The Big Tween Market Machine: Why Pre-adolescents are Marketers’ Dream

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“What do you call a consumer who wants to buy everything you have, doesn’t care what it costs and is less than five feet tall? A marketer’s dream? Nope. You call them kids.” 

AdRelevance Intelligence Report, 2000

While marketing to children is nothing new – having first been introduced in the 1960s – the aggressive marketing to those on the cusp of adolescence (ages 9-14) is a phenomenon that has arisen much more recently, in direct synchronicity with the “internet age” and the rise of new media (1990s-present). This demographic, the so-called “tween” group (for “in between”), was in fact entirely developed by and for marketers, and took on economic significance before it took on cultural significance (1).  It would not be a hyperbolism to suggest that tween culture was, in fact, entirely manufactured by the marketing machine. To understand the aggressive and pervasive nature of tween marketing, it’s important to first understand why this arbitrary distinction was created. Why “tweens”? What tweens have to offer to marketers that is so important vs. what children and teenagers already provide as consumers? Why has this market exploded the way it has in the last decade? The answer boils down to the fact that tweens, being in a transitory period, face a great degree of sudden vulnerability. And, at the same time, they retain full access to parental funds. This juxtaposition of susceptibility to influence and spending power is more prevalent among tweens than it is among teens or children.

Tweens’ Influence on Household Spending

Tweens are too young to legally earn their own money in order to attain what they want, so retain a child’s relatively unquestioned reliance on (and thus access to) their parent’s funds. According to BusinessWeek magazine, “Of the reported US$ 51 billion spent by tweens themselves, an additional $170 billion was spent by parents and family members directly for them” in the United States annually (2).  In the UK, we have 11 million people aged 15 and under, with a remarkable total expenditure of £12 billion from children up to 18, money often coming from own pocket money (alas parent’s pockets!) and part-time jobs (2b). This does not merely represent an access to more money on the part of tweens, but also a far greater lack of discretion about what they will spend it on. Teens, by contrast, who have begun to earn and control their own funds, have more awareness of the fact that money is finite and needs to be prioritized around what they really want, introducing a level of agency and choosiness about what they buy which is the precursor to adult spending habits. At the same time, tweens have just enough independence to exert power over household spending decisions owing to a shift in family dynamics which took place during the 1990s, and is known to play a key role in modern marketing strategy.(3) This shift saw a large number of tweens living in households where both parents work and in single-parent households (in 1994, one in four households in the United States with children was headed by a single parent, up from one in eight in 1970 [Miller, 1994]), and led to far more responsibility being placed upon tweens and teens (e.g. grocery shopping duties, which fully one-third of tweens have), giving them greater purchasing power and more independence. (Cuneo, 1989; McLaughlin, 1991; Miller, 1994; Rickard, 1994)(3) Tweens have been shown to have more “discretionary purchasing power than younger children or older adolescents, to shop at least three times a week, and to save 30% of their spending money for higher ticket items.” (McLaughlin, 1991) This access and right to adult funds and influence over what is done with them combined with tweens’ unique psychological vulnerabilities make them extremely appealing to marketers, and has been a strong factor in the developing pervasiveness of marketing directed at them.

The Role of Peer Pressure in Marketing to Tweens

As mentioned earlier, tweens are in a unique phase of psychosocial vulnerability. Most children in this age group are going through a fundamental change in their place in the social hierarchy around them, moving from schools where they were the oldest, most respected, “coolest” kids, to environments that are new, alien, and place them as the youngest and most vulnerable members. They have to “start over” socially at exactly the same time as their own bodies are developing in sudden, often troubling ways. The tween years are a period of intense change: mental, physical, emotional, and social. This breeds an incredibly intense pressure to “fit in”. Most surveys conducted on the priorities of tweens note fitting in on the top of, or very near the top of, the list. Naturally, this creates a deep need to have what their peers have and look how their peers look — a marketer’s haven for creating trends around brands. Teens, by contrast, are increasingly rebellious and eager to carve out individual identities, meaning that mainstream pop culture (and therefore the marketing therein) is something many teens grow to define themselves against, rather than by, an obvious challenge to marketers (for whom mainstream appeal is the goal, as it brings with it maximum profit potential). The pop idols and Disney shows that were the height of cool when they were twelve are the epitome of “lame” by 15 or 16 — hence why many pop stars (e.g. Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus) are aggressively marketed to smitten tweens while often being almost universally loathed by older teens. Research confirms the fact that tweens place even more emphasis on brand names than do older adolescents (Cuneo, 1989; Fitzgerald, 1992; Koester May, 1985; McLaughlin, 1991; Simpson, 1994). They are particularly concerned with having the “cool” brands when it comes to clothing and other matters of appearance. They much more strongly associate conformity with the need for acceptance, approval, and harmonious relationships with others (Batra, Kahle, Rose, Shoham, 1994).(3) Today’s tweens are also the most “wired” generation in history (heavily using the internet and mobile devices), meaning this peer pressure travels with them everywhere they go, and thus so does the potential to market to it. Tweens are also far more likely to click on things like banner ads than other age groups and are more susceptible to viral marketing tactics that promote the spread of a message from one user to another. Marketing to tweens via interactive social venues like chat rooms, forums, and e-mail have been noted to be especially effective.(4) Due to this, the prevalence of online marketing (both obvious and subtly worked into interactive media) has risen sharply over the last decade.

