Media Literacy at Home

Media is everywhere... it is almost the air our children breathe.  Most parents assume their kids know more about media then they do. The term 'media literacy' refers to the full range of knowledge and skills children need in order to access, analyze, communicate and create within the media milieu that makes up a significant portion of their world. If our children could only read but they couldn't write or they could not understand what they read or how a story was constructed - we would not consider them literate.   

Media literacy includes skills in using media, understanding how images and stories are constructed and a critical understanding of how media is controlled and which stories are told.  There are plenty of good websites with a comprehensive overview of how to help our kids build these skills.  I'm just going to talk about a few simple ways that parents can bring media literacy into every day conversations.

Talking with children about what they are viewing and commenting on story lines, stereotypical images and harmful messages has shown to be an effective way that parents can engage in media literacy.  Even the American Psychological Association recommends that parents and other family members "help girls interpret sexualizing cultural messages in ways that mitigate or prevent harm."  Your older teen might not appreciate your comment on every negative or unhealthy message in her favorite show but she might be willing to discuss the overall theme in a story line and how it makes her feel.  

With younger kids, make a game out of being advertising investigators:

• Count how many ads you see in an hour of television viewing with your family, including product placements in the show itself.  Discuss together how product placement and commercials might actually affect which story lines are being told.
• Notice which ads are directed at boys and which ones are directed at girls. Ask your kids how they know. What are the cues? Ask them what would happend if they were interested in the toy being advertised to the "other" gender.
• Ask your kids if the boys and girls in commercials, movies or TV shows dress and act like real kids they know.  

You and your teen may want to comb through a fashion magazine and count the ads. How many pages of ads are there versus actual articles or fashion spreads?  Explain that the real profit to the magazine company doesn't come from sales of magazines but of sales for advertising space.  Teach her to notice how the articles often reflect the items being advertised.  Play investigator again and challenge her to find the ad that "goes with" the article.   Is there a diet ad that follows the article on swimsuits?  What about the ad for a headache medication right after the article on managing migraines?   Wonder aloud if magazines intend to make women and girls feel unattractive or not good enough the way they are.  Discuss with your daughter who actually profits from girls feeling badly about themselves and always feeling driven to pursue the latest diet or beauty product.

To begin talking with girls about the unrealistic images in advertising... the Evolution video is a great place to start.  Since it was first launched by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund over five years ago,  most adults have seen this but we have a whole new generation of young girls who can benefit.  My own daughter references this video when she wants to make a point about how fake advertising can be.

A creative guy named Jesse Rosten went viral a couple of weeks ago with his humorous look at how photo shopping is the new beauty regimen.  This one is appropirate for sharing with older teens and a great jumping off point for a conversation about unrealistic beauty expectations and how advertising distorts our perceptions. Check it out here:  Fotoshop by Adobe

What Pop Culture is Teaching Our Girls*

When my then-seven-year-old daughter came home from daycare singing the sexualized lyrics to T-Pain’s  “Apple Bottom Jeans”, I was reminded how pop culture can reach right past parents’ best intentions and pull their children into its compelling grasp. That song had a great beat and did celebrate the female body … the curvier the better. While that in itself might not be such a horrible message for my daughter, the rest of the lyrics did nothing to promote female empowerment or tell her that her value lies in something outside her body as a sexual object.

Every generation has its own pressures and prescribed standards of beauty and female behavior. Madonna was wearing her bra as outerwear 25 years ago, and many of my favorite ’80s rock music had equally raunchy lyrics that promoted indiscriminate sex and drug abuse. So why does pop culture seem to have a stronger and more negative influence on self-esteem today? Is it the sheer volume of it? Is it the increased pressures also exerted by an ever-growing diet-and-beauty industry?

As reported in the Journal of Adolescence in 1997 as well as in the European Eating Disorders Review in 2003, when college-age women look at fashion magazines, their scores on body image and self-esteem tests plummet. According to the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2003, when preteen girls read those same magazines, they are five times more likely to develop eating disorders within the next five years.

Even without glossy fashion spreads and weight-loss-focused articles, I see girls growing up in a culture saturated with what are impossibly thin images of female ideals. The precocious teenagers who star in children’s television shows, the clothing lines that include thongs, and sexualized T-shirt messages for pre teens all communicate and promote specific values about beauty and gender expectations.  

These are tough messages even for an adult to sift through. Plenty of intelligent, skilled women struggle with their self-esteem and body image against the onslaught of pressures to look and act a certain way.  Midlife women are told to resist aging and aim to look a decade younger, no matter how much time or money it costs them. New mothers are supposed to strive for near-impossible “yummy mommy” status. This translates to a message that all mothers should be fashionable and sexy while disguising all evidence of the honorable work of mothering. None of these messages take into account the inevitable lack of sleep, and the unsexy reality of dirty diapers and spit-up on clothes.

Television plays its role, too. Girl culture, as it is lived out on popular TV shows, promotes an underlying value that it’s what’s outside that really counts. On TV a girl can be mean, vicious or vacuously stupid, but if she is wearing the right clothing or has the prettiest hair, she may still be the most popular. This tactic is constantly repeated in the endless “reality” show competitions that highlight women vying for male attention.

Perhaps the most significant factor that sets current pop culture apart from that of the last generation is new media. Advertising images reach children and teens through video games, the Internet, and their cell phones. While I can appreciate social networking sites as a fantastic tool for self-expression and maintaining relationships, these sites are also fertile ground for bullying and harassment.  Some web sites give girls the tools to post hurtful messages, rank friends, or rate each other’s appearance in photos. Many of their online communications mimic the blunt and often cruel evaluations in gossip blogs or celebrity magazines. 

Girls were sometimes mean on the playgrounds of my childhood, too, but the relational aggression that occurs today is more powerful and potentially damaging to self-esteem. Research shows that if the perpetrator isn’t face to face with her victim, she is less likely to feel remorse or empathy. Down the line, that is not good for her sense of self-worth either.

Who is responsible for the self-esteem of girls and women? Blaming pop culture is easy – and mostly accurate – but we can’t stop there. As adults we choose what we want to consume from the pop culture smorgasbord. We choose where to shop, what companies to support and what magazines we read. I think we should be better role models to the girls in our lives by demonstrating female friendships that are genuine and compassionate and by refusing to be preoccupied with body size, unrealistic images of beauty, and other qualities idealized by the media.

* This post has been edited from one that originally appeared as an editorial for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund in 2008

My next post will offer tips on promoting media literacy & challenging the pop culture messaging at home.