Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Kilbourne’s argument is very relevant in today’s society where women are constantly being sold in the advertisement world.  Women are faced with constant scrutiny by others, especially the entertainment world, about their bodies and self-image.  From the time of birth girls are always expected to be passive while boys are encouraged to “give ‘em hell.”  By the time a girl reaches adolescents physical perfection is drilled into her mind by the thousands of commercials the average person is confronted with in a day.  The explanation for why one in five women have an eating disorder is one that is obvious and has been obvious for years but just has been overlooked because a skinny girl brings in more revenue than an overweight woman that is portrayed as unattractive. 

Kilbourne explains that only five percent of women genetically have the body of a model and even those five percent may have eating disorders because of the pressure of the modeling industry is so cutthroat.  A woman is acceptable is she is young, thin, white, beautiful, carefully groomed and polished and any deviation from this is met by contempt and hostility.  Belittling women in ads had caused traumatic personal effects such as eating disorders, teen pregnancy, and accepting abuse as normal.  Even though women are the ones that are suffering the most, the structure of advertisement won’t change because the audiences are used to this womanly stereotype. 

The concepts that Kilbourne examine in “Killing us softly” about femininity and masculinity is congruent to what our texts portrays about gender and gender development.  Women are supposed to be soft, motherly, innocent individuals while men are taught and expected to be hard, emotionless, aggressive creatures.  Kilbourne mentions that women are expected to be innocent and sexy, virginal and experienced all at the same time.  This is a great summary for what is taught as gender development to a girl.  Children that are taught these stereotypical gender roles grow up to be adults that expect these stereotypes to stick and this is normal to them so when a man sees a woman being portrayed as a sex object its normal to him and its normal for women to believe men have power and control over many things in life.  People are very in tuned to the media and look to it for the newest trends and style.  Without the media many people will be lost because people would be forced to be their individual selves and not followers of the minority of fashion designers.       

Children are being molded by our media and all the advertisements they are exposed to on a daily basis is alarming.  Children are infamous for modeling people they find attractive and look up to so when the mass media constantly use a body type that is impossible to get by the average person it sets a lot of children up for disappointment and in some cases personal hatred.  The advertisement companies should really think about the false images they are selling.

I agree with her argument about how the media and society downgrade women in their advertisements and in turn, affects the way women act and view themselves. It is a popular tactic in marketing called “Sex Sells.” It is extremely controversial and not always ethical, but it does work. So why does sex sell? It is because you want to be that person in the advertisement that you see. The sexual appeal given off by the ad or commercial triggers a biological and emotional reaction, which is generally the point of an ad. They are created so it creates an emotional bond with the consumer and keeps their interest. The ad is generally of fit people whom the majority of the population considers ‘beautiful.’ They are healthy, toned and good looking individuals. “The Boston Medical Center indicates that approximately 45 million Americans diet each year and spend $33 billion on weight-loss products in their pursuit of a trimmer, fitter body. If the average person just looks at the products that they buy, aren’t the products meant to show off something about themselves? By showing off, they are trying to attract the opposite sex which all leads to the primitive notion of procreation. The media is basically telling us how to dress, how to behave, and what is considered ‘in’ or ‘cool.’ Like the speaker mentioned, the women in these advertisements are like sex symbols that are passive and meant to be quiet by covering their mouths in some of the pictures. These advertisements are telling the consumer what being a women means and it plants that idea in their mind. Where does it say that men had to have short trimmed hair or that women have to use make up? These gender identifiers are embedded into our society and the advertisements shown take it to another level that basically could not be reached. Perhaps that is the reason, according to the speaker, as to why one in five women have a eating disorder. Men are not scrutinized as much as women. In commercials such as for AXE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgfzdgWgEZ4), the man shown looks like a regular guy meanwhile the women are supermodel-lookalikes. This is what society is telling us.

