Concerns about the Media

I am deeply concerned about the current generation of children and adolescents. This is mostly due to the fact that my eight-year-old sister is a member of this generation, but also because they are a unit of our society. I feel like the current generation knows more about life at a younger age than any of those that came before it, and this is mostly because of the media. It doesn’t seem like there is a childhood anymore. After watching documentaries like Killing Us Softly 3 and The Merchants of Cool, I have realized that television producers and advertisers are basically able to get away with anything if it means that they will have more viewers of a specific program or consumers of a given product. Both of these documentaries showed how sex and sexuality are portrayed everywhere, because that is what sells.

I have watched many “family” movies and television shows with my sister, and it is disturbing to see how much sexual innuendo is present in programs that are supposed to be suitable for a younger audience. I’m not sure if producers do this to entertain parents, but I think it is terrible. The media is sending children mixed messages that sexual activity is normal for teens, while school systems are trying to promote abstinence. If a child sees a character that he or she idolizes on a television show acting in a suggestive manner, it’s hard to know whether they are going to follow what their favorite actor is doing or what the school says to do.

Because the media can be so unpredictable, I think that a lot of this problem is left in the hands of parents or anyone who may have a young child or adolescent in their household. It is up to them to filter and monitor what their children are watching on TV, and to never leave them alone with it.

Do you think that the media is more inappropriate and suggestive than it was when we were younger? Or is it simply that we are old enough to notice it now?

Nonverbal Communication

One of the parts in chapter six of Gendered Lives that I could really relate to was on smiling. This section points out that women tend to smile more than men, which demonstrates their responsiveness and lets others know that they are approachable (Wood 131). It also goes into a discussion about how "if a White woman does not smile and maintain eye contact, others are likely to think she is angry or upset" (Wood 131). I experienced this yesterday, first-hand, in my Cell Biology lab. My lab partner and I were trying to isolate proteins from a solution and I was just not feeling like myself due to a variety of reasons. It was my last class of the week, the ragweed had been getting to me, and I had not been sleeping well because we just got a kitten that likes to sleep on my head. My partner asked me if everything was okay and she seemed to be genuinely concerned. I explained to her how I was feeling and she told me that I was acting differently. I realized after this exchange that it was because I was not smiling and talking as much as I usually do.

I also enjoyed reading what Elaine had to say in the gray box on page 131. She was talking about how she "never realized how automatic smiling is for [her]" (Wood 131). After reading this section, I started noticing when and how often I smile during the day. I smile when I pass people on the sidewalk, I smile when someone gets on the elevator with me, and I smile when people amuse me. There are so many situations throughout the day that make me smile, and I really didn’t pay attention to it until I read this section on nonverbal communication. Women (particularly Caucasians, according to Wood) have been socialized into believing that smiling is the friendly, and often polite, thing to do when interacting and encountering others in our day-to-day lives. Chapter six really opened my eyes and made me start noticing how often and in which situations people tend to smile.

Rape and the Responsibilities of Women

One of the topics of discussion that really stood out to me on Tuesday dealt with the Duke lacrosse team rape scandal. We talked about how rape and sexual harassment cases are sometimes disregarded because of the circumstances or because of the individuals that are involved. I remember becoming very frustrated while watching and reading about the coverage of this case because of how the media repeatedly portrayed the victim. Reporters never failed to mention that the victim was a stripper, which almost seemed like they were trying to say that her job provided some kind of justification for the terrible things that allegedly happened to her.

Another interesting connection that I have to this same topic is from an article called “Rape and Fraternities” that I had to read for my Sociology class. This article focused on the gang rapes that often occur at fraternity parties when a group of males tries to get a female drunk so that they can then take advantage of her and show their “brothers” how popular they are. One student in my class made a comment to the effect of, “what is the girl expecting when she goes to a fraternity party and has a few drinks?” This comment angered many people in the class, including myself, because our peer was insinuating that the girl was basically asking for unfortunate things to happen to her. I don’t believe that this would ever give the men an excuse to take advantage of the woman. There were also comments about how the female in a particular incident was dressed, like that too would justify and make what happened to her acceptable. In my mind, there is no way to justify an incident of rape or sexual harassment. A person’s job and what they happened to be wearing on the night of the incident should never really even be given any thought.

I do think however, that in cases like the two I have referred to, women have a responsibility to use their good judgment when they are entering certain situations. They should think about the potential consequences of their actions, such as drinking excessively at a fraternity party or wearing a short skirt, and change their behaviors as necessary.

Cultural Differences and the Socialization of Gender

This was my first post from last week...

One of the topics that really stood out to me while reading the assignment that was due yesterday, was how different cultures view gender and sex. I found some of these differences to be very troubling and strange, but I know that that is only because they are not “normal” practices in our society. One of the practices that I am referring to is on page 50, and it deals with children in the Dominican Republic. It says that “it is common for males to be born with undescended testes and an underdeveloped penis” (Wood 50). The boys are then treated like girls and wear dresses until their bodies are fully developed, when they are then treated like males. My group had an interesting discussion about this yesterday, dealing with the potential psychological damage that could be done to the child. Adolescence is confusing enough as it is, and this cultural practice seems like it would just add to the confusion of figuring out who you are and where your place is in society.

My next thought came to me after watching a video on Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment in sociology today. If you are not familiar with this experiment, Zimbardo conducted a simulation of how prisoners and their guards interact by placing about 20 volunteer male college students (with perfect mental health and perfect mental health history) in the basement of a psychology building and turning it into a mock prison. The students were randomly assigned either the roles of guards or the roles of prisoners, and the experiment was set to run in two weeks duration. By the second day of the simulation, all of the students began to assume their new roles and identities. Some of the guards became sadistic, placing their prisoners in an isolation cell (which was actually a dark storage closet) for hours at a time, and several of the prisoners became rebellious and resisted the guards’ control. The experiment ended up being cut short after 6 days because Zimbardo realized that what he had done was completely unethical and that the prisoners were enduring extreme psychological and emotional abuse from the guards.

While I was watching this video, I kept thinking about gender differences and whether the experiment would have had a different outcome, had Zimbardo conducted it with women rather than men. Wood argues that the genders are socialized differently and that women have a maternal and protective instinct (Wood 54). If this experiment had been conducted with women, do you think that women would have used their maternal instinct to protect their fellow prisoners from the emotional abuse? Or, would they have taken on the roles that they were assigned, like the men in the actual simulation did?