The New Celebrity: Are Vloggers Better Role Models?

youtubers-1

YouTube, like many of the social media services we rely on, was born mostly out of necessity: back in 2005, two former Paypal employees—Chad Hurley and Steve Chen—realised they had no way of sharing the video they had just shot at a conference. Video files were too large to email and uploading them to the web was incredibly tedious, so the natural solution was to create an efficient online media sharing site.[1] However, despite these pragmatic beginnings, it took just a few years (and a 1.6 billion dollar Google buyout) for YouTube to begin profoundly altering the way we consume media, prompting average viewers to move beyond passive observation and tackle the task of content creation. As increasingly sophisticated smartphones armed those viewers with better and better cameras, a revolution was born—and nowhere has it been felt more profoundly than within the teen demographic. Today, more and more young people are naming vloggers (video bloggers) when asked who their favourite celebrities are: According to a 2014 survey commissioned by Variety magazine, the five most influential stars among 13-18 year-olds are all YouTube sensations, with the comedy duo Smosh taking the lead.[2]

For parents, the idea of their children looking up to these (often apparently wholesome) vloggers rather than an endless succession of morally questionable, highly sexualised, and obviously-manufactured mainstream ‘stars’ often produces a profound sense of relief. However, the vlogger phenomenon is not above warranting a critical appraisal; though you won’t find many of these young ‘cyber celebrities’ glorifying drug abuse or stripping naked on album covers, their status as role models—particularly role models for young women—remains somewhat questionable.

Meet The Vloggers: Who Are They?

In addition to Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla, famous for their off-beat brand of charming, zany improvised comedy) some of the vloggers most popular with teens include:

  • Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (PewDiePie): A handsome young Swedish gamer, PewDiePie has accrued a staggering 30 million+ subscribers thanks to his humorous real-time commentary on video games. Though PewDiePie refers to his fans as his ‘bros’, research suggests that he appeals to both teen girls and boys in fairly equal measure. Though some parents may take issue with his use of strong language, he’s generally perceived as good-natured and even charitable, being a major supporter of the charity ‘Save the Children’.
  •  Ryan Higa (NigaHiga): Ryan’s unique ability to master both satirical humour and topical rants (which he refers to as ‘off the pill’ rants as he engages in them while off his ADHD medication) has drawn over 12 million subscribers to his channel. Like many successful YouTubers, Ryan also has a penchant for genuine personal confession that endears him to his young fans; he has even opened up about his struggles as a victim of bullying.
  • Bethany Mota (formerly Macbarbie07): Bethany largely owes her subscriber base of over 7 million to the invention of ‘haul’ videos, wherein she reveals her purchases to her fans after shopping sprees. She also gives fashion and beauty advice. Mota, who won a 2014 Teen Choice Award, usually broadcasts from her archetypal feminine bedroom, which is adorned with colorful accessories, such as strings of pink hearts.
  • Tyler Oakley: YouTube’s most famous member of the LGBTQ community, ‘out and proud’ vlogger Tyler Oakley has amassed over 5 million fans and won two Teen Choice Awards. In addition to being a spokesman for LGBTQ rights, Oakley is much-loved for his inspirational videos and special guest features.
  • Zoe Sugg (Zoella): Another style and beauty vlogger, Zoella’s effervescent personality, comprehensive reviews of beauty products, and hair and makeup tutorials have netted her over 5 million fans, primarily young girls. Zoella’s genuinely clean image appeals to parents and advertisers alike while her openness about her struggles with anxiety make her relatable to many young people.
  • Tanya Burr: Like Zoella, Tanya—a former make-up counter girl—has amassed millions of followers while dispensing beauty advice to young girls. So successful is Burr that she now has her own lipstick and nail-polish range in Superdrug and she is often pursued by ‘high fashion’ brands (e.g. Chanel, Dior and YSL), all of whom send her freebies with the hope that they will get featured in Burr’s ‘Get Ready With Me’ make-up tutorials. Tanya, whole also maintains a clean and ‘down to earth’ image, also occasionally makes baking videos.

Deconstructing The Message: How Do Vloggers Stack Up As Role Models? 

The 2000s have thus far been disappointing where conventional celebrity role models are concerned: from the shameless excesses of the Hiltons at the beginning of the millennium, to the self-destruction and/or sexualisation of female Disney stars intended for the preteen market (Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, et al), the practised vapidity of the Kardashians or the frank obnoxiousness of many teen heart-throb (Justin Bieber, notoriously), we’ve been given solid reasons to look beyond traditional media for inspiration. But how are vloggers—the elected leaders of the YouTube generation—really holding up against their old media counterparts?

