Pratical: Practical Design Ideas

- Design packaging for cars/boy toys in a gender neutral or girly theme.
- Design a general neutral clothing or toy brand.
- Advertising campaign for 'Let Toys be Toys'.
- Rebrand/design 'Let Toys be Toys website.
- General Neutral Book Design.
- Redesign 'Barbie' to be suitable for boys and girls.

Essay: Study Task 03 - Parody and Pastiche

Parody and Pastiche are both examples of intertextuality, which means how one text is shown and understood, by understanding other texts. When discussing the relationship between parody and pastiche, Jameson shows his dislike towards pastiche describing its as 'a neutral piece of mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, devoid of laughter.' Whereas Hutcheon takes a positive approach towards pastiche, more specifically so in architecture, she believes that, "parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference".

Jameson’s idea of pastiche is contrasted to Hutcheon’s understanding of parody. Whereas Jameson sees pastiche as ‘blank parody’ and sees the word as a 'cannibalisation of the past’. Hutcheon believes it shows historical awareness and embracement of out culture, "Parody, often called ironic quotation, pastiche, appropriation, or intertextuality is usually considered central to postmodernism”.

Examples of this used within design are the nostalgic rebrands of the likes of Kodak, Natwest and Coop. "The NatWest rebrand and Co-op’s earlier this year have something in significant in common a delve into the company’s design archives, specifically a return to 1960s logos, and this has stirred up a discussion across the industry about nostalgia in branding."

These examples show Jameson ideas that we are losing out connection with history, rather than creating new, "The new spatial logic of the simulacrum can now be expected to have a momentous effect on what used to be historical time".Whereas Hutcheon argues that the values that pastiche and design of this time holds is valuable, "Postmodernism is both academic and popular, élitist and accessible".

Another example of pastiche and parody being used in design is that of Stranger and Stranger, the designs of whisky inherently convey designs of that from the victorian times, therefore creating parody and pastiche of the designs of that time into something modern, being sold today. Hutcheon states that these postmodernist designs are better "to talk to consumers in a capitalist society in a way that will get us where we live, so to speak".

Frederic Jameson 
Linda Hitcheon
Jenny Brewer - It's Nice That

Essay: Study Task 01 - Finalised Research Question

To what extent does gender stereotyping still exist and affect children today, within advertising/mass media?

Essay: Study Task 02 - Male Gaze Theory

Looking in depth first at Laura Mulvey's psychoanalytic take on the male gaze theory and the 'two contradictory aspects of the pleasurable structures', scopophilic and narcissism. She starts by discussing freud's theory of 'castration', for the reason that men can then 'live out his fantasies and obsessions' through the women on the screen. Which mirrors what Storey discusses in his evaluation of Mulvey's analysis that the symbol of the woman is 'twofold', the fact that she is the 'symbol of male desire' and the 'threat of castration'. 

Mulvey summarises that the image of women in films and how they are used are 'raw material for the active gaze of a man'. However Dyer in 'Stars' criticises Mulvey and this idea by stating that actually in narrative film now the 'male body' is also looked at in a similar way. Mulvey also states that the woman across as passive and exists within the diegesis however her role is viewed by two groups, 'the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film'. Dyer also disagrees with this as within 'Stars', Gaylyn Studlar discusses that it's not just 'voyeuristic pleasure', but an alternative pleasure of a 'masochistic relationship' between the moviegoer and female star. He also discusses differing to both Mulvey and Storey that desire can be found within 'power in the performance', which then takes control of the male gaze, so therefore the woman is in control. 

As David Gauntlet discusses Mulvey's theory in Media, Gender and Identity, he states that ultimately, her argument doesn't account for 'all gendered viewings of films today'. 

Essay: Text 1 - Media and Identity Book

Introduction

Media and Communications are a central element to modern life.
Gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities.
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 their identities from the media.
This book sets out to establish what messages the media sends to contemporary audiences about gender.
Anthony Giddens, Michael Foucault, Judith Butler.
worldopinion.com and www.statstics.gov.uk (to view statistics on leisure activities and media consumption).


Establishing the the relative positions of women and men in the modern western democracies 

The sexes today are generally thought to be equal.
Equality within everyday life is still quite established.
'Modern Men's crisis'.
Mass media help men and women adapt to contemporary life. 
Men don't need to become like women, but can have a greater value on love, family and personal relationships. - Anthony Clare
Both sexes have now become victims of the culture of consumerism, appearances and glamour. 
Some parts of popular culture seem to be reasserting the traditional forms of masculinity whilst others seem to be challenging them. 
Schoolgirls today are outperforming at all levels of school education. Cassidy 2001.
Sales of the barbie doll are falling because only the youngest girls will accept such a 'girly' toy nowadays. (Moorhead, 2001).
Young people are more sympathetic towards gay liberties. 

