Halloween and the Media

Since tomorrow is Halloween, I work with children, and it's my favorite holiday ever- I wanted to dedicate a post to my observations while costume shopping. Dressing up as a ghost, a mummy, or a witch are the classic Halloween costumes. The occasional pumpkin or cowgirl is thrown in there too. I was in shock to find so many costumes based on pop cultural advertising.

The search began when one my of girl friends had the ridiculous idea to dress up as the Fanta girls. That has advertisement written all over it. "if the Fanta girls are hot, we can be hot to." It was a little silly. The costume that truly took the spot for me when a baby at the day care that I work at dressed up as one of the little babies in a Coppertone sun tan lotion commercial. Sure it was cute- but again a little ridiculous. Who knew advertising would effect Halloween costume choice.

Another observation I made this Halloween is the truth behind Lindsay Lohans comment in Mean Girls that Halloween costumes for girls are anything made slutty. I for one dressed up as Dora the Explorer. My friends were the classic "sexy nurse", "sexy school girl", and "sexy referee." I almost fell into the trap of degrading women's self image on Halloween. I, or a day, considered dressing up as a "slutty Dora." Lucky for me I realized fast that I was being ridiculous.

Sex is Everywhere

Since our class Friday with the lecture on sexual advertising, everywhere I turn I see it more and more. I went home and showed my roommate the AXE commercial on line, and she just got a kick out of it. I had never sat down and actually thought of how empowered the idea of sex is.

I've always known that it is part of Maslows Hierarchy of needs and that 'sex sells' but more then that- sex is everywhere. In the past week I have seen advertisement after advertisement that shows sexual parts or ideas and most of them have NOTHING to do with sex. I saw a provocative shave gel commercial 0n TV last night. It was ridicules.

I do however find it very interesting that sex is all over the place. I bought a new perfume at Sephora this week and one bottle I saw was in the shape of a women. I couldn't imagine why a straight women would want to pick up a glass female body each day and spray herself with it!

Ohio School Shooting- Stereotypes

I have been keeping up with several articles from the associate press about the school shooting in Cleveland Ohio. As any school shooting I find the events to be devastating and scary. For the purpose of this blog, I wanted to point out my opinion on the stereotypes I have been continuing to find in the articles. Each time the shooter is described, his ensemble is described. The writers make it very known to the readers that he was earning a Marilyn Manson shirt with black nail polish on his fingers. The quote students that discussed his trench coat and black outfits. I feel that these factors stress the idea of stereotypes. This was seen in the events of Columbine and are now being repeated. These ideas are ridiculas. Also, I sent in one article to share with the class that made it a point to highlight the race demographic of the school and the students involved in the shooting. As if that makes a difference. I feel like those statistics were put in the article as a "post Jena 6" idea of racial violence in schools.

Pre-teens and Sexual Content

Being a child care provider, I have seen many kids movies and shows through babysitting and working at the drop off daycare that I work at. It always surprises me to see the subtle adult content in the thing the children watch. It always reminds me of an episode of sponge bob square pants where sponge bob is sad and begins drinking "juice." The more juice he drinks the sillier he acts and the stranger his vision gets. Clearly not an appropriate theme for kids.

It makes me wonder why producers and writer feel the need to add these quotes and action to children's programing. Sherek for example is filled with adult content. It's clever how well they hide it, but I have learned that most of the time- Children are smarter then we think. They know things that I don't think I knew about when I was there age.

The show that I have recently discovered is Degrassi. I catch it at night on the TV station "The Noggin." The show takes place in both middle school and high school and unlike One Tree Hill or the OC... the kids look VERY VERY young. In the few times I've watched it before bed, I've been the children fight, have sex, have bisexual intercores, do drugs, and have babies. While many of the TV dramas are about these topics in high school, the actors tend to be in their mid 20s playing teenagers. Not in Degrassi. The actors are young. It surprises me every time.

I love children, and I spend a lot of time with them. There are wholesome children's shows out there that do meet up to the expectation that adults have for children's programming.