There’s little doubt that many ‘cyber celebrities’ are at least more genuine than their Hollywood brethren; operating without handlers and the direct oversight of big business, they have worked hard to create both their own images and their own content. However, while this is assuredly admirable, popular vloggers are more often a reflection of the ‘status quo’ than they are radically reshaping it. The mere fact that almost all of the top vloggers intended for young girls run shopping, fashion, and beauty vlogs[1] alone (while popular male vloggers cover niches that range from gaming to comedy to commentary and more) is cause for thoughtful consideration.

Beauty bloggers like Zoella have also been criticised for their all-too-familiar hypocrisy: Preaching a message of self-acceptance and spouting ‘you’re good enough as you are’ rhetoric while directing their young fans toward the purchase of a sizable collection of beauty products. Conspicuous consumption, too, appears here to stay; not only are some vlogger celebrities, like Bethany Mota, famous almost entirely for shopping, Tanya Burr openly encourages her young fans to purchase brands far out of their price range. When questioned if the products she promotes aren’t too expensive for her teen fans, Burr flippantly shot back, ‘No, they can save up, or they can request them from their parents as birthday presents.’[1] Meanwhile, brilliant young women like Shirley Eniang—a maths student with dreams of becoming a pilot or an aeronautical engineer—content themselves with talking almost exclusively about different ways of wearing skinny jeans and styling ‘cute milkmaid braids for spring’.

Certainly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to look good, but the lack of diversity in female-intended content remains a troubling phenomenon among celebrity vloggers, particularly when paired with aggressive advertising and a decidedly mixed message where self-love is concerned. This peculiar brand of hypocrisy seems to have changed but little since the days of women’s magazines.

There are, however, signs of hope. The prevalence of LGBTQ cyber celebrities certainly surpasses that which is found in the mainstream media, indicating a fairer and more even playing field for young people of all identities and orientations. Likewise, not only do many vloggers (including fashion and beauty vloggers) speak up about charitable causes and attempt to shed light on real issues that affect young people (e.g. Zoella’s frank discussion of her issues with anxiety), some popular YouTube channels (run by women and largely for women) feature honest and helpful discussion about women’s health issues and sexuality. Laci Green, for example (a sex education activist from the San Francisco Bay Area) is doing her part to compensate for the lack of adequate sex ed in the United States with her popular YouTube show, Sex+. Meanwhile, vloggers like Dianna Cowan (Physics Girl) are finding entertaining and informative ways to get young women interested in historically male-dominated fields like maths and science. Evidently, the potential for change is here—we just need to decide what to do with it.

Vloggers As Role Models: Helping Your Child Choose

When it comes to embracing vloggers as role models, parents and young people alike should draw on their power to freely elect—with views, ‘likes’, and subscriptions—their own icons within the digital sphere. Parents should stay informed about current vlogging sensations and (as when dealing with traditional celebrities) attempt to guide, but not control, their children’s’ choices. Likewise, it’s always a good idea to teach young people to think critically about their favourites, to ask themselves why they are drawn to a given celebrity, what he or she is really saying, and what he or she hopes to achieve by broadcasting his or her message.

With due scrutiny, it’s possible that the ‘YouTube revolution’ will help to resurrect and refresh the tarnished concept of media-based mentors thanks to its potential for greater authenticity, the inherent relatability of its stars, and the complete creative freedom it grants to its young visionaries. After all, the best role model isn’t someone who is perfect; it’s someone who genuinely and honestly embraces his or her imperfections and then uses them as part of a platform for enhancing the common good.