The Impact of Puberty: Body Image and Gender Roles

No discussion of tweens could be complete without examining the role of puberty; the rapid changes taking place in tweens’ bodies throws how these young people relate to one another into chaos, thrusting gender roles into sudden and stark relief and raising big questions about sex, dating, marriage, and the possibility of having children. Little girls and boys who were simply playmates a year or two prior suddenly find they have to redefine their peer roles around their emerging sexuality. This creates a deep need in tweens to understand themselves as gendered persons, and tween marketing capitalizes on this by offering strongly gendered media that plays into tweens’ heightened body awareness and subsequent concerns about their appearance. While this newfound awareness is hard on the self-esteem of both genders, it has been found to be significantly harder on girls (owing in large part to an intense perceived pressure to be thin), with research conducted throughout the United States, Korea, and Australia showing that the body dissatisfaction which arises in girls during puberty “is associated with lower levels of self-esteem and increased likelihood of depression among early adolescent girls.” (Newman & Newman, 2006, p. 303.) The earlier a girl physically matures, the worse this impact tends to be, and the more likely serious consequences (such as eating disorders) become.(5) As self esteem is a “central component of personality and identity” and is centrally tied to one’s “confidence in one’s ability to think and to cope with the challenges of life and confidence in one’s right to be happy” (Clancy and Dollinger, 1993)(6), young girls’ desire to identify with themselves in a positive way (and thereby achieve greater agency and success) makes the consumption of images of beautiful, thin young women incredibly appealing—something tween television programming and advertising media taps into (and profits from) frequently. To assess this phenomenon, Ashton Lee Gerding, a humanities student, and Nancy Signorielli, professor of communication at the University of Delaware, analysed 49 episodes of 40 distinct American tween television programs that aired in 2011 on Disney Channel, Disney XD, Nickelodeon and the Turner Cartoon Network. They catalogued and examined more than 200 characters in terms of their attractiveness, gender-related behaviour and personality characteristics such as bravery or ability to handle technology (7): “Tween viewers are undergoing an important developmental stage and actively seek cues about gender,” said Gerding. “Television programming can play an important role in that development, so we examined tween television programming. Overall, girls were portrayed as more attractive, more concerned about their appearance, and received more comments about their appearance than male characters. However, female and male characters were equally likely to be handy with technology and exhibit bravery. This sends the message that girls and boys can participate in and do the same things, but that girls should be attractive and work to maintain this attractiveness”. “Tween television programs may help to shape the way kids think about the roles that are available for them. Therefore, we advise parents to watch these programs with their kids and talk with their tweens about their roles in society. We also advocate for media literacy programs that could mitigate some of the potential negative effects of these programs.”

Tips for Parents: How to Moderate the Impact of Tween Marketing

Marketing is an inevitable part of the world most of us live in, so parents cannot hope to entirely shield their tweens from the impact of marketing on their developing adolescence. Parents can, however, give their tweens tools to help them cope with the barrage, and parents should never undervalue their role in this area. No matter how pervasive the media and marketing have become, tweens still cite their parents as their biggest influence when it comes to important decisions, even in “private” areas like sexuality. Parents can, absolutely, make a strong difference in how teens interpret and deal with the media and the marketing that is so aggressively aimed toward them. Prof. Agnes Nairn and Ed Mayo with the help of UK charity Care for the Family completed a “pester power” online survey and published a pamphlet Pester-power: Families surviving the Consumer Society (2007) which include a comprehensive summary of “survival tips” adopted by parents against the current marketing pressure. The booklet can be downloaded from this link: http://goo.gl/Q34ME9 (10). In this blogpost I want to include some suggestions provided by the Media Awareness Network, the Canadian Paediatric Society, and Susan Linn (psychologist and author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood)(8), which should help parents navigate the murky waters of children commercialisation:

  • Start young. Children are influenced by marketing from a very young age.
  • Limit children’s exposure to advertising on television and on the Internet. Don’t allow them to have televisions or Internet-enabled computers in their rooms, and limit TV time to one or two hours per day.
  • Talk to your kids about how advertising works and what advertisers are trying to accomplish. Explain that advertising is a multi-billion dollar business whose goal is to get people to buy things, and that they are very good at it.
  • Encourage kids to think critically about marketing messages. You can start as small as you like: last year a Grade 6 math class in Thunder Bay, Ontario debunked a “fun fact” on a package of Smarties, which claimed that Canadians eat enough Smarties each year to circle the earth 350 times. They found that in order for the claim to be true, either the earth would have to be a lot smaller, or each Smartie would have to be 3.5 metres in diameter.
  • Help kids to understand the strategies used by advertisers. Talk with kids about specific ads: “How do you feel about the people in the ad? Do you want to be like them? Why or why not? Does the ad make you feel uncool for not owning the product, or that you’ll feel good about yourself if you buy the product? What are some other ways you could get those feelings, without buying the product? Has the ad used any ambiguous words or impressive-sounding facts and figures to make the product sound better than it is? At the end, did the announcer say anything like ‘some assembly required’ or ‘batteries not included’?”
  • Explain about product placement: if characters in a movie or TV show are using a particular brand, the advertiser probably paid a lot of money for it to be there.
  • Discuss how your kids can be smart, responsible consumers by knowing what is good for them and what is not, what is good for the environment and what is not, and what is good value for money.
  • Educate children about nutrition using your country’s Food Guide. Discuss whether eating only things you see on TV makes for a healthy, balanced diet. Make a distinction between “everyday” foods and “sometimes” foods.
  • Before going grocery shopping, decide exactly what you plan to buy, including snacks and treats. Having a list that you and your kids have discussed ahead of time makes it easier to avoid impulse purchases and set limits in the store.
  • Monitor your own media habits and buying habits, and change them if necessary. Children pick up early on what is important to their parents.
  • Most importantly, make sure TV, Internet, and video games “screen time” is well balanced with family time, active/creative play, playing outdoors, reading, and other activities without marketing attached!
Main references:
1. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=bgsu1119390228&disposition=inline
2. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-10-11/marketing-and-tweens2b. www.tgisurveys.com/tgi/Youth2006.PDF  and Youthscape Report: Attitudes, Behaviour and Spending Habits of UK Kids & Teens, Q4: 2013 https://www.marketresearch.com/Swapit-v3893/Youthscape-Attitudes-Behaviour-Spending-Habits-8261648/
3.  http://42051.faithweb.com/Tween%20consumes%20catalog%20clothing%20purchase%20behavior.html
4.  http://www.cdc.gov/youthcampaign/research/PDF/LitReview.pdf
5. http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-methods-tips/3320-development-in-early-adolescence-puberty-and-low-self-esteem/
6.  http://www.drwrite.com/research/sample2.shtml
7.http://www.science20.com/news_articles/tween_programming_is_disney_promoting_stereotypes_or_creating_what_kids_want_to_watch-134661
8. http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/en/news/newsandfeatures/pages/target-market-children-as-consumers.aspx
9. http://www.slideshare.net/gerdavandamme/whitepaper-digital-marketing-to-generation-spongebob
10. http://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/301-08-ppinf02-pester-power-booklet-10-september-2008.pdf

