TV Makes Girls Feel Like Crap About Themselves, But Does Wonders for White Boys [View all]

[Luminous Animal]

Last edited Thu Jun 7, 2012, 08:25 PM - Edit history (1)

The study, which appears in Communication Research, was conducted by Nicole Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications in the Indiana University, and Kristen Harrison, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan. They surveyed about 400 black and white preadolescent students—aka tweens—in the Midwest over the course of a year. Instead of looking at specific shows, they focused on how much time the kids were spending watching TV, period, and how it impacted their self-esteem. What they found after they'd controlled for age, body image, and baseline self-esteem was that television exposure was responsible for a decrease in self-esteem in both white and black girls and black boys, but it led to an increase in self-esteem in white boys. Harumph.

Comments from the study:

Regardless of what show you're watching, if you're a white male, things in life are pretty good for you. You tend to be in positions of power, you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there.

The roles that they (girls) see are pretty simplistic; they're almost always one-dimensional and focused on the success they have because of how they look, not what they do or what they think or how they got there. This sexualization of women presumably leads to this negative impact on girls.

Young black boys are getting the opposite message: that there is not lots of good things that you can aspire to. If we think about those kinds of messages, that's what's responsible for the impact.

http://jezebel.com/5914173/tv-makes-girls-feel-like-crap-about-themselves-but-does-wonders-for-white-boys