From: Aidan
It is no secret boys and girls are socialized differently and receive different roles during early development. They receive assigned roles and their respective traits so early on, that any alternative is seen as that, an unusual alternative. The role models young boys and girls look up to, the media they consume, and pressure from their peers all reinforce these concepts.
Mothers and fathers are some of the first people young kids interact with and are usually the first to assign them their respective roles. Parents instruct the children on which toys are boy and girl toys. The young boys play with small soldiers and vehicles, toys that emphasize strength and power. They place special importance on being proactive and moving forward. Whereas young girls are given miniature cooking and cleaning toys. These prioritize not strength and action but instead the skills to run a household, or take care of young children. They do not place any emphasis on proactiveness and are exclusively reactive to the world around them. In my image “The Car”, we see the young boy interact with the environment first and take action. He steps around to shield the young woman from the passing car. She only reacts once the young boy has maneuvered around her.
A topic frequently discussed in our course is the impact Disney movies can have on a younger audience. The roles first emphasized by the parents are then reinforced by what developing children can see on the screen. Overly exaggerated body features on both male and female characters have become more and more common. Female characters have slim impossible proportions that have an apparent lack of muscle or technical capability. They are built in a way that requires rescue. Every year the male protagonists in children’s media become stronger. Broader shoulders, and muscular physiques, which are not possible without the use of steroids, are shown as the only option. Those who lack the strength found in the main characters are found only as comic relief. Despite this overly exaggerated and overemphasized strength, no amount of strength will protect the young boy from being struck by the car. First introduced by his parents and later his media, he sees it as his responsibility to protect the girl from the car, despite no rational thinking person could hope to stop a vehicle. The young woman, despite being aware neither of them would be able to handle the car if it struck them, complied with the rules she had been taught over and over again, which is the male's responsibility to be proactive and protective.
The influence other children can have on children may be the greatest of all. No one wants to feel ostracized by the group and will do whatever they need to feel like they belong. The pressure other males have placed on the young boy (including me) instructs him that it is his responsibility to act in a protective manner, even if it is to suicidal attempt to stop a car with his bare hands. This is obviously an extreme example, but another level of how several layers of constant and similar pressure can force people to act in ways that are hard to justify after truly breaking them down. The young woman, despite her best efforts, could be seen as a damsel in distress. She knows she is not, but she offers no argument to the boy taking the side closer to the car. She sees him become a shield just like he has been taught to, and she keeps moving.
My image has an incredibly dark background to truly isolate the subjects from the rest of the image. The darkness also works as a symbol of the society that has placed them in less-than-ideal and nearly one-dimensional roles. As they walk ahead of their symbolic past they can be looked on with a literal new light. The car's headlights represent us “looking in” in their behavior. Upon inspection, the two people immediately revert to the roles they have had assigned to them. The rail on the left side of the subjects which appears in the later images seems to push the young boy into action. The responsibility he feels to always remain proactive symbolically pushes him in his right shoulder
Most critically, the two subjects were not instructed on how to maneuver in the circumstances. They were told just to walk normally and were unaware the car would be passing them. This is so critical as it shows how deep the roles have truly been assigned. Neither questioned their expected response to the situation and followed their assigned social roles perfectly.
Rudman, Laurie A., et al. "The Two Cultures of Childhood." The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations. The Guilford Press, 2015.
2 comments:
From: Maura
Hi Aidan, I love the concept of your photograph, mostly because I have experienced this so many times when I grew up, walking home with my dad. We live in a small suburban neighborhood, where most of the streets have sidewalks. So, my sister and I would walk on the sidewalk, with my dad either standing behind us, in between us and oncoming traffic, or on the shoulder to ensure that neither one of us stepped out into the road. I think your image does a great job of subconsciously depicting the “damsel in distress” trope with such a normalized, everyday behavior. It is the man’s job to protect the woman (or young girl, whatever the case may be) even though, as you said if the car were to swerve in the direction of both a boy and girl, they are both likely to be struck.
I think that there is symbolism in your intended creative technique as well as your instructive technique for the subjects of the photograph. I think the darkness of the image extends beyond the purpose you stated it had, to illuminate the subjects, which was still effective in achieving that goal. I think the darkness of the image sets the tone as spooky and unsafe, which in this case, it makes the “protection of the man” much more important. There is this “culture of constant fear” as Emily Badger puts it in an article published in the Washington Post (circa 2014) where women, unlike men, limit themselves to carrying out independent activities such as walking their dog through their neighborhood at night or going out after dark because women are taught to be weary and cautious of unknown men—and specifically the violence that can follow. The second part, your instructional technique interests me because you didn’t instruct the subjects to do that, the male subject did it habitually or instinctively. That aspect is so great because it captured perfectly the message you were trying to get across to your audience without having to be explicitly telling them.
Hi Aidan! I really love how you segmented this into six separate images. Each image feels like a distinct step in the boy's thought process, even though it's such a quick and ephemeral moment. I feel like it’s important to break down little moments like this because sometimes we don’t notice them unless we slow down and pick them apart. This photo reminds me of how my mom always puts herself between me and the road when we're walking on a sidewalk, even now that I’m an adult. Obviously, she does this because I will always be her child no matter how old I am, but it still reminds me of how society is always comparing women to children. Men are expected by society to be protectors, and it is commonly told that women and children must be protected, but the degrees of separation in urgency between the two groups is not defined. When women and children are lumped together, it reduces women’s agency by dehumanizing them and delegitimizing their adulthood. In this photo, The car headlights' illumination seems to act as an analogue for eyes, staring at the pair and correcting the boy's behavior so that he is in a protective position. To me, the car feels like both an object and a character in the image, representing the judgement of society. I also like that you mentioned how the girl doesn't really acknowledge the car until after he moves. Maybe she simply doesn't notice it at first, or maybe she assumes that the boy is looking out for her by default. Her reaction reminds me of the concept of learned helplessness, where girls are subconsciously trained from youth to believe that their actions do not matter and that they are helpless.
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