					

The Impact of the Media on Children Sexual Identities

Children using smartphones

This blog post continues the discussion of academic literature around the topis of media and children gendered and sexual identities (see the first part in my previous article on sexualisation).

The rapid development of the internet and mobile technology has brought with it the entrance of the media into our everyday lives in ways that we could not have imagined prior to the 1990s; children born from the mid-1980s onward have experienced a level of media exposure throughout their developmental years that was hitherto unheard of. This trend only continues to grow—and fast.  A study recently conducted by the family advocacy organization Common Sense Media found that 38% of children under the age of 2 have used a mobile device for playing games, watching videos or other media-related purposes. As recently as the year 2011, only 10% had.(1) In the UK, three quarters of 5-15 year olds have internet access at home and 71% have a TV set in their rooms, followed by 62% with a gaming console as well, and 54% own their own mobile phones (Ofcom, 2007). All in all, a great many young people have 24-hour independent access to media.

Of course, wherever the media goes, sex soon follows. Sex sells, after all, and in a world of increasing visual and auditory clutter, it’s one of the few tools left by which a piece of media can woo our fleeting attention. In a previous article, we both debunked some of the common misconceptions surrounding early exposure to sexualised media (such as the idea that it necessarily leads to higher rates of teenage pregnancy and abortion) and introduced the concept of agency; namely, the deeper debate between whether this exposure is removing some of the traditional negative stigma from female sexuality and encouraging the free expression of desire and choice, or whether it is encouraging sexual behaviour in such a way that young people are getting more and more willing to open themselves up to (or perpetrate) exploitation. In essence, are we dealing with the liberal encouragement of pleasure, or the destruction of natural innocence in favour of danger?

Proving either stance is fraught with obvious difficulty; while some studies have been able to show, for example, that teens who watch more than two hours of television per day are 30% more likely to have sex, regardless of parental attitudes, (parental disapproval was actually shown to more than double this likelihood) (2) assessing how much agency these teens wield on a case-by-case basis is challenging, if not impossible.

To illustrate, teens who watch more than two hours of television per day may well do so because they are having social difficulties at school, have few friends, and thus, are quicker to leap into bed with other teens when the opportunity arises. Such teens would seem to be acting for acceptance or under the influence of peer pressure, rather than acting simply because the media told them to. Similarly, teens with strict parents are much more likely to suffer from poor self-esteem (and therefore an even greater craving for acceptance) (3), which could explain why the rates get even higher for those teens whose parents have very strict attitudes about sex.

While one might still argue the wisdom of those teens’ choices, if the above were true, the young people in question would still be acting with agency, regardless of the media’s influence. So how, then, lacking hard statistical data, do we measure the effect of children’s sexualisation on agency, on later pleasure experienced as young adults, or possible exposure to danger? In other words, the contextual factors at play make very difficult to make a fair assessment of media influences, as how can researchers isolate media effects from all the other (cultural, social, economic) influences in children’s lives?

One possible avenue of assessment is the observation of those so-called Millennials, particularly the young women who were so aggressively marketed to during the “Girl Power” decade that was the 1990s, and who are now adults. Indeed ‘girl power’ has become now a well-established and very successful marketing tool and a branding of girlhood (Klein 2000).  When I think back to the mid-90s, I invariably remember a time when one could not turn on the television set or surf the internet without being bombarded by images of all-girl music groups strutting proudly in crop tops, brassieres, mini-dresses, and enormous platform shoes. Many of the fans of these groups, particularly the Spice Girls, were as young as five years of age, or younger, a fact which inspired a great deal of concern at the time. In 1994, for instance, Mary Pipher in her book Reviving Ophelia– selling 1.6 million copies – decried our media-saturated culture for “poisoning” young girls.(4)

Today, those little girls are all grown up, and form both a demographic that retains the attention of marketers and the backbone of “third wave” feminism. Those who work closely with both media and young women (see for instance Kathleen Rowe Karlyn from Genders.org) have noticed an interesting trend:

