Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Kilbourne discusses alot of  the major issues that have affected  women for decades that never seem to get solved. I found this video very interesting because it showed the increase and the importance that companies place in making advertisements that influence certain societal stigmas. Before I start I was watching a television show the other day, though I can’t recall the name it involved an experiment that measured the aggression of women and men by setting up scales attached to telephone receivers to mark the force used to hang up the phone after different types of coversational confrontations. At the end of the experiment it suggested that women in many cases can be even more aggressive than men especially in situations where their actual body is not being threatened, like over the phone, but in general both men an women had equal amounts of aggression. I thought this finding was interesting because in the Raising Cain video though the boys told violent stories as children, as infants they were more emotionally attached to their mothers especially when she did not show them any attention. In  both these arguments the  societal stigma that boys and men are rougher do not suffice,  to take it a step farther, even if we look at bullying in schools alot of the harshest bullies are girls which supports the  argument that gender roles are perpetuated in society. In class we discussed Butler and the argument presented about “Performing Gender” and how that is a societal construct. Society does distinguish the extremes of Male and Female behavior where people just act according to what these roles dictate and this is heavily influenced by advertisements.

In the ad’s that Kilbourne shows, women are objectified and used as pallets to appeal to male fantasies. The women are often presented as perfect human beings who should focus on pleasing their men/retaining pefect bodies and not being seen not heard. They discussed domestic violence and body image which are major issues that affect even younger children. Young boys and girls understand from advertisemnts and especially society that being male is only about dominance and aggression which in my opinion leads to a society full of domestic abusers, but that is a next argument. Kilbourne’s arguments relates to gender and gender identity because if a little boy, recognizes that people treat him differently because he may not be as rough as the other boys for example, people may start to question his gender which could cause a a problem for him in development. Even in the textbook it discusses the I- self and the me-self. I think that for both boys and girls their I-selves are suppressed because society already starts to force certain behaviors on them from infancy.  Society, in relation to Kilbourne does not allow for multiple Me-selves, it is rigid and for those who do not conform, gender identity can be really hard to decifer because everyone has multiple layers to their personalities. Boys are conditioned to be one way, rough, and society says that anything other than that is being weak and so the emotions are suppressed and they become “the man” instead of becoming “an individual man.”

Children as always are influenced by the media but I think that because children learn about the world by watching their care takers they fall subject to their parents own advertisment conditioning. Most of the time the parents are conditioned with what they should do if they have a boy child or a girl child so once that child is born it is no longer about what makes the child happy I think it becomes more about making sure that the child is “normal.” Which means if its a boy, he will most likely learn to chase girls, and play football and if it’s a girl she will play dress-up and house. The media controls us and we in turn become parents and expose our children to the same societal stigmas without even noticing it because it a learned behavior that assimilation is best for everyone. I also think that if everyone wasn’t so concerned about fitting into society, advertisements would not be successful, companies know that people have a need to be wanted to they manipulate images and messages to show the best ways to get  accepted for both men and women and this message is usually very misleading.