Marketing to Children

This week in class we learned about how marketing affects children.  From the time that they are first born marketers are trying to sell to children.  This is what they call "Cradle to Grave".  Marketers believe that they need to market to the children as consumers to build up a lifetime loyalty to a product or company.  We looked at ads where children were modeling for Dior and other high end adult companies. I work with kids a lot and I see this happen all the time.  I will see three year olds wearing Juicy jackets, Toms and Uggs.  This is an example of how marketers are appealing to kids.  They are taught to recognize a brand when they are very young.  When we watched the video in class on this it was really sad to see how all the children knew these brands and how it affected the materialistic side of them.  When shopping for children it is very hard to find non-brand clothes.  Children are surrounded by this type of marketing and they won't realize it until they are older and already branded.

~Liv

Nurture and Human Interaction

This week in class we talked about nature vs. nurture and the importance of human interaction.  We learned about several cases of feral children and how they don't know how to speak, eat like a human and how they don't understand the social norms of our society.  Feral children grew up in the wild and adapted the behaviors of animals instead of humans.  We watched an Oprah episode where we met a girl who was raised by wild animals and she adapted their behaviors such as snarling at the camera men, walking on her hands and feet and eating small animals raw.  In these cases, these children were deprived of the human interaction they needed to learn how to speak, eat, chew and live in our society.  Since their parents were never around they weren't able to pick up the attributes necessary to survive in a world outside of the animal one they grew up in.  These cases are very sad to hear about because they could have been normal functioning adults and now they have the knowledge of a first grader when they are thirteen years old.

~Liv

Tuesdays With Morrie- Dependency

This week in class we watched a great movie in class called Tuesdays With Morrie.  I really liked this movie because I also read the book so it was great to see it acted out.  This movie deals with many aspects of American culture and the one that attracted my attention most was dependency.  For some reason we are afraid to be dependent on people and Morrie wasn't.  He accepted the fact that he needed help when he was dying.  He wasn't ashamed of it either.  He says. "There is nothing innately shameful about being dependent.  When we were infants we needed others to live, when we are dying we need others to live, but heres the secret - in between we need others even more."  This quote from Morrie is very important because it shows us how we need to view dependency.  There is no reason for us to be shameful of depending on others because we need it to survive.  The only times that we recognize depending on others is when we are too weak or young to survive on our own.  We don't recognize the fact that throughout our lives we need the help of others to get through.  We are so focused on doing things independently because we have been raised to be independent people.  In my life I depend on my parents for safety, security, shelter, food and love.  I depend on my coaches to help me to become better at what I do and to help me correct my mistakes.  I depend on my teachers to help me learn and to grow as a better person.  I depend on my sister to be there when I need to talk to her or when I have had a rough day.  I depend on my nephews to cheer me up and to help me forget all the hard things throughout the day when we play together.  These are just some examples of the many people I depend on in my life.  I believe that the older we get we become more shameful of asking others for help and depending on others because we believe that we should be independent and provide for our selves.

~Liv  

Values of Americans

When we read the article on the values that we live by I was shocked at how I could find examples for every one of the values.  This article made me realize things in our society that I hadn't noticed before.  As Americans, we highly value time.  We are constantly on a schedule that is down to the minute and we keep ourselves constantly busy.  In Brazil they don't value time as much as we do and they believe that if you are late then you are successful.  Students show up to class late but they don't leave directly when the bell rings.  They stay until they have completed their full class time.  People in Brazil believe that time is important but that it can be pushed back until you have completed what you were previously doing.  In the United State we believe that you are late once ten or fifteen minutes has passed.  In Brazil they cut the time limit at twenty seven or thirty minutes.  You can see how different the value of time is in these two cultures and how diverse the meaning of "late" is.  For us in America time is money and if you aren't doing anything we believe that you are wasting time.  We work hard now and keep busy in order to ensure happiness and security in the future.

~Liv