In my work studying the sons of single and two-mother families, I found deep concern about the lack of male role models for these boys. But shift genders, and girls and female role models is a conversation we seldom seem to have.
Part of that is the fact that 80 percent of the single parent families in the U.S. are headed by females. Combined with two-parent families, it's statistically likely that girls will have a female role model in residence.
Still, we're up against powerful cultural and media currents. The great post-feminist irony is that in an age of hard-won female opportunity, media is channeling that opportunity to a place of hyper-sexualized stupidity. It's not who you are -- it's how hot you are.
Ask a young girl about the females she looks up to, and chances are good that -- after family members -- her list will be crowded with celebrities.
Young women at the most emotionally malleable time in their lives will naturally turn to celebrities for cues on everything from love to dress to sexuality. You don't have to spend a lot of time wading around in the media muck to see that young females are represented by a collection ranging from sad to frightening -- whose claim to celebrity is becoming a coarse side show.
But give girls some credit.
Most are not going to pattern their behavior on women who exit stores without paying or exit limos without underwear. They understand there is no reality show potential in the young women who manage to build public careers without making sex tapes, having sex in communal hot tubs, or collapsing on a Hollywood sidewalk at 3 a.m.
But at the same time, we can't dismiss celebrity's cumulative power. Sex objects in disarray have become the depressing norm. Strong, confident, accomplished women are out there by the legions. But they are going about building lives beyond the peripheral vision of popular culture.
Especially for young girls, peers provide the guide to things socially acceptable and desirable. Studies show very clearly that popular media is a super-peer; a force that can literally shape identities at a time when those identities are in play.
None of that is new. What's new is that technology has made sleaze-celebrity extremely loud and incredibly intimate.
I remember those innocent days when a mother could say: "I don't let my kids watch MTV." Good luck with that today. Celebrity images are blasted at young girls 24 hours a day, pinging from TV screens to computer screens to smart phone screens.
The web has knocked down the appearance of separation between image and real-life. These professional bad examples are fully interactive. Experience enough of the Bad Girls Club, and you could come to accept that the acceptable -- even preferable -- response is a punch in the face.
The problem is more obvious than the solutions. The media culture is a formidable beast.
Still, some are pushing back. Sisters and parents Abi and Emma Moore founded a UK Website called Pinkstinks (pinkstinks.org.uk) to counter marketing and media they see as overwhelmingly focused on girls being pretty, passive, and obsessed with shopping. They pick on pink as the default color for all things submissive and girly.
Their mission is to use multimedia and partnerships to confront the "damaging messages that bombard girls though toys, clothes and media."
The site started when Abi was making a film for CNN about scientist Naomi Halas, who is quietly and anonymously doing ground-breaking work using nano-technology to fight cancer. At the same time, Paris Hilton was being released from jail to a tsunami of media coverage -- including telling Barbara Walters that she found spirituality in jail. And her skin was dry. That was enough for the sisters, and their website was born.
One website -- or 20 -- won't stem the tide. But with a shared and wide commitment to present -- and, if we're lucky, to be -- the real role models, we might lift young girls above it.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
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Not all girls idolize celebrities, just as not all boys idolize action heroes.
As a girl, I had people whose work or ideas I admired. The same is true of me as a woman, but while I might admire some aspect of their lives or like something they had to say, I don't consider them role models. My life is very different from theirs, and very different from that of my mother and grandmother, who are my most obvious apparent role models, and that is as it should be. I'm not playing a role, so I don't need a model for one.
The notion of a role model is a modern concept, one that I do not think has been adequately tested. Even worse, it's become a kind of scapegoat idea, so that whatever we think is wrong with kids these days, we can blame it on lack of role models. In fact, "kids these days" have been a subject of complaint since humanity started writing things down; generational conflict is one of the oldest plots in existence. If it's down to lack of role models, then we've never, as a species, had role models that worked.
When I was a teenager, my #1 role model was Joan Jett, who was quite the party girl at the time. And I turned out just fine. So I think people worry about this stuff too much...
Isn't that one of the ideas you keep pounding, that is, when it suits your particular rant of the moment?
The vast majority of the behaviors that regressive males wistfully refer to as "femininity", are actually more akin to those of a female impersonator. And those behaviors are the SAME behaviors that you keep complaining about, that is, when it suits your particular rant of the moment.
The world will never regain hope as long as humans continue in their zombie-like flesh-eating predation of the world. For wildlife, it is endgame. For the oceans, it is near endgame. Eventually the toxification of the planet will also make it endgame for humans.
Instead of getting their act together and becoming fully human creatures in the web of life, the continued worship of male gods and machinery and the continued precedence of the unbridled industrial growth monster can only lead to a dead world.
The only hope for the world, her oceans, rivers, mountains and lifeforms is for the rapid extinction of humans.
Instead of fiddling while Rome burns (moderns being largely too stupid to play the fiddle and havign replaced music with loops, Autotune, digitial signal processing and so-called "artists" who cannot even read music), the world is dying while moderns drug themselves with porn, TV, twisted sexuality, patriarchal religions. What a species. Earth destroyers.
No she hasnt and its obvious you know nothing about her actual work since she doesnt explain her job here at all other than to describe her focus.
Yes, there are many more smart, hard working and talented people who never make it to the rarefied air of big celebrity. This does not mean that picking a celeb as a role model is necessarily a bad choice.
Sometimes hot looks and smarts come together. You can not expect to eliminate candidates just because they are "hot."
I tried that. Burned me every time. Women are always looking to excuse their poor behaviour/low achievement. Didn't get that job? Blame the glass ceiling. Got too drunk and embarrassed yourself? Say your drink was spiked. Losing an argument? Just cry.
You can keep saying it's 'negative images' and 'poor role models' that 'cause' this behaviour, yet girls lap it up like whipped cream off a male stripper's abs. Am I missing something here?
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but hey... maybe it's a really a pony that got brainwashed by the pro-duck lobby.
Gauche media is just catering to the demands of post-feminist women. Enjoy.
Is the "we are all human beings" mindset just empty words?
Why can't a black girl look up to Steve Jobs?
Why can't a Latino boy look up to Hilary Clinton?
It makes no sense.
It's all about our society of frivolous, often pointless, consumerism.
1. Young people (especially girls) are impressionable.
2. TV preys on the impressionable, to get them to buy stuff.
3. Older women rarely mature or become wise these days -> they somehow believe youth is desirable.
4. It's not that being youthful is so venerable. It is that in being youthful, one is a stupid, useful pawn of corporations.
The deregulation of the commercial airwaves removed any cultural responsibility from television publishers, leaving no argument against those who milk the medium for maximum profits. They know human psychology well enough to exploit, and there are no barriers to doing so.
It would be very difficult to put the media genie back in the bottle with restrictive regulations, given our cultures prevailing position I sum up as "profits uber alles". So, it falls to individual families, particularly parents, to teach their children to be savvy media consumers. A huge portion of parents will be unable or unwilling to do so. It's frustrating, but that is life.