Usually the models in these advertisements are white, which gives the idea that colored Americans are not adequate. This is shown in the video during class about young Black American children, that even a majority of them think the white doll is better or ‘good’ and the black doll is ‘bad.’ Adults that are informed consumers aren’t easily swayed by these tactics made by advertisers but for children, these advertisements are extremely influential. In the video, there was a segment about teenagers and children with make up and trying to look sexy. Now, there is the development of the tween market and exploiting these young girls as sex objects. The most famous doll, the Barbie doll is considered beautiful and played by young children. The Barbie, as a human, is not proportional. If children see this un-proportional and full of make up woman as their idol, then they would want to become like her. It will become their definition of beauty and what being a woman is.

I believe Kilbourne’s main argument is that through advertisements, women are left vulnerable to a certain image that they must portray. They should be innocent, sexy, have a certain body shape, have perfect skin, dress a certain way, act a certain way, etc. Women are subjected to be objects of sex, and “sex” sells. This is revolting, but at the same time very accurate. This is how women are expected to be. Unfortunately, this is not who many women are and it is almost impossible to fit these requirements for being a woman. Some however, believe that they have to fit these images and face detrimental consequences such as eating disorders, abuse, pregnancy, and much more. The devaluing of women in the ads has traumatic personal effects, but the media will most likely not do much to stop this because technically this is what people “want” to see and these ads help to sell products.

These ideas relate to the concepts of gender and gender development because girls are taught from an early age to act, dress, and look a certain way. The need to be feminine and act girly is seen as a necessity in order to fit in with society’s norms. Boys are portrayed as masculine, aggressive and active in activities while girls act passive and vulnerable or innocent. In a film we saw in class, “Raising Cain”, boys were told to be aggressive, tough, and to not be feminine when playing sports such as football. Girls were later shown to be  gentle, caring and sensitive to violence when telling stories and then when a boy was upset about something (schooling in Japan clip).  The images and ads that Kilbourne shows in the video are congruent with these beliefs.  These views of boys and girls in ads later develop into adult ads that show the same beliefs, except now young women are seen as sex objects giving off sex, innocence, and femininity. Boys change into young men who are shown to have power and control, mostly over women, such as holding women down, pinning them to a wall or to them, all given off sex and power. Also, showing males as aggressive and females as innocent and vulnerable to a male’s actions.

Children focus the most on the media to tell them how they should act, dress, and view objects and things. Advertisements that show girls that they have to look like a model will impact the way she will view herself and her body. Boys who will see women to be objects of sex will later treat the opposite sex as the objects they are as seen in those ads. Despite the fact that children will learn from parents and educators that this is just media and that advertising shows an unrealistic view, these images and sources of advertising are everywhere. Such images will inevitably play a role in a child’s  development.

Kilbourne makes many valid points in her argument which I agree on. Women are scrutinized for their physical appearance on a regular basis. We are bombarded daily with thousands of images of what we should look like but none of these images are realistic. It is interesting that she mentioned how adolescent girls’ self-esteem plummets during their teenage years while boys’ self-esteem remains the same. When I was a freshman in high school I was very self conscious about how I looked, I have never been “fat” but I began eating less and less until I was diagnosed with anorexia. Thank God I was able to get past it and realized that being rail thin was not the way to go, sometimes i still find myself counting calories and skipping a meal here and there but now I am definitely much healthier mentally and physically. It is very difficult not to get caught up into this fantasy world of what women should look like because from birth this is what our society teaches one to believe as being “normal”. Women who are overweight or are not as well groomed and up to date with the latest fashion trends are perceived as less feminine and can at times be shunned by certain social groups and even employers.

