Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Over the years and across the globe, advertising has not only emptied our pockets but has altered the way we view and value gender.  While the main purpose and outcome of sexual and gender related marketing is to trigger a want in the general public’s mind for a specific product, adverse affects are subconsciously obtained.  Kilbourne argues that in advertisements and the media, human qualities are divided up, polarized, and labeled masculine and feminine, resulting in a fabrication of understandings of the impressionable public.

Kilbourne’s argument is entirely valid in my opinion.  I believe that aside from selling products, advertisements tell people who they are according to their gender, and also, who they should be which is usually physically and mentally unreachable, immoral, and inhumane.  I feel that our culture has reached a sticking point in which we cannot avoid a predominant “sex sells” essence in the media.  In our capitalist economy, corporations are constantly competing for numbers, and with that in mind, continue to use a marketing mechanism that has been proven effective for years, and this mechanism has trickled down to all forms of media.   As more viewers are exposed to these mechanisms, they deem it sensible, causing these explicit borders to continually be pushed further away.

Ads aggressively influence individuals who to be; masculinity is continually linked with violence and rage, and femininity is linked with vulnerability, empathy, and passion.  Undoubtedly, advertisements and the media place both genders in separate, distinguished roles.  Kilbourne’s arguments relate with various ideas of the Social Learning, Cultural, and Cognitive theories regarding gender and gender identity development.  The view of the cultural theory includes the process of mediation, in which gender roles of adolescence occurrence are organized, mediated by cultural conceptions and stereotypes.  Ultimately, these stereotypes of gender emerge through the bombardment of advertisements to young impressionable individuals that relay various sexist attitudes regarding the “correct” role each gender must follow to fit into society.  The process of gender schemas is categorized under the views of Cognitive and Social Learning theories, and explains that through observation of these sexist advertisements, children form concepts that are used to process gender relevant information with results in imitation.  The Social Learning Theory goes onto state that children will imitate sex-typed behaviors, such as the ones portrayed in sexist ads, if rewarded.  Kilbourne’s argument also related to ideas about children and the media.  Children are virtually inescapable from exposure to the media for the greater length of an average day, whether it is on the back of their cereal box in the morning, on the way to and from school, or watching cartoons at days end.  It is believed that gender socialization processes are influenced by how the content of the media affects children’s behavior and stereotypes of how each gender should act to be part of society.  In media, the value of women is often lessened in a sexist matter and many fear that this depiction of women will translate over into society.  In addition, the media often portrays males as anger driven individuals who must always ignore and hide emotions.  Kilbourne goes onto state that men and women are driven to have inauthentic lives because the media states that both sexes can have only one set of qualities.  Males and females end up being half or less of their actual potential and this is dehumanizing.