References:

[1]   The revolution wasn’t televised: The early days of YouTube, Todd Wasserman. http://mashable.com/2015/02/14/youtube-history/#EPsBG7ZgVsqS

[2]    Survey: YouTube Stars More Popular Than Mainstream Celebs Among U.S. Teens, Susanne Ault. http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/survey-youtube-stars-more-popular-than-mainstream-celebs-among-u-s-teens-1201275245/

[3]    11 Most Subscribed Youtube Girls Channels, http://richclubgirl.com/rich-photos/11-most-subscribed-youtube-girls-channels/

[4]     Meet the YouTube big hitters: The bright young vloggers who have more fans than 1D, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2656209/The-teen-phenomenon-thats-taking-Youtube.html

25 Vloggers Under 25 Who Are Owning The World Of YouTube, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/17/25-vloggers-under-25-who-are-owning-the-world-of-youtube_n_6340280.html

Why Youtubers Aren’t The Worst Teen Role Models Ever, http://www.mookychick.co.uk/opinion/love-and-life/youtubers-teenage-role-models.php

Zoella isn’t the perfect role model girls think she is, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11259853/Zoella-isnt-the-perfect-role-model-teen-girls-think-she-is.html

YouTube UK: 20 of Britain’s most popular online video bloggers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/apr/07/youtube-uk-20-online-video-bloggers

Watching “Sexy Baby”: a Movie Documentary

“We are constantly amazed at the challenges girls are presented with today. When we were growing up things just didn’t seem as complicated. With the Internet and social media bringing sex and sexual content right into our homes, we have often wondered what the impact is on young girls and women today. The new feature documentary film, Sexy Baby, gives us an inside look into the new cultural shift taking a hold of America. Intimate, candid conversations and personal storytellingng expose this new reality. It is shocking and disturbing, but also a wake up call”.
(from http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/sexy-baby-sexiness-the-c…/)

This is another brilliant (although a bit painful to watch I must admit…) 2012’s movie documentary from co-directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus (the same directors of the recent Hot Girls Wanted), available in full format from You Tube.

After a powerful intro consisting of a fast-paced collage of images and clips cuts from popular media /news effectively depicting the sexual saturation of today’s mass media, the movie documentary starts with some young girls watching Lady Gaga in her sexually provoking “Poker Face” video while imitating her moves – a familiar sight for most people these days – then the camera filmed what appear as a 5-6 years old girl giggling “Britney Bitch”, mimicking the famous Will i Am ‘s song.

The documentary follow the lives of 3 women (one of them is actually still a young girl just becoming teenager): an ex porno-movies star who is trying to get pregnant, a 12 year old girl experimenting with her identity and a 22 year old who yearns for “normal” private parts.

What I’ve liked about this documentary is the non-judgemental way is filmed and the way it captures the reality of living in a media-saturated world.  I would have loved to see more racial diversity in it, but that’s about it. The documentary is available now to watch in different formats and, considered its sexually-explicit nature, the authors have produced an edited educational version aimed to a younger audience for its screening into schools (which I’d be really keen to show to the girls taking part in my offline projects).

Sexy Baby is the first documentary film to put faces to a seismic cultural shift: the cyber age is creating a new sexual landscape. While doing research for the film, we had intimate and candid conversations with kids in middle school classrooms, suburban shopping malls, nightclubs, college dorms, and even conducted an informal roundtable during a high school house party. While chronicling trends among small town and big city kids, we discovered this: Having pubic hair is considered unattractive and “gross.” Most youngsters know someone who has emailed or texted a naked photo of themselves. Many kids have accidentally or intentionally had their first introduction to sex be via hardcore online porn. Facebook has created an arena where kids compete to be “liked” and constantly worry about what image to portray – much of what was once private is now made public. And the list goes on… –– (C) Sexy Baby Official Site

“We are the first generation to have what we have, so there is no one before us that can… kind of GUIDE US…I mean we are the PIONEERS” says Winnifred – a 12-year-old girl from New York.

What Winnifred says reflects the thinking of many other kids: they often feel that they live in a world which adults can’t understand fully. They are suspicious of our judgements and our perspective on things because after all we grown up in a completely different era, where computers, internet and social media were not around, so – in their view – how can we possibly guide them through this new sexual landscape? As parents and educators, perhaps we should ask ourselves: how much do we truly know about this new world and about our children’s world?

