documented the phenomenon of suicide contagion.

"What we've proposed is that rather (than) highlight the stories that show the tragic and negative outcomes, which begin to link suicides and bullying ... choose people and films that model positive outcomes," she said. "It can absolutely be detrimental for a student who is watching that and is already vulnerable and being bullied. We are very worried that it creates added risk."

One of the most important messages we parents can share with our children is the power of the bystander: More than half of bullying situations stop when a peer intervenes.