Summary of What ‘Modern Family’ Says About Modern Families

The crux of Modern Family's popularity lies in its ability to parody real life without being overly mocking, and to show social conscious in a way that does not gush wholesomeness but instead values learning from interaction.  Television programs of my parent’s generation, such as The Andy Griffith Show and Bonanza, were based on righteousness characters, who encountered disreputable ones, ultimately overcoming immorality through application of their good sense or raw strength.   Fifty years later, TV’s Modern Family has neither the righteous nor the evil – simply everyday problems. Yet, Modern Family accomplishes social awareness through its undertones, oftentimes toying with technology’s role in complicating and confusing our lives, rather than its overt messaging.

Look at Cameron and Mitchell, the gay parents of adopted daughter, Lilly, who make every effort to create a nurturing home on Modern Family.   Their fundamental concerns are ones shared with heterosexual couples, for example, how to raise their infant.  In one episode Cameron and Mitchell conflict on whether to soothe their crying infant. In that episode, Mitchell tried to enforce a "baby-training" method of  self-soothing, which involved allowing Lily to cry for a set amount of time before giving her comfort.  Cameron could not withstand the crying and continued to intervene with her distress, resulting in conflict when Mitchell accused Cameron of indulging Lily.  These are moments of conflict likely common to all new parents – and there’s no right answer to raising children.  The message is that no one insinuates that Cameron and Mitchell, because they are gay parents, are any more-or-less equipped or capable of child rearing than anyone else.
  
Plot lines do not represent whether or not Cameron and Mitchell are at-fault for the situations they encounter as was present in the late 1990s sitcom Will & Grace.  Modern Family is not political in terms of gay rights or obligations; disinclined to explain or deny issues encountered strictly because Cameron and Mitchell are a homosexual couple.  That is what makes Modern Family popular for today’s gay audiences.  In fact, I read a New York Times titled “ABC’s Gay Wednesdays” by Frank Bruni (22 March 2012) which asserted that "A decade ago [gays] would have balked—and balked loudly—at how frequently Cameron in particular tips into limp-wristed, high-voiced caricature… most gay people trust that the television audience knows we're a diverse tribe, not easily pigeonholed.”

Another aspect of Modern Family’s simple genius is its scrutiny of gender bias.  There is an episode where the frustrated mother, Claire, tried to learn how to use the universal remote.  She is typecast as technology-challenged which is attributed by husband, Phil, to girls lacking the innate talent to use technology that boys naturally possess.  This skit makes fun of the gender bias that women cannot learn technology as well as men can.  Yet, the storyline shifts gears as Phil easily teaches daughter Haley how to use the remote.  It’s also a parody of the competitiveness between sexes which creates tension, but once removed, allows Claire to easily learn how to use the remote from her daughter.  Last, it’s a theme of how technology reinforces existing tensions, such as parent’s concerns that kids don’t interact within the family because of texting at dinner.

But is texting really the issue?  Or, is it that parents can no longer exercise blatant control over their children’s exposure to the world once the world enters through Skype, YouTube, and Facebook?   Clearly, it’s the latter and Modern Family explored this in another episode where parents Claire and Phil demand a one week moratorium from electronics use by their children only to find that they are the ones ultimately inconvenienced by the experience.  Below the surface Modern Family does a good job at mocking several layers of roles, interactions, and use of technology, but viewers have to watch it carefully to appreciate the subtle mockery.

Gender Neutral Children

Are children born with innate knowledge of how to behave according to society’s expectations of their biological sex?  Of course not: They need to be taught, learning by nurture (not by nature) which behaviors conform to those expected from boys or girls. But the children discussed here, Sasha and Storm, did not receive gender-specific toys, clothing, or verbal queues from parents or community.  It’s interesting to see how their parents coped with criticism for not teaching their child to be a ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ and the associated societal pressures.  Their stories are strikingly similar in that each set of parents was adamant not to inhibit or hinder their child with preconceived notions of conformance to either masculine versus feminine behavior.  