“As a teacher and researcher of film studies and television and the mother of three daughters in early adulthood, I’ve been following the emergence of girl culture since the mid-nineties.  Recently I spoke to a large group of academics and other professionals who work with girls about the ways such media icons as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena Warrior Princess and the Spice Girls challenge familiar representations of femininity by affirming female friendship, agency and physical power. Part of that pleasure involves reclaiming the right not only to the term “girl” but to “girly pleasures” trivialized by the culture at large, such as shopping and dressing up…  In a punchy and knowledgeable survey of girl culture in Spin magazine, Ann Powers describes how girls aggressively flaunt traits formerly viewed as demeaning by both feminists and misogynists: prettiness, ‘brattiness’, and sexual flamboyance.  And so, while retaining the critique of beauty culture and sexual abuse from the Second Wave, young women have complicated the older feminist critique of the male gaze as a weapon to put women in their place, and instead exploit the spotlight as a source of power and energy. Thus girls do not see a contradiction between female power and assertive sexuality” (4)

If the above is true, it would seem the end result of the sexualisation of media consumed by children in the mid-1990s is one of power, agency, and primarily, the introduction of pleasure, rather than danger.

But of course, one cannot take the above to be true without acknowledging that the media does, in fact, have the power to influence young people’s attitudes about sexuality, in which case, the opposite of what is described above could as easily be considered true. And, if you have kept up with popular culture at all since the decline of the Spice Girls and their ilk, you have no doubt witnessed a masquerade of “girl power” with the return of troubling levels of misogyny and sexual exploitation. If I compare the current times with the 1980’s in which I grown up as a teenager, it seems evident that the situation has dramatically worsened (just consider the popular hyper-sexualisation of female characters currently characterising media and toy’s industries or the increasingly narrow beauty standards promoted by media and adverts).

In the early 2000s – at the same time as Paris Hilton and other similarly vapid but “pretty” socialites began to become adored by little girls – rap and hip hop rose to greater musical prominence, tugging misogyny along with their videos and lyrics. Rap heavyweight Eminem, for instance, infamous for his lyrics depicting threats of violence on girls and women (including his own mother), has enjoyed nearly a staggering 20 years of culture relevance. Eminem’s eighth album, released just last year (2013), casually builds on his existing reputation for misogyny, the rhythm is catchy but the other day I ‘ve actually decided to pay attention to one of the songs, I could not understand so I googled it and found out what it actually says: here we go (brace yourself!)

Snatch the bitch out her car through the window, she screamin/ I body slam her onto the cement, until the concrete gave and created a sinkhole / Bury this stink ho in it, then paid to have the street re-paved,” and: “I got 99 problems and the bitch ain’t one / She’s all 99 of them I need a machine gun / I take em all out I hope you hear this song / And go into a cardiac arrest, have a heart attack / And just drop dead and I’mma throw a fucking party after this.

Eminem is far from being alone in his troubling attitudes towards women: there are plenty of other singers – both males and females -willing to subscribe to this type of messages for the sake of profitable entertainment. As usual, sex sells and will continue to sell and music producers seem to play this card more and more. So, little girls today grow up watching their former Disney idols, such as Miley Cyrus, grind against singers like Robin Thicke, responsible for singing the notoriously problematic Blurred Lines, a song which blatantly tells a “good girl” that he “knows she wants it,” really. And then, of course, we have endless popular hip hop songs reducing women to “bitches” and “hoes” who, despite this obvious disrespect, willingly dance in the background of these singers’ videos, providing visual stimulation and nothing more than that. Many parents (including myself) wonder whether their daughters will see the transformation of Miley (or Britney and the like before her) as the natural passage from innocent girl to “real woman”.

Seen from this perspective, this appears mostly certainly as a culture of danger, particularly for women – as it encourages them to be available for exploitation and to accept violence – but also for young men, as it teaches them to see women and girls consistently in a devalued, sexualised way (with far less attention granted to their personality, charm, intellect, talents, etc..). By tying the concept of masculinity to being willing and able to ‘possess’ or use young women for sexual pleasure, young men who decline to join this trend are forced to put themselves at risk of bullying and isolation.

Prof. Rosalind Gill – a feminist and cultural theorist – suggests that “for young women today in post-feminist cultures, the display of a certain kind of sexual knowledge, sexual practice and sexual agency has become normative – indeed, a ‘technology of sexiness’ has replaced ‘innocence’ and ‘virtue’ as the commodity that young women are required to offer in the heterosexual marketplace” (7).

Braidotti (2006) conceptualizes a paradoxical “simultaneous displacement and refixing” of binary oppositions (e.g. masculine/feminine) as “one of the most problematic aspects of contemporary political culture” (9). She argues how the present culture produces, pushes and encompasses simultaneously opposite effects — degrees of gender equality with growing segregation of the sexes, resulting in gender trouble on the one hand and polarized sexual difference on the other.

How, then, are children today responding to and processing the danger aspect of this equation, which has become so prevalent in our post-millennial world? An interesting body of work has been produced by Prof. Emma Renold of Cardiff University and her associates – a research offering rich insight into how children navigate their sexual and gender identities in relation to the media and the sexualisation thereof.