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.

www.theory head.com/gender

Media Power VS People Power

Theodor Adorno - Power of mass media over the population was enormous and damaging.
John Fiske - The audience, not the media, has the most power. 
Conformity has replaced consciousness.
Media is an enabler of ideas and meanings.

Media Effects and Development of Gender Identity

Influences upon any decision to do something are a complex combination of previous experiences, opinions, values and suggestions. 

The effects model on children - 
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.
Children's behaviour in experiments changes in accordance to what they think the adult wants to see. 

Psychology

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'.
Strange when modern day scientists try to 'prove' that sex differences are important. 
Social learning theory, modelling and reinforcement, not much to it though. 
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. 

History

The mass media used to be very stereotyped in it's representations of gender.  Women's advertisements tended to reinforce stereotypes of the feminine and housewifely stereotypes. Whereas showing men being more active, decisive, courageous, intelligent and resourceful. Cosmopolitan heralded the changes which we would see to develop in more recent media. 

Recent Media

Friends had a fresh outlook on men and women. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, hugely popular with the typically male-dominated world of sci-fi fans. Confident and assertive. A role model for everyone, has to use her wits and physical strength, yet still has to get high marks in school. 
Charlie's Angels, boys were not keen on it however girls loved it. 
What Women Want. 
That's why mum's go to Iceland. - It is acceptable to show women as housewives after all. 
Today's advertising does not want to alienate any target audience, so does not often include stereotypes, other than as a joke or to be laughed at.
Advertising is now more about looking nice, and perfect families. 

Giddens - Self Identity 

There is a social structure however, these can be changed when people start to ignore them, change and replace them. 
People's everyday actions and other people's expectations  are what make up the social forces and social structures. 
People have a 'faith' in the coherence of everyday life. Challenges their everyday understanding of how things should be in the world. 
The performance of gender is something that is learned and policed and something that is constantly worked on and monitored. 
Social changes brought about by changes about how people view life. 
Capitalism - fashion, glamour, must have toys, bands, movies, food and houses. 
The stuff we buy to express ourselves has an impact on our self identity.
People are in control of their own lives.
Giddens - his model of social life excludes emotions and sentiment.

Michael Foucault

Individuals own dynamic adaptation to their surroundings. People's subjective responses.
Where there is power, there is resistance.
Technologies of the self, practice of our ethics, our set of standards to do with being a particular sort of person. 
Strategies for  making sense of modern life.
The particular ways of talking about things shape the way that we perceive the world and our own selves. 
Power is productive because it causes things to happen. 

Queer Theory

Nothing within your identity is fixed.
Your identity is a pile of things of which you have previously expressed or which have been said about you. 
Gender is a performance, therefore people can change.
The divide between masculinity and femininity is a social construction built on the divide between men and women which is also a social construction. 
We should challenge the traditional views of masculinity and femininity by causing 'gender trouble'. 
There is no singular notion of identity.
Feminism causes the notion that women are a unique species. 
Butler, You have a body, you may perform an identity, you may have desires.  
If people were not always divided this way then it is not a universally fixed term. 
Gender has been culturally constructed. 
Gender is seen as an attribute, which then becomes a fixed permanent form of that persons' self. 
Gender should be seen as a fluid variable which can shift and change in different contexts at different times. 
How you behave is all that your gender is. 
Gender and sexuality can therefore be reinvented in the here and now. 
Sex and gender were just social constructs that we could 'wish away'. 
We can 'perform' gender in whatever way we like.
Although certain masculine and feminine formations may have been learned, these patterns can be broken. 
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. 

Modern Male Identities

Men's magazines are seen as reflecting to find positions for the ideas of women and men in a world in a world where the sexes are more similar than different. 
Old fashioned masculine values or a back-lash against feminism. 
Shows men insecurely trying to find their place in the modern world. 
Offers some reassurance, enabling a more confident narrative of the self. 
The magazines also raise anxieties. Be both enabling and constraining. 
Some fluidities of identities is invited.
Conceals the nervousness of boys who might prefer life to be simpler, but are doing their best to face up to modern realities anyway. 