Teaching Gender

Beginning early in their lives, children are introduced to gender roles:  through characters’ actions in television shows and the books read to them, from what they observe in their own households, based on the toys they play with, their rewards and punishment, plus the way parents reinforce appropriate play (Putnam).  It doesn’t take long to saturate.  “Children have been observed to display toy preferences with gender stereotypes at 14 to 20 months of age” according to findings published in 2001 International Journal of Behavioral Development (Serbin).  Another study, “Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration,” determined that learning to gender-type, a process wherein gender-specific behavior can be distinguished, occurs when children are between the ages of two-and-a- half and three (Ryle 131).  Weinraub’s results from 1984, published in Child Development, determined that children between 2 and 4 years of age “become aware that there are two categories of people – male and female – and they also become aware of the category into which they fit…[they] discriminate individuals in one category from individuals in another” (1493).  All these studies determined that children are aware of and make choices based on gender before the age of five. 

The Genderless Child

Both Sasha and Storm were raised without the conventional notions of gender identity.  Their parents avoid gender determinants – by removing the factors which affect their children’s learning about gender – eliminating distinctions or adherence to gender norms.  Even their biological sex was a closely kept secret that their families did not reveal to anyone – only their midwives knew for sure. 

Distinctly rigid ideas of gender would repress and limit them, their parents feared.  Sasha’s mother was concerned that gender stereotyping would impair her child’s development by skewing his/her potential.  Storm’s parents didn't want him/her to be limited by sex, instead to be able to choose whatever was comfortable later in life when s/he was prepared to make more informed choices.  Storm’s parents sought freedom of expression, which they hoped would lead their child to being well-adjusted. 

Sasha’s parents are considered odd – shunned by other parents who do not understand them as well as criticized by family and friends.  Sasha, who had not been bullied for wearing girl’s clothing, appeared at-ease in the photographs.  However, the article about how Storm was being raised described his/her family’s life as the “outlandish world of gender-free parenting” (Leonard).  Obviously, this author was jaundiced in his outlook and reporting of the story.

In addition, experts in the field were disparaging.   In the article about Storm’s upbringing, a child psychiatrist frowned on gender-neutrality with this disapproving remark, “To raise a child not as a boy or a girl is creating, in some sense, a freak. It sets them up for not knowing who they are” (Leonard).  In both articles, identical experts' comments were published regarding an environment free from gender norms.  First, a child psychiatrist expressed dismay insisting that “When children are born, they’re not a blank slate. We do have male brains and female brains. There’s a reason why boys do more rough and tumble play; there’s a reason why girls have better language development skills” (Wilkes and Leonard). Then, a noncommittal observation of a psychology lecturer appeared in both articles, maintaining that, “It’s hard to say whether being raised gender-neutral will have any immediate or long-term psychological consequences for a child, purely because to date there is little research examining this topic” (Wilkes and Leonard).

Breaking the Gender Barrier

I would be concerned about the negative impact of raising a child without gender – specifically because it strikes at the core of what is normal.  It’s extremely difficult to transgress society’s rules for behavior, and a person has to be uniquely stable and confident to withstand the onslaught of contempt for being different.  So, while I see the parent’s arguments that gender is limiting, it is also a major factor for societal expectations.  I could not see myself being bold enough to set my child up for the punishment that goes along with breaking society’s rules. 

However, I give Sasha’s and Storm’s parents a great deal of credit for following their beliefs, forging ahead despite controversy, and seeing through their convictions – because their confidence will likely fuel Sasha and Storm to persevere in the upheaval of classmates and peers who will no doubt find their upbringing unusual and fodder for teasing.  Everyone else whom Sasha and Storm will encounter will have opinions that are contrary to the way they were raised.  These kids will bear the brunt of being different. 

Having said that, there’s always someone who has to be the role model for change – and that person’s path is clearly fraught with controversy.  I think of Jackie Robinson, who was the first African American to play baseball in the non-Negro leagues.  He too was looked upon for breaking stereotypes. His role was to show that society was better served by eliminating racial bias.  He endured the social reaction of being different.  He “broke the color barrier” that had restricted black players to Negro leagues.  Sasha’s and Storm’s parents are like Branch Rickey, the baseball executive credited with bringing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers; these parents are showing us that there is a “gender barrier” and that it needs to be broken.

                                                                 Works Cited

“Canadian Parents Raise Gender-Neutral Baby by Not Revealing Its Sex.” AutoStraddle. 24 May 2011.  Web. 17 April 2015.  http://www.autostraddle.com/canadian-parents-raise-gender-neutral-baby-by-not-revealing-its-sex-90186/

Leonard, Tom.  “The Baby who is Neither Boy nor Girl: As gender experiment provokes outrage, what about the poor child's future?”  Daily Mail. 27 May 2011 Web. 17 April 2015. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391772/Storm-Stocker-As-gender-experiment-provokes-outrage-poor-childs-future.html

Putnam, Jodi. “Influences on Children’s Development.”  Purdue. N.d. Web. 17 April 2015. https://www.extension.purdue.edu/providerparent/child%20growth-development/influencesongender.htm

Ryle, Robyn.  Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications, Inc.,  2012.  Print.

