This is a post that I am making in order to make up for the class period on 1-22-2013 that I missed.
This article looks at a youth soccer league and the interactions of two teams "The Barbies" and "The Sea Monsters". The Barbies are the girls and The Sea Monsters are the boys; both of them are ages 4-5. They look at how the children react to a small spectacle showcasing a banner that the boys have with their team name on it and also a small float like thing that the girls have which has a barbie that rotates and a radio playing the barbie girl song. The boys were receiving all the attention and showing off then the girl started playing the song and took a lot of attention from the boys. The boys reacted by chanting and eventually disrupting the girl by getting into their personal space while the girl basically ignored them until physical confrontation occurred. The parents discussed how they knew that studies proved that males and females were basically the same but don't believe them after having children and seeing them in person everyday. The parents believed that children are "naturally" different based on gender.
Based on studies that show gender does not make boys and girl different naturally and my own personal opinion, I believe that our society and television/advertisement are the root cause of this so called "natural" difference. Society separates boys and girl from the moment they are born by wrapping the baby in blue (boy) or pink (girl) blankets and it only continues from there. Girl are always bought barbies, kitchen stuff, dolls, stuffed animals, and usually its pink in color. Boys are bought action figures, guns, sports equipment, and almost never are they bough anything pink in color. Pink is apparently a "Feminine" color based on our societies rules. Television is a major contributor in my opinion because it creates roles for genders. These ideas of roles can easily get caught in a young child's mind and stick with them their entire life because at young ages, children are like sponges and soak up all things around them.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI agree that the media has a great influence on gender roles for children. I wonder if those gender roles would be less apparent if commercials for all toys had both boys and girls playing with their items. Would it make a difference if an ad for action figures or an Easy Bake Oven showed a boy and girl both playing with the toy? I also wonder what would happen if instead of using the colors blue and pink, we just assigned one color to all children.
Although media has a great influence on it though, a lot of the influence comes from the parents. As I’ve said in class, my parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do including wrestling. I think my mom actually would have been pretty annoyed if my soccer team’s name was The Barbies. I don’t feel as though my parents pushed those gender roles on me as much as other parents do.
-Erin