Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!
Facebook and Texting and YouTube, Oh My!
I’ve seen some scary things in the past week. Worrisome, anxiety inducing documentaries and news stories. I feel anxiety for Fiona & Sophie.
First I watched “Sext Up Kids“, a CBC Doc Zone episode about hyper-sexualized porn culture and it’s “devastating effects” on our kids. Some of the information was truly horrifying. It begins with companies marketing sexed-up clothing and media to children and progresses to the statistic that 80% of teenage boys watch online porn regularly. Watching this porn skews their perception of healthy sexual relationships, they learn to expect the performance that porn sex is. Some of them become unable to have a normal relationship because of unrealistic expectations.
Then there is the issue of sexting; girls texting or emailing nude photos of themselves to a boyfriend who then often passed in on to his friends. Often the images end up of Facebook and the bullying begins: “WHORE“, “BITCH“, “SLUT“, and worse.
It is disturbing and sad that a young girl could think that sending her boyfriend a nude photo is a way to demonstrate her love for him. And even more disturbing that he would think it’s OK to pass it on to others.
We can blame the corporations (I do think they need to be held to task) for manufacturing hyper-sexualized clothing for little girls but….who is buying it? Or allowing their girls to wear it?
Watch the documentary here. Check out the comments by Darren Laur – he speaks of the law, and organization called The Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use.
Here is the Trailer.
Killing Us Softly 4 is a media education documentary by Jean Kilbourne. It’s about how the images in the media affects girls and asks us to look critically at popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, self-esteem issues, gender violence and more.
My book club discusses these issues at every meeting, in spite of the fact they are not always related to the book. All the moms are very concerned about their children – girls and boys.
I know that we can’t live in a bubble but I’m tempted to join a Mennonite community or escape to the South Pacific to keep my girls away from this.
We can talk to them until we’re blue in the face, educate them, discuss, empathize (and oh, I can empathize) but the reality is the media WILL influence them negatively.
My book club discusses these issues at every meeting, in spite of the fact they are not always related to the book. All the moms are very concerned about their children – girls and boys.
I know that we can’t live in a bubble but I’m tempted to join a Mennonite community or escape to the South Pacific to keep my girls away from this.
We can talk to them until we’re blue in the face, educate them, discuss, empathize (and oh, I can empathize) but the reality is the media WILL influence them negatively.
I find our western culture disturbing in many ways and this is at the top of the list.
What do you think? Can we instill a strong enough sense of self-esteem in our kids to allow them to walk away from all this unaffected and strong? Should corporations and the media be held accountable?
Education is the best gift I can give to my children. I do not care if it is classical or online education as long as the quality of education is high.I find this post very informative, Well done, thanks for posting! Thumbs up!
I think that advertisers should be required, by law, to place a warning on their ad (like on cigarettes) and not in tiny type, either, every time the image they are using has been touched up or modified.
We could also show our support for companies, such as Dove, who are supportive of increasing the self-esteem of girls.
Tracey,
The thing is, their ads convince us that we need the product to fit in, be accepted, etc. It’s a vicious circle. The ads prey on the vulnerable – it’s very, very unethical.
I don’t watch any of that crap either, but I do watch a few shows and am confronted with ads as a result. I don’t buy fashion magazines (anymore) but I do see billboards, the covers of magazines in the supermarket checkout, etc. It’s unavoidable.
I see how young women are affected on a daily basis. I teach media literacy and internet safety but I know that it’s largely ineffective. Little girls I taught in grade 4 have sexted images of themselves around and I’ve heard about it. How widely know does it have to be for a me to hear it 4-6 years after I taught them?
Kimberly,
That is scary. Another person commented on my Facebook that her daughter took a topless photo of herself on her phone but luckily hadn’t sent it anywhere.
My own stepdaughter and her friends thought you were really uncool if you didn’t have sex before you graduated from high school. It was more important to be cool by having sex than to pick the right partner and wait for the right time.
Frightening.
Sadly this is old news to me. My husband and I spot checked my 14 year old Daughter’s laptop a while ago. What we found made me sick. She had been engaging explicit sexual chat over skype. It looked as though web camming had also occurred. She has since lost her computer privileges. I thought I knew her. I thought I was the cool, approachable Mom. I thought I had given her self esteem and confidence. Sigh. So often she comes to me and tells me about so-and-so at school who dresses skanky, or smokes, or has done this-or-that. As it turns out my girl is not immune from the pressure and expectations of society. In some ways things haven’t changed. I recall going to the school library in middle school to peek at a National Geographic or classic art book to see what a boy-thang looked like. But now it’s scarey. A while back my Daughter and her friend googled sex and brought up a smorgasborg of debachery. No.. that didn’t happen at my house.. it was at her Dad’s. I had to do more than a little damage control because of that.
I am with grumbler
garbage in garbage out. I don’t watch the stuff or read the stuff or buy the stuff.
At the end of the day the role the parents play, the mini culture we live in will carry them through. But it is unfortunate we have to work so hard against the abnormal ‘norm’.
Children in beauty pageants should be removed from their mothers and put in homes where they can be kids and not look in the mirror until they go for their first job interview.
i’d like to run away screaming and bury my head in the sand cuz it couldn’t possibly happen to my two…but i’m sure i’ll really need to get in there and defend, talk and analyze these things with them so they can protect themselves.
Sara, I always see the “marketing shots” as artistic too… is that weird?! Maybe we’re old.
Thanks for these clips Erin – I really want to watch that documentary from CBC…especially as a mother of a boy – I really feel an obligation to make sure his views/opinions on his female peers are healthy and that will lead into a healthier view into adulthood.
The second clip was really interesting. I had never even thought of the way women are turned into objects in marketing – I’ll be honest, I usually see this from an artistic perspective and not objectifying women – I guess that comes from an older perspective? Not sure – interesting – I want to watch the other parts now.
I don’t know if any person can grow up in our Western culture completely unaffected, but if there are no consumers for a product, it will eventually go away. It is simplistic (and impossible) to think this problem will just go away by itself, but the less people buy into what’s being sold here, the less affected we can become.
I don’t buy celebrity news or fashion magazines. I don’t watch reality television that parade children into beauty contest arenas. (Nor do I watch people compete at weight-loss, or finding husbands.) If you limit your garbage intake, you take in less garbage.
I do wish the fashion industry would become more responsible (collectively) but sex sells… if there’s a buyer.