Serbin, Lisa, et al. “Gender Stereotyping in Infancy:  Visual Preferences for and Knowledge of Gender-Stereotyped Toys in the Second Year.”  International Journal of Behavioral Development. 25(1) 7-15. 2001.Web. 17 April 2015.

Weinraub, Marsha, et al.  “The Development of Sex Role Stereotypes in the Third Year: Relationships to Gender Labeling, Gender Identity, Sex-Typed Toy Preference, and Family Characteristics.”  Child Development. Vol. 55, No. 4. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. August 1984. Pp. 1493-1503. Web. 17 April 2015.

Wilkes, David. “Boy or girl? The parents who refused to say for FIVE years finally reveal sex of their 'gender-neutral' child.” Daily Mail. 20 January 2012. Web. 17 April 2015. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089474/Beck-Laxton-Kieran-Cooper-reveal-sex-gender-neutral-child-Sasha.html

Summary of Small Change by Malcolm Gladwell

Can Facebook and Twitter be used to reinvent social activism? Author Malcolm Gladwell argues in Small Change that social media are not positioned for this challenge because while social media are great at fostering innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together buyers and sellers, and coordinating logistics, they are lacking in creating bonds that unite people to rebel, especially critical to sweeping social changes such as America’s 1960s civil rights movement.

Gladwell’s Contention

Gladwell’s thesis statement was buried deep in the article (which made it exhausting to read until his point was finally made), which was:  Weak ties, like the ones present in social media networks, “seldom lead to risk-risk activism.”  The author’s definition of a “weak tie” are associations that, while allowing people to “give voice to their concerns,” do not elicit individuals to take action; whereas a "strong tie" is one that allows people to confront tyranny and bring about significant social change because of a deeply vested personal relationship. 

After a discussion of the Greensboro lunch counter confrontation, Gladwell purported that David Richmond, Franklin, McClain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil (the 'Greensboro Four' activists) empowered one another, using their long-term and inter-connecting relationship, to remain seated at the ‘all white’ lunch counter at Woolworth’s – despite being warned and then threatened that they could not stay there.  Furthermore, per Gladwell, without the strength of their friendship bonds, they would not have had the courage needed to protest the racial injustice of Jim Crow practices as they did.

Gladwell goes on to assert that social media connects people but only to the extent that they are not asked to risk large stakes in the outcome.  His example discussed a search for donor bone-marrow and the creation of a database as an example of social media’s strengths.  By comparison, civil rights worker’s strength to proceed with the 1960s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, per Gladwell, lay in the fortitude only exhibited when there are "strong ties" among the participants. The Freedom Project would not have been fostered by social media, in Gladwell’s estimation, because Facebook “succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice” but instead by its indirect associations. 

Media Expert Disagrees

In another TCNJ course (i.e., Society, Ethics, and Technology) we discussed how the viral popularity of a Facebook page (featuring Klahed Said, a slain victim of Egyptian police brutality) fueled further dissension and protests, leading to President Mubarak’s resignation in 2012.  Remembering this, I Google-searched ‘role of social media in Arab Spring Uprising’ and a host of compelling blogs and articles were presented.   One, written by Master’s student Eira Martens reflected an academic study by someone with diverse media consulting experience in Germany, Australia, South East Asia and Latin America.  As a result, I felt her work was less emotional than some of the blog posts that I also read from Egyptians who participated in the movement. 

Martens' research on the Arab Spring Uprisings conflicted with Gladwell’s foundational premise the people are only willing to make a sacrifice and show the tenacity required to confront stare down injustice when motivated and flanked by personal acquaintances.  In contrast, Martens stated that as brutal images in Egypt “were distributed on Facebook and other platforms such as YouTube and Flickr, made people more willing to take to the streets and risk being injured or even killed…because as well as making people angry, the images also lowered people’s fear threshold,” allowing participants to form a collective identity (Martens).  This was a departure from Gladwell's assertion that only deep and meaningful friendships fuel people's courage to protest and that social media, lacking in depth, was inept at spurring social upheaval and change.    

