Grooming: Media influence or Innate disposition?

Paddy Cow

We hear so much about how girls are influenced by the media and they are held up to certain standards etc but how much of that is the media stirring up what is already there?

For example, back when I was hitting puberty (early 90's) there was no internet and I was still very much of the generation where you learned from the playground. The one thing I was always compelled to do was to keep my lady garden trimmed. I wasn't aware of porn at the time but for some reason, I just liked to keep down there trimmed. The whole make up thing passed me by. I wasn't bothered by it and to this day (and my mother's shame) I sport the natural luck.

My friend has a granddaughter and she is five. From when she was old enough to walk, she was drawn to makeup. She loves lipstick and nail varnish and when I asked her the other day what she wants to be when she grows up she said a makeup artist. I can totally see this child being a very good make up artist. She loves everything about it but she isn't vain or conceited. I have never once heard her saying "am I pretty". She is too young to know that the words "celebrity" or "media" are and if you asked her about any of the current day pop stars, she wouldn't have a clue. She would probably think you were asking about a character in Doc McStuffins that she hadn't heard of.

I think it is just her personality and I don't see anything wrong with it. She is a well balanced child who accepts that there are certain times when she can't wear makeup but at other times, she loves playing around with it. A lot of people wouldn't agree with letting a child that young wear make up but I don't think it does any harm.

Anyways, I was just wondering about how others felt. I have been subjected to the media's influence my whole adult life and still don't feel the need to wear makeup. This child doesn't even know what the media is, yet for some reason she is drawn to makeup.

Icecowboy

Paddy Cow wrote: »

We hear so much about how girls are influenced by the media and they are held up to certain standards etc but how much of that is the media stirring up what is already there?

For example, back when I was hitting puberty (early 90's) there was no internet and I was still very much of the generation where you learned from the playground. The one thing I was always compelled to do was to keep my lady garden trimmed. I wasn't aware of porn at the time but for some reason, I just liked to keep down there trimmed. The whole make up thing passed me by. I wasn't bothered by it and to this day (and my mother's shame) I sport the natural luck.

My friend has a granddaughter and she is five. From when she was old enough to walk, she was drawn to makeup. She loves lipstick and nail varnish and when I asked her the other day what she wants to be when she grows up she said a makeup artist. I can totally see this child being a very good make up artist. She loves everything about it but she isn't vain or conceited. I have never once heard her saying "am I pretty". She is too young to know that the words "celebrity" or "media" are and if you asked her about any of the current day pop stars, she wouldn't have a clue. She would probably think you were asking about a character in Doc McStuffins that she hadn't heard of.

I think it is just her personality and I don't see anything wrong with it. She is a well balanced child who accepts that there are certain times when she can't wear makeup but at other times, she loves playing around with it. A lot of people wouldn't agree with letting a child that young wear make up but I don't think it does any harm.

Anyways, I was just wondering about how others felt. I have been subjected to the media's influence my whole adult life and still don't feel the need to wear makeup. This child doesn't even know what the media is, yet for some reason she is drawn to makeup.

I think there's a lot of brainwashing going on as to how much influence the media has. We have innate traits regardless of the media.

alleystar

Of course the media influences us, the internet is playing a huge part in that. How can young people feel secure in themselves when even those who are deemed "perfect" are being cut to shreds by either the media or the general public. The TV/Showbiz category of Daily Mail springs to mind, what is said in the comments section is atrocious at times. The commenters will find fault with anything. I was looking one day at an article about Kate Upton and the top three rated comments were pointing out that she had no waist, that she was chubby, that she was plain, so on and so forth. These comments were written by women too, you would think that they would be happy to see someone who is not skin and bone making it as a model. For thinner models (for example Jourdan Dunn) they were complaining that she was too thin. The old cankles insult was trotted out for another woman that they could find no other fault with. You can't win. Anyone who is anyway different looking is a target too, I'm thinking of the awful comments Rumer Willis is subjected to. And I know plenty of girls in their teens and women in their twenties/ thirties who would be fans of that site. Twitter and YouTube can be pretty terrible for that sort of thing too. How can that not affect them? Especially if you look similar to the person they are tearing apart?

I've seen a change myself over the past ten years. I went into secondary school with a full face of makeup and my hair styled everyday since I was 14, the majority of my female classmates did the same. We would have all grown up with the internet. I look at my older sister's year and none of them ever wore make up and if they did it was minimal.

Guy's and girl's expectations have also definitely changed due to easy access of porn. There's more pressure to fit into a certain mould for both sexes.

kylith

The media is a definite influence. Take women shaving their underarms, for example, this came about because of the rise of sleeveless dresses from about 1915. It was an ad in Harpers Bazaar that read ' 'Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair' that got the ball rolling, before that women wouldn't even have known that their underarm hair was objectionable (which it wasn't until advertising deemed it so).

If you think a five year old is too young to be influenced by media you're wrong, not only will she have seen her mum putting on makeup but she will likely have seen ads for dolls whose faces can be made up and whose hair can be styled.