Modern Feminism & Celebrities: Engaging the Masses or Losing Focus?

bey-feminist

“Feminism is flawed, but it offers, at its best, a way to navigate this shifting cultural climate. Feminism has certainly helped me find my voice. Feminism has helped me believe my voice matters, even in this world where there are so many voices demanding to be heard. How do we reconcile the imperfections of feminism with all the good it can do? In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed. For whatever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism fall short of our expectations, we decide that the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.”
Roxane Gay “Bad feminist” (2014)

 

That moment at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards when the queen herself, Beyoncé, dramatically slid across the stage with the word FEMINIST emblazoned in massive letters behind her is undoubtedly unforgettable. With her tight, glittering outfit, perfectly made-up appearance, and her status as both a career woman and a devoted wife and mother, Beyoncé single-handedly and single-mindedly embodied the major characteristics of third wave feminism, bringing the whole package to the viewers everywhere in one gloriously dramatic show of theatrics. In that moment we all knew modern feminism had arrived, right? Most major publications seem to think so, including Times Magazine, and the Twitter hubbub that followed Beyoncé’s performance was largely excited and favourable. Even Taylor Swift, who once avoided feminism as she felt it pit “girls against boys”, jumped on the bandwagon. Seemingly overnight, celebrity feminism became a bona fide phenomenon.

All appears well, at first glance, with this large-scale embrace of a word that, in years prior, was polarizing at best. True to its message that one can love men, be freely sexual, and celebrate one’s femininity (reclaiming it as a source of personal power), modern feminism has been key to banishing the old negative stereotypes associated with the “other F word”. And to its credit, one is no longer automatically presumed, by most, to be a lesbian, a “man hater”, or a prude, if one self-identifies as a feminist.

Despite the gleaming surface and celebrity endorsements, however, modern feminism – or fourth wave feminism as some has suggested (see Baumgardner 2011, Cochrane 2013, Munro 2013, Penny 2014) (1) – has been experiencing some serious criticism, even all-out backlash.  Feminism is not, in fact, new. Nor is its celebrity cachet; indeed, modern feminism is not currently doing anything truly revolutionary in terms of feminism’s perception in popular culture (even if Twitter and the news media seem to think it is). The Spice Girls were conveying roughly the same message to the masses that Beyoncé is twenty years ago, back when third wave feminism was just getting started. In fact, this last wave feminism has been bound together with celebrities and popular culture more or less since its inception.

The issue – according to celebrity feminism‘s detractors – is that feminism is not, at base, about popular culture, or even popular perception, but that it’s about systemic change and that this, arguably, may be where modern feminism is failing, raising the question of whether celebrities taking up the cause is helping the movement, or hindering it via distraction and glossy misrepresentation. These detractors are not without a point: throughout the western world over the last decade, women’s rights have either not made significant gains or, in some regions, have moved backwards. In the United States, for example, state politicians have enacted more than 200 restrictions over the last four years that make it harder for women to obtain safe, legal abortion care. To put that in perspective, that’s more restrictions in just four years than were enacted over the whole of the previous decade. (2) Likewise, in the UK, anti-abortion lobbyists have grown more aggressive, waging what the UK Times calls a “stealth war” on abortion rights. (3)

Speaking of the USA again, there has also been increasing pressure in many states to limit access to birth control. Already in some states, such as Arizona, a woman’s boss has the power to deny her insurance coverage for birth control if she is taking it for contraceptive reasons. (4) Goals like “securing the right to an abortion”, and “making it acceptable for women to delay or space their children with birth control, or even to not have children at all”, were the causes of second wave feminists. (5) How is it that modern feminism has the word “feminism” appearing everywhere in popular culture and social media, while the actual sum of women’s rights stagnates or erodes? Even the #glassceiling — something second wave feminists were relying on their daughters to break, building upon the gains the second wavers had made for women in the workplace over the span of their careers — remains securely in place.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal/Gallup survey, half of all female managers named reasons related to their gender as what is holding them back at work, including: “male chauvinism, attitudes toward a female boss, slow advancement for women, and the simple fact of being a woman.” Likewise, 61% of the women executives reported having been mistaken for a secretary at a business meeting; 25% said they had been thwarted on their way up the ladder by male attitudes toward women, and 70% believed they are paid less than men of equal ability. (6)

Meanwhile, the popular #everydaysexism project launched by Laura Bates in 2012 has collected over 50,000 personal statements from all over the world documenting actual experiences of sexism. All of this begs the question: have we allowed modern feminism to lose its focus? In an effort to make feminism more welcoming and inclusive, are we watering down what it really means?