In Small Change, Gladwell takes great stock in his assertion that high-risk activism mandates “strong-ties” with friends who are also taking part in the movement stating, “The primary determinant of who showed up was “critical friends” – the more you had who were critical of the regime, the more likely you were to join the protest.”  Martens' commentary was in direct contrast to Gladwell's baseline arguments. 

Meeting of the Minds

However, on the subject of leadership and authority, Gladwell stated that “if you are taking on a powerful and organized establishment, you have to be a hierarchy” which provides an authority structure of disciplined groups.  Marten’s research agreed that “the organizational potential of Facebook and Twitter to coordinate protests in the long-term, to define collective goals and to create effective structures seems to be limited.”

 

Gladwell’s article was written in 2010, while the Arab Spring Uprisings took place in 2012.  So, I have to wonder if Gladwell would change his position if he compared the 1960s civil rights movement (accomplished without social media) to the Arab Spring Uprisings, whose success in gathering high-risk involvement has been attributed to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.  I would personally believe this comparison would present a more convincing argument than Gladwell did in Small Change. 

Works Cited

“What Role Did Social Media Really Play in Egypt’s Arab Spring Uprising?” OnMedia. 10 December 2012. Web. 14 April 2015. http://onmedia.dw-akademie.de/english/?p=6491

Social Networks

What’s different in the online world of socializing from the everyday contact we have with other people?  In her article “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites” author Danah Boyd described that whereas the human body characterizes our identity in everyday dealings, on social media where the body is not visible or inter-reactive in real time, “people need to write themselves into being” (Dines 411).  

In addition, Boyd asserted that social networks are “arenas for formation and enactment of social identities” that individuals use to “work through how to present themselves” (Dines 415).  Using this, I asked myself how my friends positioned their online persona. Investigating my friends’ Facebook photos, I considered how they shaped and presented their online social identity.  When doing so, I asked myself ‘What does this person want me to know about them from looking at their pages?’ and ‘What impression is made from their pages?’  It was startling to me that, after viewing many of them, how much their online identities trended.  Here’s what I found.

Women’s photos show lively facial expressions (smiling, giggling, excited, energetic) and poses that are playful and humorous, portraying them as feisty and fun-loving, enjoying the company of other attractive women and men – especially images of gatherings where people were dressed-up at formal occasions.  It’s almost like women can’t be seen with non-attractive, unfashionable people because that would expose them to being less appealing.  Women’s Facebook photos also seemed to want to validate their physical appeal:  their hair was styled, make-up applied, clothing was fashionable with matching shoes and accessories.
  
It showed the pressure for them to conform to idealized body images and perhaps to mirror the women they see in advertising.  This reminded of Rosalind Gill’s article “SuperSexualize Me!” where the author talked about how advertising encourages the male gaze by creating “representations of idealized beauty” (Dines 286) and evidencing the “playfulness, freedom and above all, choice (Dines 280).  My female friends’ Facebook photos reinforced Gill’s premise of how “socially constructed ideals of beauty are internalized and made [their] own” (Dines 282) on their Facebook photos.

Compared to this, the guys Facebook photos showed primarily their camaraderie during physical activities –posting photos of themselves in-tandem with a group of friends, frequently enjoying and/or participating in a sporting event.  Guys most often post photos of themselves doing something deemed masculine: holding up soccer trophies, rooting at a sporting event, competing in Tough Mudder.  They do not appear to wear fashionable clothing, mostly in comfortable clothes that fit the activity. Unlike women, the guys seemed unafraid to look socially awkward or unkempt on Facebook, posting pictures for example from events where they are dressed in comedic outfits or being disheveled and dirty, having just completed some physical exertion.  This is confirmation that it’s more socially acceptable to be clumsy and messy if you’re a guy, but you have to be doing manly things.  Another interesting trend was that there are no whimsical photos of guys on Facebook:  No guys at the zoo.  No guys an art gallery – guys do go to these places, but don’t want their online persona to show it because it does not conform to a masculine image.

