6 SOCIETY AND SOCIALIZATION

Society and Socialization

It was very interesting to watch “Killing Us Softly”. Jean Kilbourne talked about how media portray standards of femininity thru advertisement and how these wrong ideal standards are damaging our society. The society has always been giving this impression to women that the most important thing for women is how they look. The perfect image of body we sees in ads is the image less than 5% of American women have.  The beauty that inspires everyone isn’t real even the models in those pictures don’t look like that in reality. Kilbourne said in her video that objectification of women’s body can lead to violence against women. The women’s bodies are always shown in the ads as a sexual object. The ads always have girls as passive person and boys are shown as active/strong image to the society. Kilbourne explained how everyone is exposed to the commercials and how it changes people’s mind unconsciously.

When we think of being a girl a picture comes to everyone’s mind, that is a pictures of someone who is passive, vulnerable, pretty, susceptible, or in simple words just the opposite of tough, encouraged and just opposite of masculinity. The negative image of women affects men and women both in our society. We should not label the qualities according to gender, like the media and society made us see it that way because as humans we all share the same qualities, it’s just that it has been suppressed and we are forced to focus on the emotions and qualities that only go with our gender.

Second video, “A Call to Men” is similar to Kilbourne’s killing us softly. Porter explained in detail about the problems and issues that are attached to the society’s definition of manhood. He talked about the ways we construct the manhood in today’s society , he used tormenting samples from his own personal life experience (the way his dad felt sorry because he was crying in front of him on his other son’s death). He used this model called a ‘man box’, he explained the terms described in the man box. It tells us how men are portrayed in our society as a non-emotional, agitated, aggressive, sexualized and dominant. Masculine mentality leads men unquestionably to suppress or overpower women, and that leads men to engage in obnoxious and fierce behavior towards women.

Not only this causes a problem to women but it causes trouble to men as well the violent and aggressive behavior causes problems for men as well  and each other, because not all of the men are very strong or emotionless. It’s hard for men to keep their emotions and feelings suppressed even when they are in a company of other men they never show the real feelings because they don’t want to be called as “girls”, which is apparently a very bad thing in our society.  Majority of violent crimes are done by men and a large population of prisoners are men. Acting or behaving like men is not the problem, but the real problem is the violence and insensitivity attached to the value of being manly. This lead us to violent behavior against the weak doesn’t matter men/women.

                Both of the videos inter-connect with each other. Both of the speakers in videos focus on society’s expectation from men and women. The way these ideas have been drilled into our heads it’s hard to change it all at once. Both videos also relate to the chapter 6 “socialization” because the chapter explains the society’s behavior or pattern of men/women the way they are expected to behave or socialize. The chapter explains how it all starts from a smaller scale and it goes onto a higher level. For example we start to learn how we should behave from out family, the differences between being a girl or boy. And to a larger extent when the kids are exposed to society it also conveys almost the same message as we have been taught or seen.
 

The reading “Retro wife” and “Parents' socialization of children” also connects with the chapter and the videos. The article retro wife is also about the women’s expectations and how women are wired in their minds about what they should do and what’s more ethical to them. This article was about a young educated working mom how she felt bad about not staying at home. So she quit her dream career and decided to stay home to look after her husband and kids. Society as whole always gave that impression that men are supposed to be the bread earner and women should stay at home and take care of house chores. Unconsciously we all do things that have been seeded in our minds for centuries. Women always take pauses in their career to take care of the house or family unlike men.

The second reading about parents’ socialization of children talks about how parents from different culture raise their kids. Unexpectedly the results of the cross cultural parenting research were almost the same because all of the parents want to raise a good child besides the cultural differences the way of parenting were similar. There were three parenting styles that the author talked about “Authoritarian”, “Authoritative” and “Permissive”. A parent can have more than on style depending on which kid they are talking to. In families boys and girls are treated differently and that’s how we begin to shape our society by marginalizing the characteristics of a girl and a boy.

In my own personal experience my parents are more lenient and permissive when it comes to my brother but they are very authoritarian when it comes to allowing me for something they allowed my brother. Like they would never ask him where he have been if he’d come late at night, on the other hand when I’m late, I’m not allowed to go out with those friends again until they forgets the incident.

Society’ expectation, parenting, socialization, men/women’s behaviors they all go hand in hand and that’s how we shape our society. If we really want an unbiased society than we should stop labeling and be open minded in real because media and everyone just says that men and women are equal but in reality it is not true.