The ideas presented in the videos relate to the ideas/concepts about gender and gender identity in that women are clearly depicted as only being sexual objects characterized by a sense of vulnerability, innocence, and passiveness. Men on the other hand are depicted as strong, aggressive, and dominant. In all the ads that were shown dating back to 1979 until present time the role of each gender has remained constant. Although time has passed and women have been able to gain more freedom they are still seen as the weaker sex. They are expected to be both sensual and virginal simultaneously. This idea of women being weak and having to look up at men is introduced from the time we are born, even the ads with children supported this argument. In all the ads women were typecast into a specific mold just like the men, the difference however, is that the role men are being typecast into isn’t demeaning to their persona while that of women is. Women are nothing more than a piece of meat. The most absurd ads find ways to correlate their product with women and make a sexual insinuation, as was the case of the fishing line. From birth we are told that in order to identify yourself as a woman you must be attractive, well kept, passive, submissive, women are basically thought of as decoration. We are not expected to voice our thoughts. Men on the other hand are to be the entire opposite. Issues rise when a man rather than being boisterous and macho is more passive and low key and vice-verso when a woman is the more aggressive opinionated individual, people begin to define the man as being more “girly” and the woman as being more of a “man”. When this occurs gender identities misattributed, different individuals have differing personalities therefore we shouldn’t attribute specific characteristics to only one sex. This only causes for people to feel shame and inhibit their true personalities in order to live up to what a man or woman should be according to society.

Children, especially, are bombarded regularly with commercials and ads about sex. Majority of models are teenagers themselves making kids more prone to experiment with sex at an age which they are not ready to do so. Kilbourne states that the US has the highest teen pregnancy rate out of the developed nations, clearly demonstrating that children’s advertisements are loaded with explicit sexual content. The media portrays sex as being the “it” thing to do so of course children are going to want to experiment. Shows like MTV’s Sixteen and Pregnant glorify teen pregnancy, these girls are making thousands of dollars for being sixteen and pregnant. No matter how much parents try to shelter their children from the sex ads, the unrealistic body images, and the gender typecast unless society doesn’t reformulate the advertisement and media industry it will find a way into your child’s life and impact their development.

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.

“Sex sells” is what the media, today, portrays as what is right when advertising an ad or commercial. We see this in the Kilbourne videos. I think that she a lot of valid points and that she spoke the truth, although she sometimes joked about a few points. A difference in gender is portrayed all throughout the media, and the way women and men are viewed upon as a society is taken out of perspective, since women in particular are being way to exposed to get a point across for a company. In class, we were discussing the way people view gender and how certain people view girls and how they view boys. In American society, there is a standard in which we live by as to tell us how a girl or boy should act. If that standard isn’t met, then a person may be looked as “gay.”  Girls are suppose to act the ways that society says are feminine, such as playing with dolls, having to do the “duties” when getting married, such as cleaning the house. Boys are supposed to act more macho and have a tough attitude. When young boys play with dolls, society doesn’t see this as a “normal” thing for them to do. They are supposed to learn how to play “tough” sports like football, in order to become more macho.  Children adapt to the ways of society fairly quickly, and this is why we are in a sense, brainwashed into thinking the way we do about gender identity. Here is a you tube video of a study made on children, as they tell the surveyor what they feel are the duties of a girl and a boy. Children tend to learn these perceptions from the media. Movies, television shows, commercials, among other things start children off with the mentality of the roles that each gender should take. Once they are in school, they are even more influenced and tend to copy what they see.

Kilbourne’s argument about women being sexually exposed to catch the audience’s attention is right. I feel that women are exposed, in a derogatory way for nothing. There is no need for a woman to be so exposed in that way for an ad. Also the message being brought to young girls isn’t good as well. The pressure to be skinny is made known in these ads, and girls go through whatever means possible to make themselves look like the models portrayed. I feel that there needs to be a change in how society portrays gender roles, so that people may not feel the need to feel or act a certain way. They can feel free to act however they want, and not be viewed by society as weird or strange.

I think that Kilbourne makes a very good and almost indisputable argument that objectification of women and their sexuality is rampant in advertising.  The images and ads she presents portray women as weak, vulnerable, sex objects and encourage women and girls to focus on their physical attractiveness and keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves.  Even ads featuring young children show submissive girls looking up to aggressive boys, and the trend continues and worsens as the models grow older.

