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.

I think Kilbourne talks about how advertising has helped cause women to be viewed as objects, especially for sex, and how this leads to violence and women getting raped or harassed. I agree with her on the topic that ads have helped cause women to be viewed as objects. The ads show beautiful women with sexy bodies to attract men. I think that because of some ads that are sexual in nature, women are seen as objects that will allow men to have sex with them and will not say “no” to men, who think they are powerful and superior. But, at the same time, when other young girl or any other women look at the advertising, they will feel they want to follow what other people do, and it create a gender identity. The media persuade a stereotype and also women identity of how does a women look like, and what they should do in this society. By the way, all the men in the media are powerful, strong, violent, and it is can be look like the opposite of women. However, I do not think that advertisements that are sexual or suggestive are as big of a reason why these women experience getting harassed, raped, or abused as Kilbourne suggests. It could be a factor, but I think there are just some bad people in the world who want to feel powerful, and so the only way they can feel this way is to take advantage of women since women are generally weaker and not as aggressive. Another thing that Kilbourne mentioned, that I agree with, was that females are held responsible when sex goes wrong, but I think it is depend on their culture identity and their society, because sometime, the society don’t allow women to do anything, and also the culture has affect male and female’s theories, and the way of thinking. For instance, if a woman gets raped or assaulted, it’s seen as her fault for not staying out of a dark place, for wearing skimpy clothes, or for having a few drinks of alcohol. Also, if a woman gets pregnant, it is her fault for not making sure the man had a condom on or from obtaining from sex. It is never the man’s fault.

As I mention before, the media can create a stereotype and it is can affect people’s way of thinking, and also affect the social and emotional development of all the people, including the children in America. Child can identify them by watching and following what other people doing, because identity theorists is is play an important role of how a person’s self develops. If a child is watching some violent or sex video, they will have those images in their head, and they will think that they have to follow up, because other people are doing it. Therefore, if parents don’t do their job by educate their child how to looking things in a right way, that will affect the child’s development.

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.

Advertising is an extremely powerful force that helps shape the opinions of people on various topics. The most common issue that is used is the sexualization of women by portraying them in provacative images that sometimes have little or nothing to do with the product at all. It seems that more and more advertisements, especially clothing advertisements, do not even display the product they are advertising in the actual ads. The problem is that people have become so accustomed to seeing them that they are numb to such advertisements. Kilbourne’s arguments on the topic helped shed light on how often such advertisements are displayed and to the extent they go. I can honestly say I did not notice it as much before than I do now. Overall, I’d have to say Kilbourne’s arguments are very accurate. At first, I thought she seemed like a woman who might be overcritical of advertisements by analyzing every word, but she supported her facts with numerous examples of irrefutable evidence.

The advertisements you see everyday help shape the gender roles that our society believes in. According to her research, the average person sees about 3000 advertisements in one day. Advertisements usually show men in some form of power position and women shown in a pose that is all about physical beauty and how they want sex. If a child is exposed to the same advertisement over and over again, eventually he or she will get the impression that this is the way the world is like and how they are supposed to act. This is not a stretch of the imagination as children now are exposed to media everywhere, whether it is television, the internet, or the side of the bus they take to school everyday. They do not know any better and imitate what they see. This does not only relate to gender but race as well. In one picture, it shows a small white girl standing above a small black boy similar to the way men are usually standing over women in ads. Although subtle, such advertisements help hold society back in an age where equality is promoted. The fact that children are used in advertisements like this as well just helps reinforce these roles instead of thinking maybe only adults are like this.

I do not agree that advertisements mainly only affect women. By influencing the way women think of themselves, you also affect the way men think of women and therefore create even more pressure on the women to look beautiful and live up to higher standards. Also, Kilbourne did point out briefly that men are usually portrayed in a violent manner and usually they are right. Even in sexual scenes, they are shown as figures who are almost forcing the sex to happen and the woman wanting it that way. This is why some rape scenarios occur today. Men think the women really mean yes when they are saying no and continue about their business anyway. I think on both sides of the coin, there needs to be some major polishing before the mint is used to print.

Kilbourne’s argument provides a lot of insight to the messages being portrayed in the media and advertisement. In our world today these messages are most often over looked because of their subliminal nature. Other times we just don’t pay attention to them and how they can affect younger generations, especially the ones who are close to us. As we all now sex sells in the media and of course businesses will exploit that as much as possible, even to the point where it gets a little outrageous. An example of this would be the ad that used women’s breasts to sell fishing lines. Her argument had some exaggerations but overall it showed a lot of the possible ways that the media and advertisement can be destructive to women and children, and I agree with her because I believe that it has already taken an affect. One can only imagine what will happen in the future.

