Ball is Life

from: Matthew

    My photo was taken to represent the section “The ‘Two Cultures’ of Childhood.” As you can see, the boy in the photo is watching a baseball game while representing his favorite player on the team with his jersey. At a younger age, boys tend to make professional athletes their role models because they are seen as tough, masculine, and athletic and in today’s society that is how males are sought out to be. I used a slanted type tilt to represent the boy as being beneath the famous athletes on the television. He feels as though these athletes are a perfect example of how males should look and act and he tries to mirror them by dressing in athletic apparel and throwing a football in the air to himself.

    This photo represents gender socialization with many symbols lying around the room. There is a dumbbell under the bed that represents the muscular and “manly” look boys try to achieve by working out and lifting weights, which contrasts with the pretty and “innocent” look girls try to achieve through using makeup. The media portrays men, especially athletes, as strong and buff, which rubs off on the younger boys requiring them to think that in order to become masculine they have to work out or play sports. The room is also an absolute mess and the boy is wearing dirty socks, which backs up the fact that it is acceptable for boys to be messy and dirty. However, it would be frowned upon for a girl’s bedroom to look like this and it would be considered unacceptable by society for her to be wearing anything less than cleanly. There is a trophy on the ledge representing dominance by the boy in a sport, in which he believes can add to his masculinity if he puts it in the open for others to see. Boys are known to be competitive and always trying to one up each other. Placing the trophy on the high ledge establishes a feeling of accomplishment in the boy because it exemplifies him as being the dominant competitor in that competition. The video game console is a source of violence that reinforces that it’s acceptable for men to be aggressive. Games like “Grand Theft Auto,” where the objective is to complete illegal tasks, while beating up or killing anyone in your path, is a supporter to this type of aggressive behavior in men. Of course it doesn’t influence men to kill other men, however, it does influence men to use aggressive behavior and allows society to cope with the aggressiveness because it’s in men’s “nature.”

    Lastly, notice in the room there are no bright colors anywhere in sight. Bright colors are a sign of femininity in society, so the boy surrounds himself with dark colors. He even tries to cover up the bare white wall with a full black poster to add to the masculinity of the room. Even the orange jersey (orange being normally a bright color) is a darker hue. The creators of the jersey recognized that men like to be associated with dark colors, so they changed the bright orange into a darker orange to improve the look of masculinity,, which raises their sales because the buyers are predominantly male.