Very young children are continuously bombarded with pervasive sexism in the media, and through out the rest of their lives, women are forced to question their self-images and sexuality because of their portrayal in advertising.  Such bold images of women as commodities, valued only for their sexuality, physical appearance and demure, no doubt, have bold implications for gender identity development.  From a cognitive standpoint on theories of  gender identity, the depiction of women in advertising will help young girls to establish their gender schemas–schemas which will view sexual exploitation, defenselessness, and an obsession with image as uniquely feminine traits.  Social learning theorists might argue that through media, our society reinforces and punishes different behaviors for males and females.  As Kilbourne points out, the behaviors most lauded in females are perfecting outward appearances and offering one’s body for the sexual pleasure of men, while the behaviors most punished are developing opinions and speaking one’s mind; conversely, men in the media are portrayed as powerful, aggressive, and violent, and seem to be rewarded for acting out these “masculine” traits, but discouraged from intimacy, nurturance, and gentleness–traditionally “feminine” traits.  Cultural theorists, no doubt, will view mass-media as a tool that mediates gender socialization, and may see that the devaluation of women in the media will lead the devaluation of women in society and to self-deprecation in females.  Developmentalists from any background are certain to see the media’s portrayal of women as problematic for girls and adolescent females already struggling to positively define their femininity in a largely patriarchal society. By rigidly defining what it means to be a woman in American society, sexist advertising is also detrimental to the gender identity development of boys and men, who must now ignore their complex emotional lives and strive to act out self-destructive behaviors like excessive aggression and promiscuity.

It is clear  that in America, even the youngest of children are exposed to mass media on a very regular basis.  During the critical periods of their lives, when children are forming their identities and developing scripts and schemas about the world around them, they are constantly faced with images of sex, violence, and inequality.  Though parents and educators may try to derail the notions put forth by mass media, advertising is everywhere and will undoubtedly play a role in the social and emotional development of all American children.

I recently saw a film on babies named National Geographic: Science of Babies. The film explored the ways babies develop in their first year of life, from their first breath to their first step. This relates to the development of the brain when a human is born. It talked about the helpless beings that babies are when they first arrive into the world and how they slowly adapt. At first, when a baby is born, the amount of oxygen or the first amount of air to the baby’s lungs and brain is one of the most crucial parts of living. When in the mother’s womb, the baby is solely dependent on oxygen from the mother’s placenta, and must learn how to breathe on its own when coming into the world.

A baby relies a great amount on caregivers in their first months and years of their life. The film gives a comparison to other primates, such as elephants, seals, and turtles and shows that those animals tend to adapt to their environment as soon as they are born, which is fairly quickly. Babies, however, take a while to adapt to their environments and depend a great deal on their caregivers in order to survive.  The film then goes on and emphasizes the development of the brain in babies. A newborn baby is born with over 100,000,000 neurons but after a year that number nearly doubles in size. A baby’s brain builds itself through adapting to the environment and in turn makes babies develop a learned behavior as to how they develop. Reflexes, such as sucking and gripping on to a person’s finger, are relevant in the first stages of a baby’s life, which is what we also learned in this class.

The different stages of a baby’s life are also seen in the film. It shows that at just 3 months of age, a baby can lift their head and reach out to get an object, however their eyesight is not fully developed as of yet. At the age of 6 months, their vision is nearly as good as adults, and they learn to differentiate facial expressions. What I found interesting was when the movie showed that children with autism or who develop autism in the future tend to have trouble differentiating facial expressions at this stage of their life.  I didn’t think that autism could be detected so soon in a child’s life. By 8 to 9 months, a baby’s nervous system is more fully developed and many babies start to crawl. However, another thing that I found interesting was that the film shows that many people think that crawling is a necessary stage in order for a baby to start walking, and this is a misconception. I, myself, thought that crawling was a necessary stage before a baby developed the ability to walk, but I guess I was wrong. A lot of babies do not even crawl before walking. They go from sitting up to learning how to walk. At about a year of age, most children take their first steps and learn to speak their first words. Overall, I thought that this film was a great film on describing the development of babies and gave me new insight on their development.