In addition to photos, Facebook pages are meant to summarize the people they represent through their ‘likes’ of music, movies, TV, games and books.  Here, I would agree with Boyd as these are “partially defined by themselves and partially defined by others” (Dines 416) because people characterize themselves within narrow bands of acceptability.  For example, music that my friends ‘like’ on Facebook were limited by current popularity – no one’s choice of music included classical works even though some people likely know and like works by Mozart and Chopin.  Similarly, movie ‘likes’ for the women included chick flicks and action films for the guys.  But none of the guys listed The Blind Side even though it’s a football film.  Also, no one posted photos of their parents or young siblings – not a family photo to be found.  Why?  Don’t we all have families?  We define ourselves by our likes, but only within the boundaries of our generation and our gender.  My research confirmed what Danah Boyd asserted in Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites that “People have more control online – they are able to carefully choose what information to put forward…” (Dines 411). 

What does this say about my Facebook friends, who are likely representative of my generation?  First, we want to fit into the structures because, unlike the teens in Boyd’s article, we possess greater knowledge, having already “learned society’s rules …[through] trial and error, validation and admonishment” (Dines 416).  From this, we understand society’s norms and rules, and are careful to stay within the collectively-set boundaries – avoiding publicity on social networks of aspects of our lives, like parents and siblings, who are in the forbidden zone. Also, we know where the common ground lies by gender and follow it closely – infatuated by beauty for women and confident in physical prowess for guys. 

In “Why Youth (Heart) Social Networks,” Danah Boyd used a scenario of someone tripping on the curb and bearing the brunt of visual and mediated audiences (Dines 410). Yet, on Facebook we are uniquely capable of guarding ourselves from ‘tripping,’ avoiding contempt from others in our online space and precluding embarrassment by allowing online viewers to observe only what we want them to see.  Facebook allows us to conceal ourselves, positioning our image so that others may only witness our ‘likes’ from what we choose for them to see.  Do our Facebook pages reflect who we truly are or are we merely projecting the socially-acceptable norms that our social media friends expect to see?  From my research, clearly it’s the latter.

Works Cited

“Are Social Networking Sites Good for Our Society?” ProCon. 24 March 2015. Web. 15 April 2015.   http://socialnetworking.procon.org/#pro_con

Trendsetting: Ready, Set, Go Viral

Promoting Women in STEM Careers: A Trendsetting Experience

Why are women not advantaging their position in society and bettering their communities by contributing deeper within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers? Opportunities for women in science and technology fields abound yet women are vastly underrepresented in STEM disciplines, creating “a gender gap to innovation” (Beede). Access to higher level education is not responsible.  Women now outnumber men in college enrollments: 12 million college students are female compared to 8 million men (Fast Facts).  While women occupy 48% of all jobs in the United States, less than 25% of STEM jobs are held by women (Beede).  The fault for this inequity has been attributed to toymaker’s paradigms (Blake), teachers’ biases, and the lack of role models (Huhman).  However, toys and teachers are not solely culpable – popular culture and media hinder women from the sciences. How?

It’s because Americans learn more from media than from any other source.  Advertising, which represented a $235.6 billion U.S. industry in 2012 (Newsom), hyper-stresses femininity to sell products using the Internet, television, and magazines and, thereby, substantively influences how women evaluate their self-worth:  based on their bodies, not their minds or capabilities.  Rosalind Gill’s article  “SuperSexualize Me!” reinforced how “the body is portrayed in advertising and elsewhere as the primary source of women’s capital” (Dines 280).  Also, Sut Jhally asserted in “Image-Based Culture” that the foundation for “gender (especially for women) is defined almost exclusively along the lines of sexuality” (Dines 245).  In addition, gender socialization, which was persuasively portrayed in the 2012 documentary Miss Representation, revealed how America’s media (mis)shapes women’s perceptions using appearance as a measure of value, explaining why women gravitate to media’s definition of femininity (Newsom). 

Insomuch as conforming to media images of beauty and sexuality begets societal acceptance, pursuing STEM fields translates to being unfeminine.  For example, popular television sitcoms, such as The Big Bang Theory, emphasize how female scientists are embarrassing misfits, such as the comically awkward character, Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler.  Adhering to gender rules, women more typically pursue social sciences and humanities where being creative and nurturing coincides with society’s norms.  According to research published in January 2015 edition of Science Magazine, women earned “70% of the Ph.D.’s in art history and psychology” but “fewer than 20% of all Ph.D.’s in physics and computer science” (Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer, and Freeland).  The authors asserted that because women are stereotyped as lacking the innate intellectual talent required to succeed in physical sciences, “The emphasis on raw aptitude may activate the negative stereotypes in women’s own minds…If women internalize the stereotypes, they may decide that these fields [STEM] are not for them” (Leslie 262).