Renold’s research revealed that girls feel a much greater pressure to conform to popular ideals of bodily attractiveness than boys feel, to the point of giving up “active” hobbies and sports to maintain a feminine shape. Girls also expressed a greater dissatisfaction with “dating culture,” with research showing that:

For some boys, simply having a girlfriend, any girl was enough to secure social status and popularity. In contrast, many girls highlighted the ways in which their status as girlfriends objectified them, particularly when girls attractiveness was rated and ranked. Many girls also resented how they were passed around and fought over by boys who wanted to claim them as theirs.” (5)

And yet, at the same time, girls found it more difficult to resist the pressure to be part of this dating culture than boys did. (5)

Likewise, girls who were deeply invested in “being girlfriends” were more likely to accept harassment and abuse, including keeping “nasty” text messages due to being “in love” and, true to the theory that male acceptance is hinging too heavily on female exploitation, young boys who were “positioned low down the gendered and sexual peer group hierarchies were also described as the same boys who would engage in harassing behaviour such as repeatedly asking girls out, or sending abusive texts to girls who refused to go out with them, or ended the relationship”.  Both genders reported instances of being “forced” via harassment by peers to engage in dating-related and/or sexual behaviour, such as being pushed and bullied into kissing.(5)

However, while the impacts of the “danger”aspect of the sexualization of the media can arguably be seen enacted in the above,it was also found that children are hardly passive observers shaped by the media without any awareness or agency of their own. In fact,

Many children offered powerful critical commentaries from nudity on MTV to air-brushed images of models in magazines. Many girls also drew a clear boundary between what their favourite celebrities would say, wear or do and their own lives. (5)

This important – and encouraging – aspect was also confirmed by the girls in my own research.

Renold’s research suggested that, if anything, rather than becoming more sexual in manner and dress due to the current attitudes toward female sexuality portrayed by the media, many young girls today so actively fear being labeled a “slut” that they prefer to cover up, and are once again moving away from being able to equivocate female power with aggressive sexuality. Many felt uncomfortable with the amount and the nature of sexuality expressed in music and music videos.

Children were also shown to be quite critical of sexual and gender norms, expressing the desire to fight issues such as sexism, but often not being sure how they could safely and effectively do so. Many children wished they could more freely express their concerns about issues to do with gender and sexuality in the context of their present lives, rather than in the context of their futures. Both boys and girls expressed the need for sex and relationship education that deals specifically with domestic and intimate partner violence “both within their communities and in their own and older relationship cultures,” showing that both genders are concerned about the levels of sexual violence they have witnessed.

In sum, children were witnessed to be practically crying out for a voice of their own, for better access to information and education regarding sexuality and gender issues, and for a meaningful way in which they could safely challenge entrenched gender and sexual norms while still in their formative years. Ergo, we can safely conclude that many children do not fall into these roles nor succumb to the pressures of the media due to passivity or lack of agency, but rather due to a perceived lack of viable alternatives.

In my own research what impressed me was the variety of roles these young girls would experiment with; phrases like “oh yes, but I do that only when I feel girly” were very common and often represent the “identity play” girls would constantly engage in. I love the term “contingent and ambiguous practices of identity” in Gonick et al.’s article (8) and I agree with their suggestion that:

“In posing the question “what comes after girl power?” we suggest that girls’ agency and resistance needs to be theorized as articulated and evidenced within the logic of the production of gender, the body, and sexual, racial, cultural (etc.) differences. This presents a complex, embodied equation of gendered subjectivity that is less about balances of agency (girl power) and compliance (girl victims) than it is about contingent and ambiguous practices of identity” (8).

Prof. Gauntlett (10) highlights the wide range of contradictory messages about gender and identities presented in today’s media as a positive factor, able to effectively widening the options available to young people’s in their own construction of identity:

“The contradictions are important (…) because the multiple messages contribute to the perception of an open realm of possibilities. In contrast with the past – or the modern popular view of the past – we no longer get singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of male and female identities (although certain groups of features are clearly promoted as more desirable than others). Instead, popular culture offers a range of stars, icons and characters from whom we can acceptably borrow bits and pieces of their public persona for use in our own. In addition, of course – and slightly contradictorily – individuals are encouraged to ‘be yourself’, and to be creative – within limits – about the presentation of self. This opens the possibilities for gender trouble, as discussed above. Today, nothing about identity is clear-cut, and the contradictory messages of popular culture make the ‘ideal’ model for the self even more indistinct – which is probably a good thing”.(10)

Regardless of one’s personal opinions on the level of pleasure vs. danger brought about by the media’s purported “sexualisation” of childhood, it should be agreed upon that children deserve a voice and a choice in these matters, one that is not drowned out exclusively by adult concerns or clouded by moral judgments. I personally believe that one effective way to foster agency in young people is to ensure that it is given to them before they have succumbed to the pressure to be “sexy” within the narrow parameters presented as acceptable by our heteronormative society. This can be effectively achieved through a more active discussion of gender practices and media content within the family to start with, and with much deeper and wide-ranging inclusion of media and marketing literacy, along with the discussion of topics relating to gender and sexuality, in the school curriculum, compared to what we have now.

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Main references:
1. http://mashable.com/2013/10/28/children-under-2-mobile-media-study/
2. http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20060403/media-messages-harm-child-teen-health
3. http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/positive-discipline/strict-parenting
4. http://www.genders.org/g38/g38_rowe_karlyn.html
5. Renold, E (2005), Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities, Routledge.
6. Klein, N. (2000). No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto: Vintage Canada
7. Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 2: p.72.
8. Gonick, M ,Renold E., Ringrose J., Weems L. (2009) Rethinking Agency and Resistance: What Comes After Girl Power? Girlhood Studies Vol. 2 (2), 1–9, Berghahn Journals.
9. Braidotti, R. (2006). Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
10. Gauntlett, D. (2007). Media, Gender and Identity, Routledge.