The education system in United States is not a good system. There are many new teachers coming to school, and sometime they don’t have enough educational skills, and they don’t really care about their student. For instance, I have one student in an after school program told me that his daily teacher in school was used their cell phone all the time and listen to music in the classroom, and he said he couldn’t understand his teacher. However, I think the teacher need to show their responsibility to their students, they have to understand their job is to teach and educate our new generation.

In addition, school is not only the place that children can learn new knowledge, parents and family also play an important role in children’s education. Many parents think that if their child doesn’t understand anything, the reason will be they don’t learn anything from the school. Parents also need to help and educate their child, beside just let them go to school. School is a place for children to learn new knowledge, but school is not the only place. I think the way of how students learn is more important. Therefore, parents have to make sure their child understand what they learn from school, because school and parents need to work together.

However, what we are doing is to help children learn and understand new knowledge, but it is also important to let children understand question by themselves. For example, some students are really good in English or any other language, because they like to read and write. The school has set many differences reading level for students, and the reading levels seem to be the motivation for students to read more books in school. Moreover, teacher should explain and teach more high level of learning skill, other than just teaching basic skill. Sometime, teachers would just give the answer to students, and just tell them the way to solve the problem. By the way, teacher should have more knowledge of teaching skill; because they should let students think the question by themselves and let them solve the problem, beside not just tell them the answer.

Many schools don’t have enough money to rebuild their school building, and buy more materials of new technology. Teachers need to have more new materials to educate students, because I think students need to be more diverse in today’s world. In addition, if children don’t have a good learning environment, they won’t get any motivation to learn. It is also important to manage the school hours. Last year, the education department wants to increase the school hours, because they want students to have more time to stay in school. But, I believe that, student also will learn many new knowledge outside of the school building. They have their own friends and family, and also they own cultures. As I mention before, students need to be more diverse, they can’t just learn knowledge from the text book.

It is amazing that at the age of two most children can say about a 100 words, but about six months later their capacity to speak not only doubles but triples to a vocabulary of 300 words. My godchild, Hannah, just turned two this month, and speaks English fluently, along with bits and pieces of three other languages. Let me explain. Hannah watches two shows that contribute to her knowledge of language: Dora the Explorer (Spanish) and Ni Hao Kai-Lan (Mandarin), and her grandparents who speak Malayalam- this leaves Hannah speaking a mix of languages- everything jumbled up. For instance, the other day she said: “help me, help me, ayudame (‘help me’ in Spanish)”, to which her grandparents had no idea how to help her from ayudame. Hannah knows how to count in four different languages up to ten, and speaks them interchangeably.

Another example I recall of a child switching languages in conversation is of my cousin Cynthia, when she was four. Cynthia and all of our cousins were (in English) joking around when my grandmother, who only speaks our native language Malayalam, interjects with a comment. Cynthia responded to her in Malayalam and then resumed speaking to us in English.

What is striking to me in both situations is how Hannah mumbles and jumbles her languages, but Cynthia differentiates between the two. Which brings me to the question: when do kids who speak more than one language understand when they are speaking a different language?
After consulting various sources including my mother who says “the child just knows”. I have come to the conclusion that I child recognizes the syllables’ of the language or the grammatical tones. My theory is based of the data shown in the YouTube film the linguistics genius of babies by Patricia Kuhl

I feel as if Children probably understand the tones that others are using with whichever language they are speaking, and likewise reciprocate the sounds they hear with the language they know. Although it is possible, since tone differentiation happens at such a young age, for us to assume that children can naturally distinguish the difference between languages and choose which language they can communicate (depending on their knowledge of the language). But then you might wonder why Hannah says “ayudame” when we were speaking English? There are three reasons I come up with in regards to this. Either the grammatical tones are similar between the two languages (English and Spanish), Hannah is imitating what she has witnessed (in this case on Dora The Explorer) or she has no other way to convey/express what she is feeling and reverts back to the language she feels comfortable to express this idea.

Overall, the idea of language is complex, and many theories may never fully be developed because of the lack of substantial evidence.