The objective of my social media project was to show that women in science are ‘in style’ – meaning that being a female scientist, engineer, or programmer is fashionable.  College women involved in STEM-related college curricula, the target of the challenge, were asked to pose for and post photos on FEMS 4 STEM, a Facebook community, showing their stylishness – wearing high-heeled footwear or fashionable clothing.  While we were not successful with endearing our fellow students to participate, my partner and I linked web content to the page to make it more robust, including articles we had read to complete this Trendsetting assignment.  Then, we encouraged fellow students to read and "like" the content.

While we were not successful in utilizing ethos, pathos and logos, creating social currency, or a memory-inducing trigger to get others to share our Facebook page (Konnikova), I think this project was still a success.  We learned that soliciting attention in a world crammed with media messaging is challenging and that the ability to start a trend, evoking our peers to get involved in what we think is important, requires effort.  Most importantly we now realize that social media, which is accessible to everyone,  can be used to breakdown gender barriers because, as stressed in a 2014 article in Everyday Feminism, “We shouldn’t have “male-dominated” and “female-dominated” fields that separate us into gender-specific jobs that don’t correspond with our actual aspirations” (Valoy).   This assignment educated me that the power of social media is in my hands and can be used in reverse of media trends
that objectify women.  I think this trendsetting project was most valuable because it allowed me to project my beliefs instead of merely being a consumer of what others want me to believe.  We may not have “gone viral” but we did learn that we have the power to “infect” others through social media.

                                                                  Works Cited

Beede, David et al.  “Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation.”  U.S. Department of Commerce. ESA Issue Brief #04-11.  2011 August. Web. 6 March 2015. http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/womeninstemagaptoinnovation8311.pdf

Blake, Tanya.  “Toy Story.”  Institution of Mechanical Engineers. 6 March 2015. Web. 1 October 2014.  http://www.imeche.org/news/engineering/toy-story

Dines, Gail and Jean M. Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media.  Boston: Sage Publications, 2014.  Print.

 “Fast Facts.”  The National Center for Education Statistics.  U.S. Department of Education. Web. 6 March 2015. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

Huhman, Heather.  “STEM Fields And The Gender Gap: Where Are The Women?” Forbes.  20 June 2012.  Web.  6 March 2015.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/20/stem-fields-and-the-gender-gap-where-are-the-women/

Konnikova, Maria. “The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You.”  The New Yorker. 21 January 2014. Web. 12 April 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you

Leslie, Sarah-Jane, et al.  “Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines." Science. 20 January 2015. Web. 4 April 2015. http://www.unh.edu/sites/www.unh.edu/files/departments/unh_advance/PDFs/science-2015-leslie-262-5.pdf

Miss Representation.  Dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom.  Virgil Films, 2012.  Film.

Valoy, Patricia.  “6 Reasons Why STEM Outreach is a Feminist Issue.” Everyday Feminism. 18 April 2014. Web. 9 March 2015.  http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/04/stem-outreach-feminist-issue/

 

Reality Television

Which elements of reality TV are real? Clearly the people are real (not animated).  Their identities appear real, not actors playing a character’s role.  The settings do not appear to be on Hollywood stages.  But are the situations genuine?  Reality TV is a hybrid: not scripted like sitcoms, not actors performing in dramatic roles.  Reality TV features regular people in circumstances that are constructed to mirror parts of real life, such as dating in The Bachelor, vacationing at the Jersey Shore, or caring for children in Supernanny.  The later is the focus of this review.
 

Each episode of Supernanny followed the same pattern as frustrated parents, driven to the brink of insanity with the struggles of raising their children, reached out for help from Nanny Jo, a former nanny and child raising expert, who entered the home and provided wise and practical advice on how to re-engineer the home.  The interactions appear spontaneous (not scripted) as the knowledgeable nanny first viewed the family interacting, later providing an evaluation on how to improve the household.  Portrayed as distressing to parents, especially to super-stressed and overwrought mothers, the evaluation sessions were frequently filled with crying women – overwhelmed by their role and obviously distressed with their childrearing failures.  See images below.

