Medialit Funnies

I know, I know. I haven’t blogged for a goodish while. I do apologise. It’s a long story.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I have a serious passion for media literacy, with deconstructing ads my activity of choice. This means I can spend unreasonable amounts of time frowning and looking very seriously at the screen – much like I am in my profile pic.

Talking to kids about bad news

The recent tsunami in Samoa and earthquake in Indonesia has seen our media flooded with disturbing imagery and distressing eyewitness accounts of the devastation and destruction wrought by these natural disasters.

While we need to be informed of events like these, unfortunately this need isn’t always balanced well against the needs of kids who are often watching morning news shows (especially during school holidays), and afternoon or evening news broadcasts. Many kids also see the news with their families over dinner. This means children are exposed to footage that would distress most adults, and often keys into their deepest fears of being abandoned, losing a parent, or being affected by something similar themselves.

Adproofing article at Eureka Street

There is a freshly written piece over at Eureka Street by Tania about the inspiration behind Adproofing Your Kids. Here is a whole bunch of words that aren’t in the book. Definitely worth a read to help inspire you on your own journey in raising media capable children.

Martin Lindstrom on Today’s Brand Savvy Tweens

Want a potted insight into why children today are so enamored by, and conscious of, all the brands surrounding them? This video does a good job of introducing the issue, and providing some useful tips for parents. It’s a real eye-opener to see how quickly children recognise brands: not just visually, but through sound and scent too.

more about “how brand savvy are tweens? A Focus G…“, posted with vodpod

Advertising to kids is nothing new. But the ways children are targeted have changed significantly over the past 25 years, and those changes have not always been in our kids’ best interests. Children are a powerful market segment, with extraordinary spending power and influence over what their parents buy: note when Martin Lindstrom tells the interviewer that ‘…67 percent of all new cars bought in the family are decided by the kids at home.’ And he’s not joking, either.

What would Punky do?

more about “Soleil Moon Frye brings Punky Power b…“, posted with vodpod

Yesterday a couple of tweeps pointed the way to a video made by Soleil Moon-Frye (aka Punky Brewster) to celebrate her millionth Twitter follower. In the video, Soleil (of course, now grown up) goes all out in trad-Punky garb, whips out her phrasebook and rekindles the spirit of the TV character so many of us grew up with. OK, so the video itself is just a tad uncomfortable (as is the audio). But still, wow! Punky Power! And it got me thinking. About Punky, and about girls’ role models in general.

Punky Brewster ran from 1984-88 (I know, so short!) and while Punky was a little younger than I, she was an inspiration for girls in so many ways. Sure, the show itself was reasonably rich in dodgy jokes and awkward stereotypes. But there were few such limits on Punky. She was defiantly off-trend (no pink, no frills and certainly no princess aspirations). She was outspoken without being bitchy. She wanted to be an astronaut. She was bright, empathic and free of mean girl stuff. Put simply, Punky was unique. She was somebody girls could look up to. And despite its shortcomings, the script produced some killer lines, like this exchange between Henry (Punky’s foster father) and Mike, her teacher: Henry: ‘Typical female.’ Mike: ‘Really? I didn’t know there was such a thing.’

Challenging the sexualisation of girls

Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls

Recently I was invited to contribute to an anthology, edited by Melinda Tankard Reist, titled ‘Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls’ (Spinifex Press).

This extremely important publication documents and explores the harms done to girls by a culture that tells them that being thin, hot and sexy is the most important thing they have to offer.

If you’re in Melbourne this Wednesday evening, September 2 and would like to pop along to the launch, you’ll be treated to a performance by Julie Gale, Director of Kids Free 2B Kids, and a panel discussion with Melinda Tankard Reist, Clive Hamilton, Julie Gale, Renate Klein and myself. We’d love to see you there!

(Note: Melinda Tankard Reist appeared this morning on 774 ABC Melbourne’s Conversation Hour, along with Dannielle Miller, of The Butterfly Effect. If you’re interested in listening to what they had to say, an audio download of the very lively and interesting discussion should be available soon through the Conversation Hour website.)

Aren’t kids good enough as they are?

Two years ago (to the day!) this piece was published here on MercatorNet.

When the school photographer offers to touch up your child’s picture she could always say, ‘No thanks’.

Last summer, we spent a warm evening with friends. Over dinner, we discussed advertising, branding and materialism, and how it affected our children’s self-esteem and body image. Our friends’ 11-year-old daughter Charlie was listening. She was all too familiar with these concepts.

“It’s really awful,” she said of advertising and fashion shoots in ‘tween’ magazines. “You look at them and think, ‘She’s so pretty. If only I had those jeans, those sunglasses, that hair, that dog… Maybe then I wouldn’t be left sitting on my own at lunchtime’.” While Charlie is particularly cluey, we were surprised at her awareness of how these images keyed into her confidence, self-esteem and need to belong.

A day’s a long time in social media (w/apologies to Harold Wilson)

Wasn’t it fascinating to watch the unfolding of a collective Twitter shout today? Around nine this morning, blogger and commentator @miafreedman tweeted this outraged missive: ‘Cotton On – how dare you. I will not be setting foot in any of your stores http://bit.ly/113gld #cottononaresick’.

Her blog post told the story of one reader’s experience with Cotton On, a popular clothing label, over yet another totally inappropriate piece of baby clothing.

If we back up a bit, last month Cotton On raised the ire of customers with their range of slogans on baby garments. These included such gems as ‘I’m a tits man’, ‘Mummy likes it on top’, ‘The condom broke’ and ‘I’m living proof my mum is easy’ (story here). Despite the public concern, Cotton On had no plans to pull their range.

Modern Parents’ Toy Story

Almost a year ago, we had this piece in Eureka Street, inspired by a very early morning request for a reptilian superhero.

“Last night, our six-year-old son had a nightmare. Despite reassurance and a cuddle in mum and dad’s bed, his eyes were open and his brain was switched on. He had decided he wasn’t going back to sleep. So, at five in the morning, we found ourselves in the peacefulness of the pre-dawn, drinking hot chocolates and musing on the important topics of our world.

Like most parents, we’re concerned about what it means to be raising children in this modern world. So concerned that we’ve turned to researching and writing to help ourselves and others make sense of the cavalcade of images and ideas our children are exposed to. Media violence, advertising and commercialisation are topics discussed regularly at our dinner table. We try to break the issues down into concepts and words our children understand.

But over that hot chocolate conversation we got a glimpse of what it is we’re trying to achieve. In between sips, our son told us he was going to save up his money to buy a Ninja Turtle: one of those small, green karate machines which, along with Pokemon, Bratz and Shrek, represent all that we tried to flee by tree-changing to a more self-sufficient lifestyle in rural Victoria.

And while we’ve managed to keep most of that stuff out of our household up to now, when our six-year-old told us he wanted to buy one, we just smiled.

The first post

A blog about advertising, marketing to kids and parenting the media. This website is an online meeting place for people interested in our book ‘Adproofing your kids‘ (Finch Publishing), and a platform to continue the discussion about the role of parents and the wider community in supporting our kids to develop media literacy, and become critical thinkers in a media saturated world. This blog is under construction and constantly being added to, so stop past again soon to see what’s new!