This video was very powerful and eye opening. I thought at the beginning she was going to be way over the top and really push a feminsit agenda with her examples. But as I started watching, these we mostly ads that I have seen in magazines and on television. If not exactly at least very similar. I never really thought about the message that women should be silent and how she says that is shown by all the photos with hands over the mouth and text that in many different ways tells us to be silent. Many of the things she showed didn't seem so bad when you were only looking at one ad, you thought that one is not so bad, then she would flash several more and the pattern would become obvious. I think that may be one reason why it goes on as it does, because we don't see them all together, we view them one at a time. And at times when we don't really give ads our full attention so the impact is so gradual that we don't notice it. Kind of like when you buy a car and the color you choose is one that you think is not real common, then you drive it off the lot and you see that color everywhere. Now that I have been made aware I will now SEE these ads.
We are not going to change advertising overnight or maybe ever, but we can reduce the impact of the ads on our children by educating them to be more visually literate. Teach them to look with understanding and be aware of hidden messages and false messages. They all know that photos can be manipulated and many of them have played with the programs that can do this, but when they are looking at images in other contexts they don't always apply that knowlege. Maybe if we make them aware we will begin to turn the tide.
This video also focused mainly on the impact on women and what it is teaching men about women. The other trend I have seen in media lately is the stupid male. Maybe it isn't as harmful, but what does it tell young women, that they will never find a smart, loving man to share their lives with, that they will have to put up with incompetance for their entire married life. Shows like Ray Romano's show, where no matter what he did he was wrong, she was always right and he was always stupid. I got to the point where I couldn't even watch it anymore because that attitude bothered me. Now you see it in commercials, in movies and on TV shows that stupid and obnoxious is funny and acceptable. I see this attitude carried over in to classrooms, that obnoxious is funny and cute, then they can't understand why the other kids don't want to be around them. This does not help with the fragile self esteem of teen males. We like to think that these things don't bother boys this age but there are many studies that show male teens are just as swayed by the images they see in magazines and on television as females. The difference is that they internalize it more, don't talk about it and the more insecure they feel the more confident they try to appear because they don't want anyone to know. Bravado is many times a coping mechanism to coverup insecurity.
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