The sexualisation debate: innocence versus sexual agency

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There is no question that the pervasiveness of the media affects us all—regardless of age, race, and privilege—but the question of how much it impacts the developing brain of a child—particularly when it comes to their emotional and sexual development—and what the long-term consequences of this might be, is such a diverse and complex area of study that definitive conclusions have yet to be drawn. Millions of children are being subjected to marketing-driven media every day, much of it containing sexual overtones, whilst we look on with no real knowledge of how this will affect them ten, twenty, or thirty years down the road. Are we affecting our children’s self-esteem and their ability to be healthily intimate one day, merely for the sake of profit?

Several countries now ban advertising to children altogether in an effort to control the media; Sweden, Norway, Greece, and the Canadian province of Quebec have all instituted a ban on advertising to children under twelve in any way, shape or form, and a rising chorus of voices in the UK is calling for a similar ban. A recent petition letter (leaveourkidsalone.org), which was circulated by Jonathan Kent, writer and broadcaster, and Rupert Read, reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia and chairman of Green House think tank —and subsequently signed by more than 50 authors, journalists, renowned academics, and leading childcare experts— implicates marketing to youngsters in a host of national ills, such as high rates of teenage pregnancy and underage drinking. Among other things, the aggressively sexual subtext in advertisements is seen as a powerful and insidious encouragement to engage in destructive and risky behaviours—an alluring voice that infiltrates the media to make partying and having sex seem “cool” to innocent young minds.

The letter claims that such marketing is “Designed to manipulate adult emotions and desires onto children as young as two or three”, a strong nod to the adult themes, such as sexuality, that are present in many advertisements. The letter also claims that marketing to youth, on the whole, makes them “harder to control” by turning them into little adults who demand what they want, when they want it, and aren’t afraid to express themselves verbally, physically, or sexually.

On the other hand, critics depict this move as a moral panic and argue that the commercial interests behind broadcasting aimed at children would make problematic, if not entirely unfeasible, a total ban on advertising to kids: a measure which would undoubtedly shake the whole foundations of children programming. One can easily imagine how the main stakeholders holding strong financial interests on the outcome of this debate – broadcasters and children products industries – are lobbying to make their voices heard.

Like in any important socio-economic issue there is always a political side to it. The issue of KGOY (acronym used for “kids growing older younger”) is often attributed to the increasingly strong influence of media on children’s mind, but I agree with Jackson (2006:251) that this line of thinking is not necessarily helpful to young people as they are based on notions of childhood as innocent and powerless, rather than acknowledging or seeking to increase children’s abilities to understand their world (for example, by enhancing their critical skills through media literacy interventions). Critical observers have questioned whether these experts truly seek to restore children’s agency and protect their ‘innocence’, or whether they seek to limit their free will and access to media in an effort to control social problems that would be better addressed by the government, for example by providing more useful and thorough social welfare programs (all of which are presently facing a decline in the UK).

Said need for critical examination is especially evident when one considers that in Canadian provinces like Ontario, where advertising to children under twelve is perfectly legal (and the media is, overall, little different to what it is in the UK), the rates of issues supposedly tied to early sexualisation—such as teenage pregnancy—remain relatively low (as do abortion rates, despite Canada’s notable lack of restrictions on abortion). And yet, across the border in the United States, where much of Ontario’s consumed media originates from, issues like teenage pregnancy are much more prevalent. When one weighs this information, the clear link between the media, early exposure to sexual content, and the “too much, too soon”social ills suggested by the team of English experts grows more tremulous.

This does not mean, however, that concern about the impacts of marketing and the media on children’s developing sexuality is mere moral panic, and nothing more. Statistics, at the end of the day, tell us little about the actual people behind them, and there is no denying that across the western world, overt sexuality is being displayed by young people—particularly young women—more often, more blatantly, and earlier on that at any other time over the past century (and perhaps much longer).

The issue of whether or not these young women have knowledge about and access to birth control (and the right socio-economic reasons to use it) tells us nothing of the emotional consequences they may be suffering as a result of possibly premature sexualisation and self-objectification. How do they feel about themselves? Is their body image suffering under the pressure of increasingly unrealistic beauty standards portrayed in the media and in the effort to be sexually appealing? Are young girls too willing to be intimate with any man that desires them, having been taught that they are simply objects for this desire? Are they able to be properly intimate with young men who have also been raised in today’s culture? Or, conversely, are young women finally being taught that female sexuality is not a ‘sin’, a dirty secret, but rather something to be reclaimed and expressed while also striving towards a successful career? Is ‘girls power’, as a feminist-inspired discourse absorbed by popular culture and challenging the idealisation of girlhood in our culture as repository of purity (based on the rhetoric of girls’ vulnerability and need for protection), leading to increased girls’ self-determination and agency?

In short, are we creating something revolutionary—acceptance of the sexual agency of young women —or are we setting girls up to be passive targets of exploitation, while pushing young men to aggressively exploit?

These are the main questions of the “pleasure vs danger” debate, which I will address in my next blog post. So far, I have tried to adopt a sitting-on-the-fence stance in the attempt to present more objectively the different sides of the argument. In a third article I will also be keen to clarify my own position on these issues. In the meantime, I am asking my readers to chime in and let me know their own perspective on things. 😉

 

Main References
1. Jackson, Carolyn (2006). "Wild" girls? An exploration of "ladette" cultures in secondary schools, Gender and Education, Vol.18 (4): 339-360
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9984366/Ban-advertising-aimed-at-primary-school-children.html
3. http://www.economist.com/node/4649
4. Currie D, Kelly D M, Pomerantz S (2009) Girl Power': Girls Reinventing Girlhood. Peter Lang Publ.

