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Originally Posted by vanblah
Well ... maybe educate future parents and then wait for the current crop to die off? Education is really the only viable solution going forward. Maybe not with regard to the current society.
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True, as with all forms of old-school thinking (racism, sexism, etc). As I said, I can see it changing markedly by the time my grandkids, and their grandkids, etc roll around... as long as conversations like this keep happening, and people don't lighten up so much that they don't keep pushing for change, that is.
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Originally Posted by vanblah
It's certainly a slippery slope and I'm not sure how to control it other than by saying: "This is NOT real. This is a stereotype and you should not base your self-worth on this" (to both sexes).
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This might work for adults, but not for kids. And that's the problem, again, at least for this generation. Kids don't have a very good system in place for distinguishing between what is real and not-real... and so these things get stuck in their brains, which requires a hell of a lot of work to get them unstuck.
Your point reminds me of the way my parents let me watch rented horror films at home (I was watching Psycho, the Exorcist, all the Freddy Krueger movies by the time I was 5 or 6)... they would offer "parental guidance" by telling me to hide my eyes behind my hands during scary scenes (never mind the sounds), or if I happen to peek and get scared, they would tell me it wasn't real... those were their actual words. "It's not real, don't be scared honey." Right. Off to bed I went, terrified of pretty much anything that went bump in the night, up until I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. I slept with a very bright nightlight in my room because I was so anxious about someone coming to get me (we lived in a very isolated house in the middle of nowhere, huge forest around us). No matter how many times my parents dismissed my fears, they only got reinforced every time they let me watch another horror film... until I was finally old enough to figure out that they really WEREN'T real, and that I didn't have to watch horror films anymore. However, I still hate being home alone at night. Probably always will.
(And now who's rambling, eh?) But just wanted to say, kids really don't know any better, at the time when parents would like to think that they do. We can't depend on the media to intervene, since they base their entire marketing strategies on people getting brainwashed by their crap.
Interesting thing is, in Iceland, nudity is something that most people don't blink an eye at... you see it all the time in ads, in a non-sexualized way (there was a huge billboard here, encouraging people to wear seatbelts, with both people fully nude and only wearing a seatbelt over them... no one cared). You grow up going to the local swimming pool where everyone in your gender gets naked to shower thoroughly before swimming (it's required, because they don't use much chlorine in the pools). Girls get to see all KINDS of bodies--let me say it again, ALL KINDS!!!--and I think it does make them a little bit less insecure about their bodies, than if all they're seeing are models on TV, etc. It's a more realistic, non-sexualized view of male/female bodies in general that I appreciate, here in Iceland.
Alright, done for tonight.