Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

From a very young age, girls grow to learn that we must spend a great deal of time on how we look. Many women these days try so hard to lose weight and to look good for the world. It is no wonder that so many women these days suffer from eating disorders. But where in the world did women get these standards on how to look and how to live our lives? Where does this image of thinness come from? Kilbourne strongly believes that the root of all this disaster comes from the media, from advertisements. Advertisements are what we all see daily. We may pass by an advertisement and unconsciously just pass by an ad thinking nothing of it. No matter how much we may deny it, advertising does make a great impact on how women in our society should look and how they should be treated. These advertisements are in a way a guideline on how we should look in order to be accepted in our society. I agree very much with everything Kilbourne argues in her videos. She brings up many strong points on how women are viewed today in our society. She made many points that stood out to me. “What’s most important about women is how we look” I think that is a lie when a man says to a woman that personality matters the most for him and that personality is the first thing that a man looks at because in reality, we all know that looks and the body type of a woman is what a man looks at first. She also mentions how women are only acceptable only if we are carefully polished, which is very true no matter how much men may deny this.

In my opinion I feel like the media and our culture is also a reason why childhood in our culture is slowly disappearing. At a very young age, girls are pressured to look like how the models in magazines look. This is the start of a very disastrous problem. One question that I had while watching “Raising Cain” was “how did these little boys learn to be so aggressive and tough at such a young age?” However after watching the video Kilbourne makes it clear that there is only one answer to this and that answer is: the media. Kilbourne mentions and shows ads on different Calvin Klein products. Many of the models of these products were children. The children of these ads were portrayed in a particular way. Boys would be portrayed as being tough and strong while the girls would be shown as being passive and happy. They were even positioned n a way that showed this. The little boy was shown to be looking down at the little girl who was smiling and had a passive look on her face. It is evident that they purposely made it so that the little boy looks more dominant, bigger, and taller than the little girl. Even when we were born girls were handed dolls, barbies, plastic kitchen toys and more to play with. On the other hand, boys were given toy cars, baseballs, footballs, basketballs and other toys to play with. See the difference? We teach children to behave and act a certain way. Our culture, the environment we live in is the core reason for why our children are growing up this way. It is inevitable.