Pop Culture Project Self Evaluation

Children's Media            

            Going into this project, I knew that the ideals were going to change for the ways that children’s media was broadcasted in the United States throughout the decades. Just from seeing things that my mom and dad grew up with, I knew that the television shows and games that were geared towards children used to have an essence of innocence and purity in times such as the 1950s and the 1960s. I also had an idea that the things that I grew up watching or listening to were starting to show hints of sexualization in the children’s media.

            After completing this project, I am left questioning how parents today think it is alright to let their children watch certain programs and play with certain toys. The things that children are now exposed to encourage them to grow up at a much faster pace than previous generations as well as promoting a lifestyle that is extremely lazy. This all came from comparing the 2000s and 2010s to the 1990s. I know that if I could, I would stay in the 90s forever because I feel it was a perfect transition from the extremely guarded childhood to one that is much too free. It is here that my bias towards 90s cartoons came into play. While I was presenting the piece about Rugrats, I could tell I was not being very objective cause this show was a huge part of my childhood and growing up. I can relate so much to the characters in the show, even though they are, for the most part, babies.

            Looking through our project, I can see that we left out a lot of the pieces of media that had an impact on boys in particular. I think this happened subconsciously because I was working with two other girls and we were picking things that we had direct contact with. However, I think this omission had more of an effect on the audience than it did the actual project itself. This is mainly because there are a lot of louder and more opinionated boys in the class and seeing things like Bratz dolls and a Britney Spears music video may have caused an overall lack of interest in our presentation. With the dolls, it was clear that the company who manufactures and markets them is going for a certain look. They play into the idea of younger girls wanting to look older by wearing make up and promiscuous clothing, and I think our presentation talked a lot about this.

            I think that my personal beliefs on where children’s media has turned played a significant role in this project. Even just in the way that I was presenting my specific areas of the project, it was clear that I was a lot happier with the overall messages of the earlier media. The three of us all felt the same way with a lot of the personal beliefs that were weaved into the project which makes it, as a whole, not very objective. We looked at everything through the eyes of 18 year old girls who are not too happy or thrilled with how children today are turning out.