Kilbourne’s argument relates to ideas about gender and gender identity development because she highlighted what the advertisements were saying and how they can shape the way women think. One of the things she spoke about was people with eating disorders, who clearly won’t benefit from the messages that the ads are sending. Things that we see in the world create impressions on us affecting how we think and a lot of times who we are. When you think about it that is pretty much the purpose of the media and advertising. This causes a lot of potential problems with people’s identity as ads become more and more gender specific. Every so often society has a lot of noticeable trends that are obviously credited by things we observe. People might see these trends as normal waves  but when you portray that lighter is beautiful, skinnier is sexy, or masculinity/aggressiveness is the way to go, you turn harmful trends into movements that develop into future identities. The identities which often leads to self esteem issues.

I can see her argument highlighting issues with children and personality formation. It is fair to say that the younger you are the more impressionable you are, especially when it comes to developing your personality and identity. Children are one of the media’s biggest audiences so they are definitely being exposed to a lot of sensitive messages. Even worse is the fact that they most likely will take them out of context or may not have to mental capacity to understand what the media is trying to do. Having young girls believe that the only way to be strong women is to be more masculine can really throw off what it really means to be a woman period. Basically the main problem comes from a standardized idea of what seems to be the right way to live.

In watching Kilbourne’s speech concerning the effects of advertising on modern society, one cannot deny she raises many interesting points. By illustrating how pervasive advertising has become in modern media, she makes it clear how powerful it can be on our culture. It goes beyond selling products, and affects a society’s values, ideals, and concepts of sexual identity and normalcy. Kilbourne suggests that these effects are felt most intensely by young women.

 Modern advertising implies that flawless physical appearance is the most important. This establishes an unrealistic ideal, and any failure to reach this standard can be accompanied by guilt and dislike.  Adolescent girls are more and more likely to experience eating disorders, lowered self-esteem and scrutiny and judgment from peers. Any of these can certainly lead to long-term negative psychological effects, and the increased rates of teenage suicide in recent years reinforce the reality of this problem.

Kilbourne also demonstrates how sexuality is used to sell almost everything. Women are often portrayed as passive and vulnerable sex objects, and this objectification can have numerous negative consequences. Adolescent girls are receiving the message that their individual sexual identity should be defined in terms of submission, and that their happiness is contingent upon the presence of a man. This can clearly interfere with healthy psychological development, as there is now a pressure for young girls to grow up quickly. Developmental psychologists recognize that the process of “identification,” in which children try to behave like significant people in the environment is important to socialization. With the importance advertising places on sex, it is logical to assume young girls would try to match that behavior. This trend can be clearly seen in the hyper sexualized images of adolescence and the increased rate of teen pregnancy in America. Modern psychologists may point these traits to a gender schema, in which adolescent girls are processing what behaviors define their behavior femininity.

The objectification of females can be understood more clearly when compared with the images of males in advertising. While females are often displayed as obedient, silent and vulnerable beings, media tends to portray men as active, exploring and vocal entities. Kilbourne suggests that this subliminal message we receive is that women should be diminutive and their voices should remain unheard. This lack of strong females and feminine characteristics is troublesome because it can create negative stereotypes towards women, as well as wrongly influence young girl’s perceptions about their place in society.

Kilbourne is also very critical of the growing depictions of violence against women in advertising. Men’s sexuality is linked to violence, while women are not only objectified, but victimized, as well. By trivializing and eroticizing violence, a very dangerous model is set in which violence and battering is seen acceptable. Equally dangerous is the implication that women want to be forced to have sex. In no way can this be overlooked. Ultimately, when the media devalues women, it also devalues certain traits traditionally associated with women. If the media minimizes the importance of love, guanine emotion, intelligence and communication, society as a whole will suffer. It is through a fair representation of both masculine and feminine traits that empathy and knowledge can grow.

Although her main focus is on unjust representations of women, Kilbourne is critical of consumerism in our society. She urges members of society to view themselves as concerned citizens as opposed to consumers. An educated public, aware of advertising techniques, can initiate change. By changing the ads, it is possible to alter any negative attitudes associated with them. Psychologists must recognize the correlation between the objectification of women in media and the difficulties some adolescence experience both psychologically and socially. As our understanding of these processes increase, it is important to use it for the benefit of this and future generations.

