Essay: Triangulation Notes

Controversy in Contemporary Advertising

*Mainly discusses how advertising shapes children’s view on gender

• Advertising is subconscious
• Consumers create meaning from advertisements. 
• If you have knowledge  of how other people stereotype your own demographic group, you will start acting that way.
• If no one reminds you, you will not be affected.
• stereotypes/how they affect consumers
• children observe and imitate
• television is a vehicle of socialisation where children learn about social behaviour and gender roles and expectations. 
• continual exposure to advertising creates concepts which children then develop about the real world.
• they are shown both inappropriate and appropriate behaviour.
• when girls and boys play together they generally play with boys toys.
• girls and girls play with girls toys
• boys and other boys play with boys toys
• ads that show opposite behaviour are just as effective - more parents that see this as an issue
• children who watch more tv have a more stereotypical view of sex roles. 
• children learn their values by seeing themselves reflected in culture. 

Different theories

• Social identity theory
• expectancy theory
• recursive advertising

Identification - The child learns gender roles by imitating an adult model to whom they are attached emotionally. 

Cognitive Development (Piaget) - The child is the agent of his own identity through a process of learning and acting gender rules. 

Social learning - the child learns gender rules socially through a process of reward and punishment. 

Gender Schema Model, The child constructs gender identity by processing messages from social community and fitting them together with previously received information. 

Cultural associations of gender stereotypes play an important early role in this process but not necessarily a permanent role. 

Gender aschematic 

Media/Text/Identity 

*discusses both nature and nurture development on gender

• It’s unlikely that the media has a direct and straightforward effect on its audiences.
• It’s unsatisfactory to assume that people copy or borrow identities from the media.
• Mass media helps men and women adapt to everyday life. 
• Media and communication are a central element to modern life. 
• Both sexes have now become victims of the culture of consumerism appearances and glamour. 

• Biological Determination - the view that people's behaviour patterns are the result of their genes and inheritance. They argue that women and men are fundamentally different , they were born that way.

• Social Constructionism - people's personality and behaviour are not pre-determine by biology, but are shaped by society and culture. People can adapt and change.

• How do mass produced items become significant in how we think of ourselves.

- Theodor Adorno - Power of mass media over the population was enormous and damaging.

• John Fiske - The audience, not the media, has the most power. 

Positions children as potential victims of the mass media. 

Allow young people no opportunity to express their critical abilities, intelligence or free will. 

Children can talk intelligently and cynically about the mass media. (Buckingham, 1993, 1996)

Children as young as 7 can make thoughtful, critical and media literate videos themselves.

Some psychologists believe that chromosomal and hormonal differences are the main causes of differences between male and female behaviour. 

Others say that gender roles are learned during development and everyday life. 

'Nature vs Nurture debate’.

Cognitive development theory, gender roles are learned, however the child is more active in the creation of their own gender identity. 

A child will acquire a 'gender constancy', they will then develop their personality with an either masculine or feminine mould. The child then actively seeks about how to act like a boy or girl. Children initially learn that certain activities or interests are appropriate for one sex or the other. They then learn and interpret the world through these ideas. 

^deterministic and descriptive

These make it sound as if this is a natural and necessary part of a child's development, that they have to cultivate a masculine or feminine identity. 

Could create ideas of failed to require a gender constancy, or have a incomplete gender schema. Gender Identity disorder. 

Freud - The developing child will identify with their same sex parent. 

The performance of gender is something that is learned and policed and something that is constantly worked on and monitored. - Gender is a performance

The mass media can serve a valuable role in shattering the unhelpful moulds of 'male' and 'female' roles which continue to apply constraints upon people's ability to be expressive and emotionally literate beings. 

Mass media has become more liberal  and more challenging to traditional standards and this has been a reflection of changing attitude, but also involves the media actively spreads modern values.   *There are changes happening, making it more liberal and gender neutral. 

Popular media has a significant but not entirely straightforward relationship with people's sense of gender and identity. 

No more gender documentary - Not so much advertising, more people and things around them

Don’t believe that biology alone can explain these differences, they lie in the societies we live in. 

From the moment they are born they are aware of gender, from the clothes that they wear, to the language people use.

They have set mind sets on what is acceptable for their gender. 

The world shapes the skills they develop.

If little girls play with certain toys, then it has a fundamental effect on how their brains develop.

Children occupy a world where children are giving them messages constantly about what it’s like to be a boy or a girl.

It is a preference that is in many ways learnt.

Pink and Blue Book

Babies and toddlers have little choice in their clothing, which reflects the attitudes and beliefs of adults. 

Children are known to acquire sex role stereotypes and begin to fit their own identities during these first years of life, this is a particularly useful way to understand how gender norms are negotiated, expressed, learned and changed. 

The age limit is important, children learn the patterns of gender-appropriate dress and the body of behavioural science research on gender identity in early childhood.  

The convergence of these trends at the end of the century, ambivalence about the industrialised future, anxiety about competition and survival, challenges to existing gender roles, resulted in changes in children's lives that are visible in their very appearance. - happened due to certain events at a certain time.

Children have been the main targets of manufacturers, advertisers and marketers. 

Parents began to consult and value the opinions of small children in making purchases for them , 'consumer-tot'. Primary actors to reactors in responding to children's desires. 

Social learning theory of gender acquisition combined with interactionism provides the necessary framework  for studying gender symbolism with a dynamic system such as fashion. 

Maccoby has always argued that gender roles are both biological and cultural in origin, shaped by social interactions. The relative importance of a child's interactions with peers, parents and siblings. 

3 year olds know their own gender but don't always stick to these conformants. 

from 4-8 gender appropriate behaviours are a moral imperative. 

Girls understand both male and female scripts where as boys only understand male.

Other children act as enforcers of gender rules. 

Children of 4-5 play mostly with their own sex. 

Gender permanence. Once this is realised they become less rigid int heir stereotyping. 

A population that is shut out and frustrated by fashions based on a strict boy-girl gender binary. Gender dysphoria, and gender incongruence. 

Gender theory is expanding. 

Cas Holman 

• Believes it’s helpful to have models, but you don’t have to pick options from what you see, you can create your own.
• Identity is something we design, so therefore we can design anything.

• I design out of frustration with what exists.

• Makes me angry to see girl versions of other toys.

• Let’s just help anybody become the best versions if themselves. 

• shouldn’t give them toys with a story already built into it.

• they need to make the story themselves