I'm too pretty to...

This first tee shirt was featured in a blog post on the Beauty is Inside blog. I agreed with the post that wearing a shirt like this gives not only a highly-sexualized image of young girls, but it also makes them seem untrustworthy. The author found this shirt in the juniors department, which seems way too young to be flaunting your man-stealing prowess.

Upon reading this post, I was reminded of a similar controversy involving a girl’s tee shirts sold at JCPenney (click here to read about it). The following shirt was pulled after complaints poured into JCPenney.

What bothers me the most about all these tee shirts is that they reinforce sexism and sexualize girls at a very young age. Here words and appearance come together to teach young girls that math is only for ugly girls, and judging by the shirt design, we are also telling 7 or 8 year old girls to use their bodies and not their brains to get things done. As a high school senior in my second year of AP math classes, I find it offensive that we still market smart girls as ugly, weird, or nerdy. I am not an ultra-feminist, but these shirts are only a few examples of tons of sexist shirts on the market (click here for more examples).

Another thought that bothered me was that there are parents that let their children wear shirts with messages like this, or worse parents that buy these shirts for their kids. It’s disturbing when parents are actively involved in the premature sexualization of their own children. I’ll be honest, Toddler and Tiaras on TLC is one of my guilty pleasure shows, but beauty pageants are one of the most concrete examples of such a phenomenon. All of these subtle forms of sexism and sexualization of girls keep all females stuck in traditional gender roles.

Simba doesn't live in Nairobi...

Consider for a moment the two attached pictures; which one best represents Africa?

My gut reaction was to chose the UNICEF advertisement with the despondent-looking children. But taking that stance infantilizes Africa. The second picture is one of Nairobi, Kenya, which although it may not be Chicago or New York is a functioning “modern” city that is also a part of Africa. I began to question what made me view Africa as a continent of starving orphans and not a place with a wide variety of people and problems? I came to the conclusion that American media coverage makes Africa appear helpless, childlike, and unable to solve its own problems.

To test this theory, I went to the New York Times and browsed through the articles of their Africa section. To my surprise, only one of the articles listed was about progress in Africa, and the rest were about either political unrest, violence, and natural disaster (I invited you to follow the link and see for yourself, that hardly any of the articles pertain to progress). To further support for my hypothesis, when I clicked on a link to read about Ugandan government officials stepping down amidst scandal, the following advertisement appeared at the top of the screen...

“Children are dying in East Africa”, and cue photo of a despondent child.

Now I don’t mean to dismiss the tragedies and suffering in Africa, but I would like to make clear that there are modern cities and capable adults in Africa. Until I was about twelve years old, I believed Africa was essentially The Lion King or The Jungle Book and I believe that kind of ignorance is dangerous. There has been a recent back lash against foreign aid in Africa and I would have to agree with it. The people of Africa are perfectly capable of solving their own problems, they only need capital and international support to do so.

Since most of our exposure to Africa is through ad campaigns such as UNICEF, Heifer, or the Red Cross, which want to illicit guilt through their photos, we are left with a distorted sense of Africa. For one we categorize the whole continent as one, like I have done throughout this post, even though there are innumerable tribes, languages, customs, and cultures throughout the continent. We also tend to cast Africa in victim narratives because of our media perception. We look to give handouts instead of advice, and want to intervene instead of assist. Our media perception causes us to act a certain way in regards to Africa; so if we alter the media image or Africa, maybe we can shift people’s thinking as well?

I am curious to see how Africa appears to other people, feel free to comment!

Hot or Not Elections

We would all like to believe that we live in a democracy populated by informed voters that cast their ballots based on a candidate’s credentials and perceived ability to lead, but how much of that perception has to do with ‘looking’ like a leader?

Appearance came into politics with force after The Great Debate between Nixon and Kennedy. It was the first presidential debate to be televised and Kennedy’s more youthful appearance gained him widespread support. More recently though political science researchers at MIT have discovered that there is somewhat of an international idea of what a good leader looks like. In the study they showed people in the United States and Canada pictures of election match ups in Mexico and Brazil. Participants were able to predict the election outcomes with 68% accuracy based on physical appearance alone. Even more surprising, the people from India and the United States chose the same candidate 75% of the time. Despite vastly different cultures and ideals of beauty, all four populations had similar ideas of what a good leader looks like.

In another study, researchers found that “low-information voters”, or people in the lowest quartile of political knowledge, were most heavily influenced by a candidates physical appearance. The effect was magnified by the amount of time the voter spent watching television. To me, this is very concerning. I never realized that the attack ads and incessant campaign ads actually worked, even after having interned on a senatorial campaign. I remember one of the staffers telling me, “Politics are nasty. We do what it takes to win, and trust me if people didn’t respond to nasty we wouldn’t use it”. The combined effect of low-information voters being swayed by appearances is roughly equal to the advantage of being an incumbent, researchers found. Again, this is a red flag. Human behavior isn’t going to change on it’s own, which makes me believe we need stricter campaign laws. If appearances alone can determine an election, something has to change.

I liken the dangers of looks being able to win elections, to the dangers of rhetoric alone winning elections. Charismatic and verbose leaders can sometimes be the most dangerous, igniting violence and spewing hatred with their words. There is danger in electing any sort of leader without first considering their qualifications. A country cannot be lead by a pretty face or great speeches; we need a doer.