"Packaging Girlhood" Final Post

The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to young girls isn't pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girl power has been co-opted by marketers of music, fashion, books and television to mean the power to shop and attract boys. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage them to pursue accessories over academics; sex appeal over sports; fashion over friendship. These stereotypes are everywhere, from Disney movies to hip-hop lyrics, Nickelodeon cartoons to Seventeen magazine.
Little girls are portrayed as "perfect little angels," sometimes with  a sassy twist; elementary school-age girls  are boy-crazy "tweens," ready to buy into a version of mini-teendom that eclipses the wonderful years of childhood that truly belong to them; middle-school girls are cast as full-fledged teenagers, or at least teenage wannabes, eager to conform to that CosmoGIRL!  lifestyle. And high-school girls? They're sold an image of sexually free model-diva-rock-star that younger girls are supposed to look up to.
This book has really highlighted all the important issues girls face with the media and the high expectations young teenagers think they are supposed to live up to. Not everyone is capable of being the head cheerleader whose decked out in glitter eye make up and skin bearing tops. I was definitely never this type of girl.  I do admit, when I was younger, I did feel insecure about not being thin, pretty, and popular. This need to grab the spotlight and transform into a diva whose obsessed with the superficial things in life, only makes young teens stereotypical girl consumers. Both authors give good advice to parents who want their daughters to be surrounded by strong female characters and role models, and a concise demonstration on how girls are effected by the media surrounding them. I didn't realize until now, how influenced my choices and consumptions were by magazines, movies, television, and books. I hope in the near future more female roles will be less diva and more determined to break free from those stereotypes presented within the marketers' schemes.

"Packagine Girlhood" Bring It On: Cheerleading

One activity in which girls are invited to rave, yell, be athletic, jump, run, and bring it on is cheerleading. But what exactly are they being asked to bring on? Images of cheerleading are everywhere in girl world, creating impressions about what it means to be a cheerleader that it might not live up to and impressions that cheerleading coaches hate. The depiction of cheerleading, even when the hard work involved is shown, emphasizes the pretty and popular quotient. Let's consider the impression that kids get about cheerleading from movies. Movie makers and screenwriters try to have it both ways. In movies such as Bring It On, they try to do justice to the new version of cheerleaders as competitive gymnast-dancers, however, they also perpetuate the old version of cheerleader as the popular blond sex goddess that men long for. Even a part of athletics promote the stereotypical outlook that girls are expected to look great, while trying to bring it on. In class, we even talked about cheerleading classes that are required within the Texas school system. It's all integrated within the cheerleading life, that cheer is as big of a priority as education. Even though I  don't agree that cheerleading seems as important as school work, the impression that cheerleading carries fits with the way the media portrays how they should look, act, and attract.

"Packaging Girlhood" Chapter 5: Shopping: It's a Girl Thang

When we look at the images in books, television, and movies, we see that even the youngest girls are barraged with a message of the near-orgasmic pleasure of shopping. But shopping and an endless desire to consume are shamelessly marketed through toys, TV shows, movies, magazines, and Web sites so that girls are brainwashed into believing that shopping is for real girls. For the 2004 holiday season alone, Susan Linn reported in Consuming Kids,"Mattel produced at least seven Barbie play sets with a shopping theme." Girls and shopping is a persistent theme for marketers, and for obvious reasons. Hook girls early on the pleasures of shopping, and the rest is a marketer's dream. 

Fostering the connection between mothers and daughters through shopping is the obvious emotional link for moms. Share an afternoon together, shop, go to the spa, have lunch, and talk girl talk. The unexpected ultimate marketer's wonder, Neopets, got me hooked at age twelve. Kids from around the world are invited into the free site to create and then care for their virtual pets. Neopets is actually a sophisticated marketing scheme disguised as virtual pet care. The object of the game is to gain Neopoints by playing product-placement games or by watching commercials and movies trailers and visiting the Web sites of their sponsors. You can buy food for your pet (such as McDonald's fries; no wonder their happy meal toys in the summer of 2004 were Neopets) and then keep its teeth from falling out with a Crest spinbrush. This displays a message for kids, specifically twelve or younger, to consume. These are products they can use as well, and thus kids connect emotionally with their Neopets. 

For future generations, if society wants girls to learn how to live right and if in the real world there is concern about environmental depletion, poverty and overconsumption, why don't we see more toys that teach creative versions of reduce, reuse, and recycle rather than that play against the girls-as-superficial-shopper stereotype? 

Abortion

The video our class watched on abortion in Mississippi was disturbing to me because there are groups that sit outside of clinics and try to persuade women to not get an abortion. Although they are excercising their right to free speech, it's hindering the women's right to potentially improve her future. Depending on their financial situation, or age, bringing a baby into a world that won't be cared for properly, isn't right. I do think that health care should cover abortion. Regardless of other's beliefs, why should a pregnant, poverished, young girl, not be given the financial coverage to have an abortion. Those who don't believe in it, just won't use health care for that reason. With the lack of clinics in Mississipi, abortions are limited, and women are rejected their natural born right to improve their health, and life. Besides abortion, their are many things that tax payers pay towards something they don't agree with or believe in, such as war. As a woman, I would like to know that, if I'm pregnant but my life can't sustain having a child, that I would be given that right to recieve an abortion. These groups on the video go around excercising their right of free speech, but they feel the need to restrict other women's rights because they believe they're in the right for protecting the life of a child. They don't know anything of a stranger, their financial situation, and it's disturbing to think that someone in Mississippi could be able to tell a woman in Illinois that their right to an abortion, is no longer. The legal status of abortion should be that it's allowed, but not past a certain amount of time. I think that if a woman were to have an abortion at seven or eight months, that's too late, and could wait another month or two to give birth to the baby. Overall, the video we watched really upset me and at the same time made me less hopeful for women's rights in the future.If these groups continue to rant about what they believe to be the sinful act of abortion, and become successful in their quest for making America pro-life, I'm moving.