Because they focus on men and women in domestic situations, reality parenting shows such as Supernanny can scrutinize and expose gender roles. However, the majority of the nanny’s advice focused on changing the practices of the primary caregiver – an incompetent, lenient mother – so that the father, who could pitch-in somewhat after work, would not come home to chaos.  The camera spotlighted the moms as upset and humiliated as the nanny doled out ridicule for their lack of domestic control, while the solemn dads cautiously listened and comforted inept wives.  This patriarchal reinforcement of gender roles was subtle, portraying women as responsible for nurturing, unable to cope without outbursts of emotion while men were to calmly look on as their focus remained on the family’s financial support.  Supernanny was guilty of proliferating traditional gender roles, frequently providing day planners to structure how women needed to take charge of the job of domestic manager. 

The allure of the show was that audiences thought they were getting genuine parenting advice about genuine people’s problems from a genuine expert.  But the most genuine aspect lied in attracting a specific audience demographic:  a breeding ground for advertising.  In his article “Marketing Reality to the World”, author Chris Jordan asserted that “Advertisers readily sponsored Survivor because of its design as a virtual commercial for their products” (Dines 518).  The same argument could be made for the success of Supernanny in attracting a captive audience of parents of young families who were concerned with raising those children.

Jordan also pointed to the low production costs make reality TV shows attractive since the number of television channels “competing for funding and audiences advertising is that broadcasters must spend greater and greater sums on marketing to get their shows noticed…” (Dines 521).  Without a large cast (only Nanny Jo) or production sets (only the family’s homes), the cost of producing Supernanny would have been far below popular scripted sitcoms, like The Big Bang Theory, where the lead actors are paid $1 million per episode, and the producer, Warner Brothers TV, “is expected to clear $1 billion in profits, with some projecting that Big Bang could contribute to Time Warner’s bottom line twice that over its lifespan” (Andreeva).  Obviously, television is big business.

Reality parenting shows, like Supernanny, which allow women to be shown as inept caregivers who berate themselves for not living-up to the standards of motherhood, reinforce the patriarchy of our culture while also attracting women to products that support their caregiver role.  This show, like other reality TV programs, was designed to make money by selling products to women using the backdrop of improving their parenting expertise. 

                                                                    Works Cited

Andreeva, Nellie. “Big Bang Theory’ Stars Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco Close Big New Deals.” Huffington Post. 4 August 2014. Web. 10 April 2015.

Girl Rising

Unlike their American counterparts, girls in developing nations are not valued for their potential to contribute to society beyond their abilities to bear children, labor tirelessly, and not complain about the cruelty of being born where their gender governs that civil and women’s rights mean practically nothing.  As portrayed by Girl Rising, educational opportunities for girls can be vehemently discouraged by some cultures, wholly overlooked as unnecessary in others while for some girls the prospects for education are dramatically difficult given economic conditions, presenting a life-and-death struggle for individual parents to provide.

Suma from Nepal and Ruksana from Pakistan were each featured in Girl Rising, but their individual stories were dissimilar.  Their similarity in Girl Rising was that both Suma and Ruksana were caught in developing nations, devoid of financial resources, where education for a girl was not a valued necessity as it is in the United States.  The sharpest contrast was that one girl, Suma, was born to a culture where girls were ‘chattel’ – items of property that could be sold for profit.  We talk about women in American culture being objectified by the media, but Suma was the ultimate example of being an object in her culture – a human being disregarded for her personal and intellectual capabilities – reduced to a role in society of nothing more than a commodity to be traded, put to work, and abused at the discretion of her Kamlari masters.  The other girl, Ruksana, was born into a family beleaguered by poverty, but resolute about educating their daughters.  Ruksana, whose family lived in a tent on the city sidewalk, was indulged with the purchase of art supplies as a method to recognize that her preoccupation with drawing was distracting her in school.  While the family lacked financial resources, they were persevering in their quest for their daughters’ education.

  Suma was bonded to three different masters, beginning when she was six years old.  She washed dishes, minded goats, and gathered firewood from 4am until late in the night.  She was teased and beaten; they called her the ‘unlucky girl.’  She ate nothing but scraps from her master’s plate, wore rags as her clothing, and slept on the goat house floor.  Poignant to her experiences while subsisting as a bonded laborer were her songs of despair, “My parents were unfair/They gave birth to a daughter.” Suma’s dogged determination to survive sustained her through these ordeals until she her plight was recognized – she was rescued from ignorance by a school teacher who boarded at her third master’s house.  He convinced Suma’s master to allow her to enroll in a night class where social workers taught girls to read and write.  Later, other social workers argued for Suma’s freedom – disputing that Kamlari was unlawful in Nepal.  After several tries, her master allowed Suma to return to her own family.  Then, she sang of being her own master now, “I’ve seen what change comes from/It’s a breath like a song/Others pick up the tune/And the melody touches the heart of one person and then another.”  These lyrics rejoiced in Suma’s power to do or be anything that she chose.  Yet, Suma did not stop there.  She gathered with other former slaves to convince additional masters to free other bonded girls.  Suma used her power and freedom to extricate more girls from the oppressions of the Kamlari system.