Yes, we probably have and are, but to blame celebrity involvement alone for this would be terribly short-sighted. The real problem with modern feminism may lie within the movement itself, and how, in its efforts to be “all-inclusive” (breaking down barriers created by race and gender orientation), it has sadly and ironically become splintered and full of exclusive sects. Many third wave feminists report finding themselves shut down or unwelcome in conversations if their sexual orientation or race doesn’t match the mainstream. Thus, feminists who happen to be people of colour and gay feel unwelcomed among feminists who are heterosexual white (and viceversa), or if they happen to be cisgendered among transgendered individuals (and viceversa). But these divisions exist not in the ideals helded up by feminism; they are simply created by people’s different perspectives: some class/group of people feel more oppressed than others and wrongly excluded from the conversation, while some other class/group of people feel guilty and far too privileged than others. These feeling create barriers and barriers that painfully obstruct communication and progress. In forums and articles across the web, I read about different experiences  and contrasting points of view: some white — along with male feminists—feel accused of “derailing” conversations, not checking their “privilege” enough, and generally taking the focus off the people who — by their own estimation—really matter in that conversation, because they are the ones who are really oppressed. Take, for example, the experience of Generation-Y feminist and writer Devon Murphy:

“For as long as I can remember, I have been a feminist and proud of it. You could say I fell in love early, and like one who had found a high school sweetheart, I barely turned my head to see what other options were available. But now that I’m in my mid-20s, things seem a lot murkier. While I will always consider myself a feminist at heart, it’s no longer the simple movement I signed up for as a child. It isn’t just peace signs, birth control pills and that extra 30 cents on the dollar. What I once saw as a solid rock of ideals turned out to be a prism. And the more light that shines on it, the more the idea splinters into areas I can’t reach or even begin to understand. This is both exciting and difficult. I’m not sure where I fit in anymore, since, as it turns out, I was born into the white, upper-middle class section of feminists. We’re not always the most popular, and some say we have the least to be angry about.” (7)

Meanwhile, writer Liz Henry of The Broad Side laments the fact that, while the LGBTQ movement has conquered both pop cultural exposure and the dismantling of “state-sanctioned and federal government-endorsed homophobia”, feminists “have yet to decide if Sheryl Sandberg is the anti-Christ or the power unicorn the movement deserves; if women of color “stir the pot” or have a damn point. Or about the future of feminism in and of itself.” (8) Henry raises a valid question: If we’re wholly occupied attacking other women’s right to be feminists, and alternately building up and tearing down our own idols, how do we go about, as a unified whole, defending women’s rights within the political systems of our nations?Within this environment, it’s all but impossible to ascertain whether celebrity endorsement is harming the message of feminism or whether, conversely, it’s the last bit of glue holding the splintered third wave of the movement together, a beacon of hope and inspiration to young girls regardless of their race, class, or orientation.

Perhaps we should all relax and accept for ourselves the “Bad Feminist”‘s label  the adorable and witty Roxane Gay (2014) embraces in her book? But before we can effectively criticise the message that this new form of celebrity feminism or fourth wave feminism is spreading, we have to agree — if not unanimously, at least relatively cohesively — on what the right and proper message of feminism actually is. Before we can properly call ourselves feminists, we have to act on it. After all, no amount of celebrity exposure and pop cultural dissemination can step in and cause change for us. 😉

  1. Baumgardner, J.(2011)F 'em!: Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some ThoughtsonBalls, California: Seal Press. Cochrane, K.(2012.)All the RebelWomen: The rise of the fourth wave of feminism. London: Guardian Books. Munro, E. (2013)‘Feminism: A Fourth Wave?’ ThePolitical Studies Association. http://www.psa.ac.uk/insight-plus/feminism-fourth-wave. Penny, L. (2014) Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/laws-courts-shrinking-access-to-abortion/2014/10/10/efd0aef4-4f25-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html
  3. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/thunderer/article4363365.ece
  4. http://www.ibtimes.com/arizona-birth-control-bill-banning-use-contraception-employers-back-spotlight-798937
  5. http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/historical/Third-Wave-Feminism.html
  6. http://www.feminist.org/research/business/ewb_glass.html
  7. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/24/modern-feminism_n_3471768.html
  8. http://www.the-broad-side.com/the-jezebelification-of-feminism-liz-henry
  9. Roxane Gay (2014) Bad Feminist. Harper Perennial

Media’s Perfection through a Young Woman’s Eyes

sunset strip billboards jun12

by Dusty Rose (USA, age 25)

I live in Los Angeles, self-proclaimed “Entertainment capital of the world.” Every waking morning the denizens of this overcrowded mini-state are inundated with images. Billboards on the work commute or daily walk, magazines in the grocery stores, banner ads in the email sidebar or website of choice, commercials and trailers for every conceivable product, film, and TV series.