I strongly agree with Jean Kilbourne’s argument because the ads she portrays on “killing us softly” videos show very disturbing images of men and women. I especially found the ads by big clothing companies targeting young teenagers to be vulgar. The mass media; television, books, magazines and games, are revealed as vicious when it comes to exposing young womens bodies for profit. The media seems to put forth a great deal of effort trying to exploit young adolescents of today. By displaying repulsive pornographic images of young females they have basically corrupted the identity of those young innocents. Kilbourne’s message is clear, that mass media and specifically firms such as Calvin Klein, Pepe Jeans and others are completely destroying young men and womens identities and their reputations by revealing ads on them globally. I personally believe that youths should be taught complete sex education at the age of 10 – 12 so that when they reach adulthood they will understand the ways of life and will have freely chosen their path.

According to the discussion in class and the textbook, I think gender and gender identity development plays an important role in people’s lives. First of all, gender is very much related to the videos on ‘killing us softly”. It was mostly pointed toward females  because females have more choices to sell their looks in front of the camera. It was more like a trend to them or a new fashion at the time. But also in one of the videos, we notice that even young boys were out in the open on the front page covers of the CK magazine with other little girls at the age of 7 to 10 exposing themselves. So what happens to the gender identity? Females are more targeted by the media because of their sexual prowess when it comes to selling clothing. Society believes that if they dress with the same clothes as the models they too will be beautiful. Kilbourne mentions that in the real world the male physical attraction isn’t judged as often females. Females seem to be judged on their looks and their physical body beauty. This is how it all assembles, kids growing up are exposed to the media at a young age, they become models at young ages.  So the media has caught the attention of children and it has been ingrained in them that the kids on ads are normal and it is the way of living that they want. The media that uses children and young adolescents in their ad campaigns care only about the money they will earn from it, not about the identity of so many children being ruined.

When people hear “gender” and “sex” they often categorize the two things as the same. When in fact, sex is biological, and gender is socially constructed.

Sex is: male or female.

Gender is: girl, boy, woman, man, and is basically what society ends up piling on top of sex.

Gender-neutral parenting has been a recent trend. That is when parents do not impose social constructions of frilly dresses for baby girls, or blue clothes for boys. I first heard of this when I heard of a fictional story of a psychological experiment that a young couple took raising a child and never disclosing the sex of the child for a long time of his/her child-life. They did this by dressing the child gender-neutrally (in casual neutral toned clothing), maintaining a gender-neutral name, and never saying “he” or “she” in conversations.
Gender-neutral parenting however isn’t this absurd, although it seems like a political statement on behalf of the parent, it is strange to me. I believe I understand the perspective, as not to impose rights or wrongs on what their kid’s gender should or should not do. For instance, the J. Crew ad that has the mother painting the kids nails (something that Gwenth Stefani a celebrity advocate of gender-neutral parenting also does). Is it that controversial if the child wants to have his nails painted? It is based under a social construction that we think a boy shouldn’t paint their nails, for the fear of that makes them more feminine, or even gay. But, what about Celine Dion, her son looked like a girl for a while (he had his hair grown out mid-chest), was that a statement of gender neutrality?

When I asked a few people about gender neutrality, one person (a mother of two) said to a certain age a gender neutral parenting style can be harmless, and it is fine to do within the privacy of a personal home, there is no need to publicize if you are putting nail polish on your son etc. (This to me has an air of un-comfortableness to it). Another friend of mine, a single male said that he thinks the whole concept is kind of weird and gender roles should be followed to maintain order.

According to an article written by Niharika Mandhana called Boys will be boys, unless they’re girls, “So many assumptions about gender roles are just entrenched in our culture,” and “Being gender neutral encourages people to pause and think about their perceptions.” I think this statement corresponds with what Kilbourne speaks about in her speech killing me softly. Personally I think it is highly impossible to go completely gender neutral and think some parents are doing this just to make a statement, although respectable. I found it intriguing that Marianne Mullen started Polkadot Patch, an online boutique that specializes in gender-neutral clothing, all because Mullen’s friends were “stuck” buying her a baby shower gift since the sex of the baby wasn’t disclosed.

Gender-neutral parenting just seems like another way to capitalize on a market or publicity for celebrity parents/ attention for regular parents, and to conservatisms a form of hippy- parenting. Nonetheless, parents do what you need to do to raise your “normal” children. I don’t mind nail polish being limited to just girls but heck that’s what I am used to.