In direct contrast to the treatment Suma received from her parents, Ruksana’s  father devotedly believed in educating his daughters.  However, while in her classroom, Ruksana daydreamed and doodled on her notebook, rather than paying attention to her math lessons.  Her teacher, frustrated with Ruksana, demanded that she leave the school.  Surprisingly, Ruksana’s father greeted this news with compassion.  Rather than reinforce the need for her to pay attention in class, her father brought her to a craft store and purchased colorful markers and a sketch pad.  Now, Ruksana promised her father that she would attend to her schoolwork because he had made her so happy.  But their worries were not over.  Because of street violence, it was no longer safe for Ruksana to sleep in the family’s sidewalk tent.  Instead she was sent to a shelter only to return as police evicted families and tore down their tents.  With no home or place to live, Ruksana’s father reluctantly agreed with his wife that the family should return to their native village and give up their dreams of the girls’ education.  In a surprise turn of events, Ruksana’s mother, who had been adamantly wishing to return to the village, said that educating the girls was truly their most important goal and that the family must remain in the city.  They still did not have a home, but the girls continued at the school.

After viewing Girl Rising, I researched and learned that Nepal’s Kamlari system, which was abolished in 2000, had legitimately allowed the parents of girls to sell them into indentured servitude.  I knew indentured servitude was an arrangement that had allowed poor British youth to afford passage to the American colonies in return for a period of bonded labor; only to be replaced by the disgraceful forms of cheap African slave labor.  As a history student, I learned that slavery was abolished in 1865 with the 13^th Amendment.  So, it never occurred to me that there was slavery or indentured servitude in existence in the 20^th century.  Girl Rising provided more education on a topic I had no idea still existed.

I also know that educational reforms of the early 20^th century made public education free for citizens as it was paid for by taxes and became mandatory in America.  From a bit of research, I also learned that we have the early settlers of Massachusetts to thank for public school groundbreaking.  As early as 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a ruling to establish elementary education for all children, not just boys, and by 1817 Boston had established free public primary schools (Historical Timeline).  In 1785 the Continental Congress established “land grants” for public education, leading to the state public universities  – I read a Forbes report that as of 2012 the male-to-female ratio in public universities was 43.6% male to 56.4% female (Borzelleca). What is interesting is that religious training coupled with the need for discipline and obedience, primarily from immigrant and poor children, was the driving force behind the historical push for public education in the US (Cheek).  It was not until the landmark 1950s Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, that US schools became integrated, allowing girls and boys of all races to participate with equal access to education.

Any discussion of American education by a student at TCNJ would be incomplete without discussing the role of normal schools.   These were set-up to train professional teachers, which is how our own TCNJ, which was Trenton State Teachers College evolved from the original New Jersey State Normal School, demonstrating that opportunities for girls to be educated, and to grow to teach others, were possible because of the very institution that is now educating students in this class.  Looking into its history, it’s noteworthy that the first three women to attend the experimental normal school in Lexington, Massachusetts were accepted in 1839 (Cheek) while New Jersey State Normal School at Trenton opened in 1855.

However, one point about America’s education of girls must be noted here.  The American education system and our culture are sorely lacking today by not encouraging girls in math and science fields.   A recent study I read stated that, “Girls whose 6th grade teachers were biased were less likely to take advanced math and science classes in high school, likely contributing to lower numbers of women going into STEM fields after graduation” (Moeny).  This was the topic for my trendsetting project where I go into more detail.  

                                                    Works Cited

Borzelleca, Daniel. “The Male-Female Ratio in College.” Forbes Magazine. 16 February 2012.  
Web.  9 April 2015.  

Cheek, Karen.  “The Normal School.” N.d. Web. 9 April 2015. https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/normal.html

“Historical Timeline of Public Education in the US.” Race Forward. N.d. web. 9 April 2015.

Money, Jordan.  “Biased Teachers Dissuade Girls From STEM Courses, Study Says.”  Education Week.  3 March 2015 Web. 9 April 2015.