COMM 322: Final Project: The Sexualization Of Children

Brandon Reed, Josh Fern, Alexandria Larsen, Caleb Livesay, Andy Kunz, Sydney Curet, Reign Acosta

Celebs and the 3rd Wave

Third wave feminism is very interested to me. I never actually thought about what plays into a feminist because of the common stereotypes that just lay the basics down, but I think third wave feminism is great. Someone in class mentioned that they did not see a problem with it because they are using their resources to convey messages. Are we wrong for deciding who makes the feminist cut?

In media right now, there is talk that Miley claims to be a feminist. Her definition was basically telling women not to be scared of anything. We often see Miley in the news for being over dramatic, or shall I say just how the media portrayals her every move as dramatic.

People disagree with her being a feminist because she hasn’t done anything (or nothing has been reported) for women’s rights.

Someone who does see her side is Catherine, “She’s using it for her own purposes, she’s increasing her fan base, she’s making a lot of money, she’s doing what she wants to do.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/miley-cyrus-feminist_n_4274194.html

On the other hand we have Lily Allen who has been ridiculed for her pregnancy weight gain and not losing the pounds fast enough.

She recently came out with the song, Hard Out Here. It actually mocks Robin’s Thicke’s Blurred Lines song and video, Miley as well. Some of the lines include, "I won't be bragging 'bout my cars or talking 'bout my chains… Don't need to shake my ass for you 'cause I've got a brain."

When picking the feminist here, to some it can be simply clear, but for me it’s confusing. Being a feminist has such a broad definition. I think if you are using woman power for yourself, it can be just as rewarding as using it to help other women. I often hear that we women need to embrace ourselves and be comfortable in our own skin. With these two artists, they both have different views of that and it’s perfectly okay.

Heternormative Effects in Children Shows

Sometimes I wonder if heteronormativity is established with our age. For example, parent’s and media might have taught kids the “norm” but how many of those kids actually understood why things are the way they are? I feel like they don’t understand what they are being taught until they are older.

I have two brief examples of television shows that have characters in question. The first, a lot of us might have watched as a child is, The Power Puff Girls. There is a villain named Him. If you don’t remember, Him was the red devil like creature with lobster hands. As a child, I never questioned his appearance clothing wise. But if you look at a picture of his character, Him is wearing a “Santa” similar dress with black high thigh heels, pink rosy cheeks and long eyelashes. He also has masculine voice in the show.

I never thought about Him being possibly contradictory with his character, it was just something subtle in the show and not very questionable until I became older and saw the stereotypes of LGBT in media and how the LGBT community “should” act and appear.

However, a noticeable questioned character for many of us was Tinky Winky in the Teletubbies. He was purple and carried the red bag similar to a purse. I was never really sure what the genders of the Teletubbies were, I had thought they were all male, except for LaaLaa. Maybe that is why I questioned Tinky Winky in the first place, but I never thought the show sent out subliminal messages. For me as a child, the show was not based around his character, so I didn’t spend too much time thinking about why he had a purse. I am not going to lie that I was fascinated with the show. I still know every single word to the theme song. My favorite part of the show was the characters were always making a mess and NooNoo, (the vacuum,) had to clean up. To me the show was harmless. However after research, others disagreed. It turns out that there are two female and two male Teletubbies. Many thought of Tinky Winky as being a homosexual figure for kids and that he promoted homosexuality because he was purple and had a triangle which both could represent the gay pride symbol. After revision of the character Polish politician, Ewa Sowińska (who is not for homosexuality), determined that the character was harmless to children, he simply promoted happiness. In conclusion, I think that heteronormativity effects older people and young adults more than children.

The Lonely Facebook Struggle

I use Facebook as a connection to family that I don’t see on a regular basis, old friends from high school and group projects. A while ago, I tried to deactivate my Facebook and Twitter account just to see how many people would actually even notice. I was trying for a month, but unfortunately could only make it to 2 weeks for Facebook and 3 weeks for Twitter because of a group that I am involved with on campus. Our main communication is through a Facebook group with frequent updates on Twitter, so I had no other choice but to reactivate them. As soon as I reactivated Facebook, I get about 6 messages from friends. Out of those 6 messages, 3 of them were related to the group that I am in about schedules. 2 were “friends” needing certain things to get their homework done. The other message was from my younger brother away in basic, saying that he wasn’t able to reach me by phone. None of those people bothered to call or even shoot a text besides my brother, so did they really even care? I think not. Facebook is a lonely mess, but so is real life.