Gender Stereotypes: Where do They Come from and Why do They Persist?

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Questioning the origin of gender stereotypes is a complex and global issue, as multifaceted and layered as the cultures from which these preconceived notions originate. In Iceland, for example, almost no one (3.6%) believes that a woman has less right to available jobs than a man, whereas in Egypt, almost everyone believes such as an ineffable truth (94.9%).(1) What cultural variables could possibly account for this? Religion often takes the blame, but when one looks closer, different nations where the majorities are of the same faith often still exhibit a remarkable variety in the level and enforcement of gender stereotypes.

One hypothesis that accounts for the development of this discrepancy lies in the different ways in which various cultures practiced agriculture in the past. Ester Boserup, from whom this theory originated, found that gender roles are strongly correlated to plough use. Unlike shifting cultivation, which relied largely on the use of hand-held tools, plough usage requires “significant upper body strength, grip strength, and burst of power, which are needed to either pull the plough or control the animal that pulls it. Because of these requirements, when plough agriculture is practiced, men have an advantage in farming relative to women.”(1)

Naturally, as the centuries passed, it became thus assumed in those societies that men have an advantage when it comes to activities outside of the home (i.e. manual labour) whereas women specialise in those activities which take place in the home. The belief in this division of labour became so imbedded in these cultures that it effortlessly crossed over to those populations applying the same belief system to non-agricultural work.

To test this hypothesis, researchers combined pre-industrial ethnographic data from a wide variety of nations and ethnic groups which reported whether those societies traditionally practiced plough agriculture, alongside contemporary measures of individuals’ views about gender roles. Consistent with Boserup’s hypothesis, historical plough use was found to correlate very strongly with views on gender inequality today. (1)

In the digital age, where rapid and frequent cross-culture communication is a fact of life, the reasons why these stereotypes still persist is perhaps more baffling than their origins. After all, it is quite easy for someone from Egypt to observe the fact that Icelandic society is functioning perfectly productively, despite their belief that women work just as effectively outside the home as men do. Likewise, even countries with adequate workplace equality still have stereotypes about the preferences and natures of women and men as distint categories.

But when exactly do these develop?

The short answer would be, perhaps obviously, “in childhood.” Children become “gender aware” at a very young age (typically between three and five years of age, in our commercialised society even sooner), and begin to develop gender stereotypes almost immediately thereafter.(2) These concepts become rigidly defined between 5 and 7 years of age (Martin & Ruble, 2004), and begin to have lasting impact on identity and self-esteem by adolescence.(2)

Is this nature or nurture? It is a combination, but research seems to suggest that for the most part and at younger age, it is the latter. Children observe the roles of their elders, and begin to act them out in play with their peers as soon as they can walk and communicate enough to do so; through this process, they label themselves as being a boy or a girl, and begin to instruct themselves on what that entails.(2) “Imitation and instruction are vital components to children’s development. Adults promote this learning by role-modeling behavior, assisting with challenging tasks, and passing along cultural meanings to objects and events, all of which are components of gender development.” (Vygotsky, 1961)

Even if a child’s parents do not adhere rigidly to gender stereotypes, the pervasive nature of the media inundates children with preconceived notions about gender. Gender-typed messages are found on bed sheets, towels, bandages, clothes, school supplies, toys, and furniture (Freeman, 2007). Even the most well-meaning parent cannot shop for their child without exposing him or her to segregated pink and blue aisles for girls and boys. If aisles were thus segregated by race, most people today would be appalled, and yet it is considered normal where gender stereotypes are concerned (fortunately, activists, consumer groups and concerned parents are starting to react to this, demanding an ending to gender segregation in the marketing of children’s toys – see for instance the Lettoysbetoys and PinkStinks campaigns promoted in UK).

Likewise, adult role models are frequently shown perpetuating gender stereotypes via the media; for example, advertising related to computers typically depicts men and boys as “competent users, engaged in active or professional roles, while women and girls were passive observers or merely posed next to the computer while looking pretty or provocative.” (McNair, Kirova-Petrova, & Bhargava, 2001) This, of course, subsequently shows up in children’s play. It also keeps gender stereotypes perpetuated even as we move into a highly digital economy.

When a child enters school, this bias usually deepens, furthered by the biases of his or her teachers. “While unintentional, a teacher’s inherent biases can perpetuate unfair stereotypes and may be manifested in discriminatory classroom practices. For example, one group of teachers perceived girls as passive learners and therefore more “teachable” than boys.” (Erden & Wolfgang, 2004). In my research this was very evident as primary school girls (age 8-11) often complained of the double standard in terms of expected behavior from their teachers: boys would be allowed to be noisy and misbehaving in the class and playground to a much greater extent than the girls. An example is given by their conceptualization of “being a girl” as opposed to “being a boy” (see link http://thegirlsproject.webs.com/stereotypes.htm) Research shows that females often receive less active attention from their teachers, which reinforces lower aspirations of achievement and poor self-esteem. (2)

With all of these factors taken into consideration, it is logical to assume that gender stereotypes today are the product of cultural bias that is found on many different levels of society—in the home, in the media, on the playground, and in the classroom—which then perpetuates into later workplace, affecting our identity/sense of self and our relationship with others. Ending gender stereotyping, then, will take the concerted effort of many – parents, educators, activists, media producers, marketers, regulators, to name a few – to critically analyze and counteract gender bias found at all levels, in the media, the school system, the workplace, and the home.