Renovations

While I was scrolling through the power point, observing all the pictures it presented of newly built schools, I couldn't believe that's where students go to learn. Our high school looks nothing like these photos, and it's surprising to me because we're a Blue Ribbon school. Over the years I've noticed that many technological problems occur, the Internet system  is constantly down, or certain areas of the building are too old to function. How the district plans to execute their plan to rebuild both HPHS and DHS takes into a lot of consideration. In class,we discussed how the district thought of combining the two schools, and making it one big high school, such as New Trier or Stevenson. Hopefully, this idea is never actually used for the future of both schools. At sporting events, parents and students see the rage  both Highland Park and Deerfield students have towards one another. By doing so, this could be an equation for disaster among the students. I think that Deerfield would lose its credibility as a Blue Ribbon school because it wouldn't be called Deerfield High School. Scrolling past all the lovely, new, renovated schools, I came across the pictures of our school. Pipes and machines are gathering dust, and look as if they've been abandoned, and the athletic field is covered with water. I think that there comes a breaking point for all these issues because one day a pipe will burst or our school can barely host home games. There's no doubt that our school, and along with Highland Park, need these renovations. In the power point it says that they would like to install video surveillance at major corridors and entries. I think this is necessary because I had an item stolen of mine several weeks ago, and according to the deans, the video's were inconclusive. Then I asked myself, well these camera's are there for a reason, and it's not for them to be used as decoration. It baffles me that our school is highly respected academically, but if you were to look at our power facilities, it's like someone came in and switched all the wires. To see these pictures of what could potentially be a new Deerfield High School is exciting and if it can be achieved financially, it's a good way to improve the learning environment, and to look like a Blue Ribbon school.

"Packaging Girlhood" Chapter 3: What else they hear from peers: gossip

Thanks in part to the tween marketing campaign and its obession with sexy looks and crushes between eight-year-olds, by the time they're twelve most girls are looking forward to the teen years. Becoming a teen appears to be more exciting, and glamorous for girls in the end of theirreteen years. They have been exposed to and are actively seeking TV shows, movies, clothes, and magazines that vault them into full teen mode. All these factors contribue to the desire to be an older, sexy teenager whose obessions include shopping, boys, and gossip. Even the youngest of the teen magazines have articles about being a good kisser, and the rest have monthly tips about how to keep boys happy and avoid being the school slut. It's all about what others will think of you, based on your actions. There are crowds in middle school that take the job of defining the norm through cliques and gossip.  Both Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown conducted a survey with middle school girls, and they claimed that the latest gossip is about bodies and appearance, attitude, relationships, and sex. These girls monitor themselves if they're going to be "normal"  and have good reputations. It begins to be a moral failing if a girl does not take care of herself, which means buying and wearing the right things. This constant struggle to be considered cool, calm and collected adds more unecessary pressure to preteens. Still, girls continue to snipe at each other with humiliating, repuation-damaging words. It is not always the case that boys externalize their rage and girls internalize it, but the higher levels of depression, eating disorders, and self-cutting behaviors that girls display demonstrate a sense of long-term impact these words have.

"Packaging Girlhood" Chapter 4: Reading Between the Lines: What Girls Read

While we realize that girls read books that are full of stereotypes, from cereal boxes dominated by male characters to the birthday cards that tell them how pretty and "special" they are, but feature boys having wild, rollicking birthday fun, we've limited this discussion to the core reading material marketed to girls: books and magazines.
Specifically, teen series books tend to contain a lot of stereotyping because they're written very quickly and depend heavily on cliches. The authors of the book, "Packaging Girlhood" interviewed an author who worked for a company that published books for girls. This author told them that as editors and writers, they sit around a table brainstorming an idea. The editors made sure that the writers would make their girl characters more like-able by putting some spinach in her front teeth. The topics of these books are generally boyfriends, magic, shopping, girl talk and dreams-the usual. Since the hyped-up mean girl phenomenon, a new spate of books about girl-against-girl competition has arisen, as in several series: The Clique; The It Girl; and The A-List.  One cliche that I have noticed throughout these books is that the lead girl is dissatisfied with herself and her body. The message I received from this was that to be a girl you have to be somewhat down on yourself and awkward. It makes girls feel as if their body will never be good enough, or always imperfect. Sooner or later some kind of competition is set up between the lead character and the more beautiful girl. There's always a girl who is prettier than the lead character and is a source of jealousy. Quite often the author makes her snobby or unlikeable, undoubtedly because the way to save girls' self-esteem is to teach her to say, "At least I'm nicer! At least I'm not her!" Comparing yourself to someone else only discredits who you are as a person. Girls generate their self esteem based off of how they compare to other girls. This only sets them up to feel bad about how they look or how they view themselves. Many of these books I never picked up only because I wasn't interested in knowing that being cool meant wearing a specific pair of shoes or getting clothes from specific stores. Many of these cliches are why girls act the way they do because it's all their exposed to by these writers and editors.