The other side of the Facebook struggle, making it a full circle of loneliness, and another reason to deactivate it, are the apps. They are extremely crazy with the various recreations of life that you can live virtually. I haven’t played any of those sorts but I have recently been occupied with Bitstrips, and it is very time consuming. I don’t worry about social things as much, because I am either spending hours making Bitstrips just right or reading through Tumblr. I just so happened to look over to the other apps being advertised, and there are apps from baby adopter to virtual families and even to apps for friends. So even if you don’t talk to any of your “Fakebook” friends, you are able to entertain yourself with apps that can fill in the gaps of your life.

Both of these brief topics relate to the article by Stephen Marche, Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The article talks about loneliness being a public health issue with negative outcomes throughout life. I know that I can say that the 2 weeks I went without social media were probably the healthiest. I gave coworkers the chance of friendship, which is great now. I didn’t bother to look them up on Facebook because the face to face conversations are nice and I also did not want to turn them into “Fakebook” friends. I think if it were possible to communicate to the people I need without having Facebook as the connection, I would deactivate Facebook in a heartbeat and keep it that way. (It would also help if Facebook wasn’t tempting and having the easy process of just logging back in and BOOM, reactivated).

Commercial Realism: Feminine Touch

     In the Codes of Gender film that we watched in class, something really irked my nerves. (I know the point of the video, but I’m not going to touch on that.) There was a part in the film where there are ad pictures showing different female models in “defenseless” positions. The argument I have is why are these positions seen as bad?

     Almost always, the female is the controller of sex. She says when and when it’s not okay. The male doesn’t really ever get to choose. So these pictures to me represent a lust effect on the men and the girl is working her power or deceptive power she has over them. EX: There were some pictures with just one female model and multiple male models. The male models were seen as ready to respond and the female model was seen as submissive and defenseless. To me I thought the woman was dominant in the photo for having multiple men want her.

     “The world around them is too much to cope with…” Feminine touch is when we always see women touching themselves in various ways. I think that the “Feminine Touch” is powerful. The author said that we hold things as if they are controlling us; carrying basically air. Maybe we don’t have to do that because often times we can get things very easily done without using the masculine “firm grasp of the hand.”

     If anyone has been watching this season of America’s Next Top Model, it has both women and men competing against each other. The argument from the women’s perspective is that modeling is a women’s profession. They can model their whole body, but what can a man show? Their masculine jaw line? Their abs down to their crotch area?

     Tyra would call the female modeling pictures from the Codes of Gender film H to T modeling! (Head to Toe)

Advertising & Branding to Children

I have an addiction to Yahoo news. A lot of the times, Yahoo has the saddest stories, but there are those moments when they have inspiring stories as well. I have chosen to look at the branding side of an article that was posted last week on Yahoo. This article is about a young girl who wrote a letter to the Bratz maker, MGA Entertainment, to change their dolls up to look more like her. She wanted less makeup, shorter hair, longer dresses than usual and for the dolls not to be mostly blond.

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/girl%E2%80%99s-letter-prompts-bratz-dolls-maker-to-create-custom-dolls-213131169.html

This interested me because of our class talk about advertising with kids. Companies love children because they are full of ideas, and also because they are the “sell to” target. In class, branding to children was sort of seen as a bad thing, but what if it wasn’t. From the example I have above shows that kids can have a mind of their own and can go against what’s “cool.” I think that even though there are such things as the “cool” or the “lame” brands, children knowing which brands are which, help better the companies.

This 8 year old girl, Angelina, chose to write a letter, not via internet or technology, but a cute sloppy hand written letter to the company. Angelina did not even have to start a petition to get a response from the company, which I thought was cool because to me that means companies can listen without embarrassing pressured action to satisfy the consumer. She got a response from MGA Entertainment saying they were “inspired” and they sent her three dolls that were picked from the Bratz custom designs from fans. Two of those dolls were blond and one of the blonds included a short bob and a longer dress. In terms of the makeup, it was not as heavy as I have seen my own Bratz dolls, but yes they still included makeup.

 

I would have like to see the company actual make a doll that resembled Angelina or to at least have natural colors for the makeup choice. However, since Angelina was satisfied with the custom dolls and that MGA Entertainment even responded to her letter, I guess that makes me happy too.