I have lived my life so swamped by these images that I have learned to tune them out for the most part, which only prompts bigger, flashier, more attention-grabbing ones to take their place as advertisers realize we’re becoming inured to their attempts.

The few times I actually stop and look at what is being sold, I realize that it is always Perfection of some kind. If they are not directly showing you how YOU could be Perfect, they are showing you actors and actresses who set a standard for “Perfect” that few can reach naturally.

I remember growing up hating myself all the time. Before I knew the diagnosis label Trichotillomania, I was pulling out my eyebrows and eyelashes from anxiety, and would spend hours meticulously tweezing my knees because it calmed me down. When I hit puberty, skin-picking was added to the mix. The pulling and picking eased my anxiety, but directly fueled a raging self-hatred. Several passages in my old journals spew vitriolic sentences about how “Princesses don’t have scabbed and scarred faces” and “Princesses don’t have gaps in their eyelashes.” I never actually referenced Disney princesses in this, but rather the idea of Perfection that I saw everywhere and was embodied in the term “Princess.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t me, and I belonged “in the garbage with the trash.”

As I have grown, I have struggled and continue to struggle with overcoming my self-hatred. I don’t wear makeup unless I completely lose an eyebrow, and then it’s just a little eyebrow pencil. I feel shame some days, but prefer not to hide behind a mask like there’s something terrible that I must hide about my appearance.

I have also made many friends, and at least three were actively bulimic when I was with them. It was when their fingers were down their throats that I most raged at the images everywhere, the worshipped model of Perfection that made them think they were “less than.” I hated the pain my friends were in, and wished with all my heart they would see themselves as beautiful, even as I could not see myself as anything more than garbage.

If I could change one thing about how the media presents women, it would be to strip away the concept of perfection. Not that women don’t go around all day without makeup, many do. But do they wake up in Perfect eyeshadow? Do they swim with gloriously thick mascara? Is every blemish properly concealed to avoid the horrifying truth of nature? Must every single woman walk around looking like she just spent half the day in a high-end salon? And, in the vein of stripping away “Perfection” as it is known, I would add in a boatload of women in various sizes and shapes as actresses in main and supporting roles, whose role in the film is NOT to be fixed, degraded, or made fun of. I would have some struggle with their appearance, reflecting our own struggles, and I would have some rejoice in their reflections to give us some hope that we, too, can enjoy ourselves in any shape and size.

Maybe one day the standard for Perfect will be different, or maybe we will outgrow the need for Perfect. Until that day, the best thing we can do is build each other up in the places where we are constantly torn down.

Launching LetMeBME: A Worldwide Video Project

What would happen if I start asking women and girls around the world to answer 3 simple questions? This is the first short film produced from a selection of the first contributions received 😉

Eventually I would like to invite contributions from the men/boys, to see what is their view on question 1: I think it’s paramount to include all views and allow the project to be as inclusive and agenda-free as possible.

The project website www.letmebme.org is still under construction and I am looking for sponsors to effectively power the website with in-built video-uploading technology: this will bring the project to the next level as contributors will be able to directly share their uploaded videos through YouTube/Vimeo and other video sharing links. For now everyone interested in sharing their thoughts can send their short video via email to letmebme@mediasavvygirls.org or via tweet/facebook with the hashtag #letmeBME; our editor will upload all new contributions on a monthly basis.

In this era of social media and advanced video technology there is not excuse for not joining in and letting our voices be heard!

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.

Celebrities Speaking up about Sexism

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Last night I came across an interesting article in Huffingtonpost about Hollywood celebs speaking about sexism in the movies world.

How actresses are treated backstage is a clear reflection of a pervasive discrimination towards women/girls in the media. I think it is indeed positive to see that celebrities are starting to speak up candidly about these issues: after all, they are seen by many – young and old, men and women and everything in between – as role models to look up to, so their words and experiences can really sparkle a lively debate around gender equality not only in the media, but backstage, during the planning and production of a media product.

I think pictures can move around the web much faster than articles, so I decided to make an inspiring visual slide from this article to hopefully spread awareness. Ellen’s testimonial should encourage other actresses and celebs to speak up and their words can be amplified through social media, reaching more and more people.

You can read the article in its entirety by clicking the link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/sexism-in-hollywood-women-problem-inequality_n_4867219.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

 

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:

delusions_of_gender_web_girl

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! 😉