Modern Female Identities

Nowadays women magazines objectify men using the same kind of language and imagery as men's magazines. 
Offer a confusing and contradictory set of ideas.
Many messages are positive. Assertive and independent women.
Didn't take all the messages seriously anyway. 
Actively processed by the reader s they establish their personal biography, sense of identities and technologies of self.  
Younger women's magazines encouraging a 'liberated' identity instead. 
Celebrate women's opportunities to play with different types of imagery which is in line with the idea that gender is a performance. 
They would never encourage women to step outside their carefully imagined boundaries of the sexy, the stylish and the fashionable. 

Role Models

They feed into our calculations about how we view life and where we would like to fit into society. 

Generational Differences

Anti-traditional attitudes established in the young will be carried into later life.
Conservative attitudes develop throughout the population as we get older. 
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.  
Whether the post-traditional young women and men of today will grow up to be the narrow-minded traditionalists of the future. 

Conclusion

We no longer get singular, straightforward messages about the ideal types of male and female identities. 
This opens the possibilities of gender trouble. 
Nothing about identity is clear-cut.
The contradictory messages of popular culture make the 'ideal' model for the self even more indistinct, which is probably a good thing. 
Things do change.
Popular media has a significant but not entirely straightforward relationship with people's sense of gender and identity. 
Media messages are diverse, diffuse and contradictory. 
The meanings of gender, sexuality and identity are increasingly open. 
Modern life is all about radical uncertainties and exciting contradictions. 

Essay: Text 2 - Pink and Blue Book

Understanding Children's Clothing

What is the purpose of cultural patterns such as gender conventions in clothing?

Do they simply arise out of a need in an earlier time and then continue through mindless transition?

Do they stem from societal structures and conflicts, manifested as material objects and patterns of their use?

Or are they responses to these social structures, the way we change them over time to suit our changing environment?

Or can our material world be reduced to the embodiment of neural impulses, evolutionary biology, or unconscious fears and desires?

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. 

Gender - refers to cultural differences between men and women based on the biological differences. Used for distinction in role, behaviour and appearance. 

Sex - is to denote those biological differences

Current gender studies have a much more complex and fluid notion of both sex and gender. 

Gender differences - refers to elements that are classified as feminine, masculine and neutral. 

Gender Identity - personal congruence

Children of up to the age of about 6 or 7 in the US.

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.  

Children in early America were conceived as impressionable, but also that their physical surroundings were designed to shape their bodies and souls. 

Changes brought upon middle class America after the industrial revolution and the American civil war, men left their work in the home and women were left in a different sphere. 

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. 

Children and Consumerism

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

Countless researchers have documented the growing importance of consumption by and for children and analysed it's impacts on boys and girls. 

Grant McCracken, Daniel Thomas Cook, Gary Cross. 

The convergence of child-centred educational theories, middle-class parental concerns  and psychology driven advertising. 

For children, the parents are the main consumers, they act as the child's purchasing agent. The most significant changes in the gendering of children's clothes came when the 'toddler' was introduced. 

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. 

Children and Gender Identity

Which models had been discarded and credited. 

Jean-Jaques Rouusseau and John Locke, G Stanley Hall, 'Baby X' studies. 

Fashion participation is very much a matter of gender, and it has changed from men to women and children. 

Fashionable clothing became a means of fitting in and instilling self confidence, even in very young children. 

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 

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. 

The Two Sexes - Growing up Apart, Coming Together 

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. 

The importance of ambiguity and anxiety as motivators for children's fashion changes.  

As children mature they realise that gender is permanent and not subject to change based on appearance making them less dependant on stereotypical styles. 

Fashion changes are shaped bu anxietites of sexuality which is observed very differently in girls than boys. 

Adults interact with infants based on their assumed sex. 

Clothing shapes the response of others to the baby. 

Once children learn gender terms they begin to connect these terms to other things such as clothing. 

They learn to correctly assign gender using hair and clothing cues about a year before they learn genital differences. 

Gender permenance. Once this is realised they becom eless rigid int heir stereotyping. 

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

Gender theory is expanding. 

Essay: Study Task 01 - Research Question

To what extent does design help with child development?

To what extent is children's branding aimed at parents?

How is children's branding  related to their development?

To what extent does colour in design affect children's development/ideas? - (pink/blue etc.)

To what extent does colour in branding affect children's development/ideas?

To what extent do gender stereotypes still exist and impact within children's advertsing?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11199-012-0177-8


Bakir, A., Blodgett, J. G., & Rose, G. M. (2008). Children’s responses to gender-role stereotyped advertisements. Journal of Advertising Research, 48, 255–266. 

The doll experiment

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Caldera, Y. M., Huston, A. C., & O’Brien, M. (1989). Social interactions and play patterns of parents and toddlers with feminine, masculine, and neutral toys. Child Development, 60, 70–76. doi:10.2307/1131072.PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
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