 Main reading:
  1. http://www.econ.northwestern.edu/seminars/Nemmers11/Giuliano.pdf
  2. http://bit.ly/1pOb7Gv
References:
Boserup, E. (1970). Woman’s Role in Economic Development, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Erden, F., & Wolfang, C.H. (2004). An exploration of the differences in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade teachers’ beliefs related to discipline when dealing with male and female students. Early Child Development and Care, 174(1), 3-11.
Freeman, N. (2007). Preschoolers’ perceptions of gender-appropriate toys and their parents’ beliefs about genderized behaviors: Miscommunication, mixed messages, or hidden truths? Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(5), 357-366
Martin, C., & Ruble, D. (2004). Children’s search for gender cues: Cognitive perspectives in gender development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 67-70.
McNair, S., Kirova-Petrova, A., & Bhargava, A. (2001). Computers and young children in the classroom: Strategies for minimizing gender bias. Early Childhood Education Journal, 29(1), 51-55.
Vygotsky, L. (1961). The development of scientific concepts in childhood. In K. Paciorek, & J. Munro (Eds.), Sources: Notable selections in early childhood education (pp. 11-18). Guilford, CT: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill.

The Scientific Evidence about Pink and Blue Brains

If you are interested in reading the scientific evidence of the actual (biological and genetic) brain’s differences between boys and girls/men and women, there are two important books which present and discuss a comprehensive – if not staggering – amount of neuroscientific research.

It is worth to note that both are written by neuroscientists who know their stuff, not journalists or specialised writers! Both books emphasizes the fact that new science discoveries have confirmed that the “neuroplasticity” of our brain make our biological characteristics not a fixed entity, but instead something which is constantly changing and molding through our thoughts moving through it (in other words our interaction with the enviroinment, as our thoughts are inflenced by it).

The first book is PINK BRAIN, BLUE BRAIN by Lise Eliot, PhD. I am reporting the synopsis verbatim as it is really self-explanatory of the content and conclusions of this work:

pinkand blue review

The second book is THE DELUSIONS OF GENDER by Cordelia Fine, which cover and raving reviews are copied below:

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reviews codelia fine reviews codelia fine 2

I have read both these books and I guarantee you that – once you start reading – you will find very hard to stop! Some of the conclusions really took me by surprise and I noticed that we are constantly fed inaccurate information by a stream of fiction-science astutely popularised by the media. These books have re-shaped drastically my many assumptions about girls and boys’s brain differences.

Don’t have the time to read a full book on the topic? Try this short booklet (8 pages!) by Patricia Campbell, PhD, it is from a fairly autorevole source (US Department of Education) and clearly written:

http://www.campbell-kibler.com/Stereo.pdf

Have a good read and please let me know your reflections too! 😉

What children really think about gender stereotypes in their TV programs?

This is a huge scale content analysis of gender stereotypes in children TV programmes around the world and one of a few study investigating children’ own preferences regarding gender  stereotypes.

Gotz. M. (2008), Girls and Boys and Television The Role of Gender.

Gotz and her research team tracked gender representation in almost twenty thousand children’ TV shows from 24 countries and found that gender stereotypes are still extremely prevalent within kids’ television. The same study reveals that these stereotypes are far from what kids actually prefer: most girls in the study actually identified with “assertive and resourceful female leads that are in control of their lives and find their own solutions to problems” (Gotz, 2008).

Click the link below to access the file and read more 😉

http://bit.ly/1c4ihme

The Blue and Pink World of Marketing to Kids

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Griffiths, Merris: ‘Blue worlds and pink worlds – A portrait of intimate polarity’. In: Buckingham, David (Ed.) (2002): Small Screens. Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 159-184

This an interesting content analysis study detailing the strict division between pink and blue world existing today in children marketing.

Content analysis represent important studies in terms of evidencing the characteristics of adverts content, although it is only part of the puzzle: the author points out how further research is needed to investigate children actual response to advertising, especially at younger age, when their gender identity is still a shaping process (and this was precisely the aim of my PhD exploration into girls advertising experiences).

The aim of Griffiths’ paper is formulated as:

“to analyse the ways in which gender stereotyping operates on the most subtle and unobtrusive levels within toy advertisement texts, and thereby to describe and explain how the ‘gendering’ of both product and purchaser operates. An analysis of this kind demands that one look below the more obvious surface meanings of texts to the underlying structure of their ‘hidden’ (or unconscious) appeals. I intend to clarify how toy ads create a gender-polarised world for children, whilst demonstrating that the  situation is a little more complex than simple divisions between ‘blue’ and ‘pink’”.

“Of course, it should also be noted at the outset that textual analysis only identifies the parameters within which audience readings occur. How these readings occur is a matter for further research. The social worlds of boys and girls may in fact be much less polarised than the famously constructed worlds of Barbie and Action Man”

After a careful analysis the researcher concluded that the current gender segregation in marketing children toys is doing more harm than good, effectively pushing kids into pre-fabricated boxes:

“Yet when faced with a ‘packaged world it may well be that children have no option but to learn their place within it, seeing the patterns of behaviour that are represented there as unalterable fact”.

You can access the full article clicking the link below:

http://www.merrisgriffiths.co.uk/blue__pink.htm