Blog 6: Media Literacy Skills

I found this presentation very interesting; it had several good points. I do see a connection between my life and the amount of media that I consume, but I also feel like because of my college education I have been able to break out of the social constructs that the media have created for our society. When I was a kid in elementary school, I did not care in the least what I was wearing. I think the media is very quickly becoming a bigger part of our lives, because nowadays kids are wearing trendier shoes and clothes at earlier ages. I recently observed a fifth grade classroom and very quickly noticed how stylish the kids were. I did not start feeling the pressure to wear trendy clothes until Junior High. Kids are being "sucked into" media messages at earlier ages, because the media is just about everywhere.

One thing that makes me personally so irritated is how women and men are portrayed in the media. I have girl friends who are such twigs and they complain all the time about how fat they are. The media teaches women to be as skinny as they can be, and many women end up having eating disorders and becoming extremely unhealthy. On the other hand, guys are taught to be strong and almost emotionless human beings. I know so many guys who were taught not to cry and not to talk about their feelings. The presentation made a good point: who is behind these ideas? In my child development course, we talked about the similarities between boys and girls as kids. It isn't up until they are told how to act in society that the differences between them start to emerge. I think more people need to realize that many of what we see and hear in our society is just a social construct made from the media. We need to question what we hear and see instead of blindly taking the messages in and accepting them.

It is absolutely outrageous the things that are shown in music videos, for example. In many rap videos men are surrounded by half-naked women, and these women are portrayed in sexual, negative ways; it's very degrading. Many song lyrics have hugely misogynistic messages. They sing about hating women, violence against women, rape, et cetera, and there are people who listen to this and support this kind of music. Because some people accept messages from the media without questioning what they are being fed, some of these individuals also pressure people around them to accept it as well; they do not use their critical thinking skills. I have male friends, for example, who are mocked and ridiculed if they do not watch pornography. Many of my girl friends accept that their partner watches it, because they believe that it is normal nowadays. For some reason, men are pressured into believing that looking at pornography is a masculine activity and that it is perfectly okay. The media just disgusts me.

All in all, I think it is extremely important for parents to teach their kids from a very early age to use their critical thinking skills to question the media. Media literacy skills are very important to acquire, otherwise many kids will grow up being naive and blindly accepting what they hear and see. It is really sad to see people grow up bound by the social constructs of the media. Many women and men do not feel happy with who they are and what they look like, because we are taught almost everywhere how we need to act and look like to be accepted.