             Advertisement is a powerful force that has influence over society and has encapsulated the rigid roles of an exaggerated normality with the sole purpose of drawing attention. Through the eyes of a feminist, I can understand the position Kilbourne is taking regarding the derogatory messages that advertisement portrays about femininity. The media does show images of ideal beauty which young girls strive to reach by spending their time, energy and money. Their failure to achieve this state is inevitable. The perception of woman they have is diluted by a predisposed emphasis on specific gender roles. Some controversial ads are inappropriate; however they are often taken out of proportion. I do agree that certain perceptions of woman in the media can have negative repercussion on the self-esteem of woman; however society wants and needs ideal images to influence their decisions. Advertisement agencies should not be punished for trying to sell their products. If showing sexually explicit images leads to an increase in sale, it would be unreasonable to stop.  

             According to social learning theory, experiences of imitation and reinforcement lead to the development of children’s identity. If children see advertisement where positive effects of people, of the same sex, being young, thin, white beautiful, well groomed etc. then they try model that lifestyle. By building one’s self-efficacy, however, people can overcome obstacles in their lives. Sociocultural theorists believe in the idea that “though others, [people] become themselves.” They would respond to the video that advertisement does have an impact on the identity of individuals, and by portraying negative aspirations of normalcy; it can have a detrimental effect on children’s self-evaluation. Culturalists would view gender role as whatever society accepts as their norm. Specific gender roles are recognized and deviations of that role are usually looked down upon. Advertisements just illustrate and emphasize an already established gender role.

            The development of one’s gender identity is closely related to social interactions and self-evaluations. At a young age, children use categorical identification in order to describe themselves. They describe themselves with basic attributions as well as the things they like. As they ages, they begin to relate their identity with that of others. Assessing themselves more critically, children start to compare themselves with people they know. According to Erikson’s Stage Theory, once an individual reaches adolescence; they are faced with the difficulty of finding their identity. While being surrounded by advertisement all around them, confusion and self-hatred can be consuming. The media portrays a façade of an exaggerated reality and adolescents are forced to compare their own ability and appearance with it. As emphasized by Kilbourne, women are more affect by advertisement because they are often construed in a sexual way. Unless society breaks through the established gender roles, advertisement will not change their tactics.

I thought Kilbourne’s speech was very well thought out and supported by substantial evidence. At first I thought her claims were outrageous and speculative. For instance, she kept saying that women were portrayed as passive and in the background. I thought she was selecting advertisements that supported her claim and it took me a few seconds before her argument sunk in. As a woman, I am outraged by the portrayal of women sexually but I never noticed how they were also portrayed as passive, for some reason I couldn’t grasp that argument until supporting evidence was shown. In fact, some of the ads that she showed were so blatantly encouraging women’s passiveness to the extent that it literally had words to support the claim. I believe as I was watching Kilbourne’s argument years of media influence and brainwash were both surfacing and unraveling. She drives home the idea of how we should be conscious of advertisements and change them / our attitude toward them; otherwise we would not be able to live freely. I loved how her argument dug to the deeper issue of feelings which are polarized and set on two extremes: masculine and feminine; and how ultimately we have gender-ized our emotions so that the more “feminine” emotions such as sensitivity and compassion were not welcomed (because they are seen as weak). Her illustrative metaphors and likening media to mainstream pornography support how critical it is to pay attention to this issue.

According to the text, media refers to mass communication, whether it is newspapers, magazines, Internet. We are immersed in media. The text mentions how television, the most exposed form of media for children, communicates information and sways our opinion, it even moves us emotionally. Kilbourne also mentions about two to three full years of our lives equal the amount of advertisements an individual has seen, roughly 3000 a day. Therefore, contributing to the fact that we are engrained in what media portrays as our culture, and have come to terms with projecting those identities portrayed to men and women around us; holding the media standards as our own, or creating rigid gender schemas (ie: how a woman should look, how a man should feel and so forth).

This relates to the idea of gender concepts and identity because kids are so saturated by the media that they mimic what they see. Often times children act on what the gender descriptions imposed on them are rather than orienting it based on interest. For instance, in the video seen in class boys and girls had their own activities they were interested in, boys enjoyed more active and physical games where as girls had participate in games that were more to themselves. Yet, the boys at the boy’s school played a hand game that would typically be considered feminine if they were in a co-ed environment. This example shows how environments have a huge impact on the characteristics displayed by individuals, if people adhered to Kilbourne’s thesis (about changing how we perceive advertisements staying away from gender polarization) things would look different, men and women would be able to live more freely rather than boxing actions and emotions to two rigid concepts.