Good Media

What Do Our Kids 'Dream On'?
Andrea Rock, contributing editor

Kids look to the media for role models. We know it and research confirms it. Children look to the media to learn what the world is all about, and how they should behave, in order to fit into the world. Unfortunately, the role models that Hollywood and Madison Avenue produce are rarely ones that we want our children to emulate. There seems to be a never-ending desire to push the envelope, and define decency down, through the stories that are told, and the language and images that are used.

But regardless of the media-created behaviors our kids watch, one message we take from media is clear: people are perceived to be more highly valued if they look a certain way. Any dreams they might have of getting a good education, working hard and achieving, may well be shortchanged by an obsession with appearance.

For years, parents have been concerned that our girls are learning that they can never be too beautiful, too thin, or too rich. Those values seem to supersede moral values or the American work ethic. Increasingly, our boys are being taught that their worth also stems more from their appearance than their character or achievements.

Please take a few minutes to watch these two videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Xa1Nw8eJY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Ajvix6DXs&feature=related

You may be one of those parents who takes great pains to limit and monitor your children’s use of media. But as these videos reveal, such images of physical perfection are inescapable: They are on billboards, in shopping malls, on the covers of the magazines that line the check-out counters at the local supermarket. They show up online, and on our mobile phones. And of course, they populate film, television, and popular magazines of all stripes. So what’s a parent to do?

  1. Monitor your own attitude about weight and appearance. If you are obsessed with your weight, they will learn from you, as well as from the media!
  2. Talk to them about the difference between fitness and health, and emphasize that thinness does not always equal health.
  3. Show your kids the above videos, so they can see how print models’ appearance is so dramatically changed by technology.
  4. Talk about the characters on TV shows or in movies. Point out the fact that the characters are almost always uniformly thin—sometimes unhealthfully thin—or always more beautiful than average. Engage in dialogue about this.
  5. Learn about actresses and models who have struggled with eating disorders, and contrast their real lives with the lives we see in media storylines.
  6. Point out to your daughters the large number of famous women who are incredibly beautiful and incredibly thin, and have been cheated on or divorced by their husbands.
  7. Point out to your sons that men also are increasingly being objectified in the media. Boys are developing the same anxieties about appearance that girls have long struggled with. Some boys are developing eating disorders.
  8. If your children start talking about plastic surgery or steroids, find websites that show the disastrous results of some of these procedures.
  9. Read, with great gusto, Karen Schachter’s articles in this wonderful magazine!