Straight Talk

On Feb. 16, a panel of teens gathered at The Spokesman-Review to talk about media and how it affects teens’ images of themselves and their peers. The discussion was moderated by Lewis and Clark senior Christine Benedetti. The following is an excerpt from the discussion.

Christine Benedetti: Does popular culture have a positive or negative effect on teenagers?

Emily Arneson: It can be positive, but I think a lot of people are too concerned with it. You can enjoy your kind of music without basing your life on it. Just because you like some kind of music doesn’t mean you should go out and do what they’re saying.

Peter Caster: Just because Britney Spears is skinny and good looking you don’t have to get liposuction and a face job. A lot of people take it the wrong way.

Emily: Teenagers are especially impressionable because we’re trying to figure out who we are and who we want to be. So having all this stuff thrown at us may not be such a good thing.

Christine: What about teenage girls specifically? What is the effect on them?

Emily: Mostly negative. I have a friend who’s anorexic and I don’t know if it’s because she wants to be a famous person, celebrity or whatever. It really does play a big role, because if you didn’t see all that stuff then you wouldn’t think, “Oh, I have to be skinny.” But every time you turn on the TV you see somebody that’s skinny and not everybody looks like that. You don’t see normal people being successful in music or acting or whatever.

Brittani Kelly: I think that’s probably ingrained in everybody from when we were really young. Like Barbie and girl toys and this is what the female shape is and this is what the guy shape is. Guys are supposed to be muscular and chicks are supposed to be teeny weenie with big busts and stuff. It’s something that is always there and is there real early on.

Elana Mainer: I was wondering if they started taking pictures of normal people or heavier, less pretty people, who knows, maybe they would be accepted but we don’t even know because every picture we see in magazines is Jennifer Aniston-type bodies.

Christine: How does it affect males?

Peter: I don’t think it affects guys as much as girls. At least it hasn’t affected me. I don’t watch “World’s Strongest Men” and say to myself I can go out and lift a few cars. I don’t listen to the Backstreet Boys on Total Request Live and get up and dance.

Christine: Do you think you have to be a macho guy because of the media?

Peter: Kind of. I don’t like being skinny and measly. That’s kind of due to the media because the girls are like, “Oh, I like this big hunk.” It does affect you because you see these girls going off with these macho guys who could bench press me and it’s kind of depressing.

Christine: Do you think it affects girl/guy relationships?

Elana: The guy asks the girl on the date and the guy saves the girl. It’s like a Superman, Tarzan and Jane kind of thing. The media pretty much started that.

Christine: Twenty or 30 years ago, the average model was like 5 foot 4 inches and weighed 145 pounds. Now they are 5 foot 11 and 110 pounds.

Guys, do you think that changes how you look at girls?

Peter: A slimmer girl is more appealing than a larger one. That’s just the way it’s been and I don’t know how to explain it. It probably is because of the media. If there were 300-pound girls on TRL everyday I’d be like “fat girls rule.”

Brittani: I think that’s probably true because Marilyn Monroe was this big thing and all the guys thought she was just so beautiful. I was watching a couple of movies a while ago and I realized she was a very voluptuous woman. So you can imagine if she was considered the beauty of that period of time that all the guys were going around looking for a more voluptuous woman. Now, it’s Jennifer Love Hewitt. So it is different.

Emily: I think I heard someone say she (Monroe) was like a size 14.

Danny Pecka: Is that big?

Elana: Yes.

Emily: Yeah. … Everything in high school is based on looks. You judge somebody based on what they wear, how they look, who they’re talking to, or their connections. That’s all that seems to matter in high school. I think it changes as you get older.

Nicole Hammer: I think it doesn’t only have an affect on how your body looks but how you should act. The media portrays certain races as they should act this way and others this way. I know in my school I’m in honors classes and most of the people in there are white. But the black people who are considered popular, I know a lot of them, and they all don’t do good in school. The white people who are considered popular are all in my honors classes. I think that’s because the black people see black people portrayed on TV and stuff and see that few of them excel in school. I think if they didn’t have that sort of image, more would be into excelling in school.

Emily: Everyone is affected somewhat. Some people are able to look through it. Maybe I can look through and see that wearing brand names isn’t everything but maybe I can’t see through something else that the media is telling me.

Katelyn Rice: I think it depends on whether you want your individuality or you want to be in the popular group.

Elana: I think the media has more of an impact on insecure people. If you talk to someone who is really impressionable and doesn’t grow up with parents who tell them don’t drink or smoke. … Our Gen editor: Is pop culture to blame for teenage problems?

Peter: I think it’s partly to blame. (But) you can’t just throw all the problems on media and pop culture. It’s also the person’s fault. It’s about 50-50.

Brittani: I know with anorexia, one of the major reasons that happens is because someone feels out of control with their life. So they choose to stop eating because it’s one thing that they can control. And so that’s their problem. But it is manifested through weight because that’s what they see from the media.

Emily: It’s also parents who teach their kids that they’ll love them no matter what. That they’ll find friends that don’t care what they look like. Some parents don’t tell their kids things like that. They don’t say, “Just be yourself.”

Peter: I think friends also have a big impact.

Katelyn: I disagree with a lot of what you guys are saying. You’re not giving the media a lot of credit. My friend went through anorexia. She was 95 pounds, she’s an eighth-grader, and she decided she had to lose weight because she wasn’t the stick-thin model. Media has a lot to do with that. I’m not saying your friends and family don’t, but media has more than half the effect on everything.

Emily: Yeah, because you look up to those (famous) people and see how successful they are. All of the guys like Britney Spears so they think “Well, if I look like Britney Spears then all the guys will like me, too.”

Elana: I kind of think the media is the kick-off point. People get their impressions from the media. It’s where everything starts.

Brittani: Obviously there has to be an outside source. If you’re getting ready to do something special and you’re trying to look real nice and you go ask your parents how you look and they say “oh you look wonderful,” you’re not going to fully believe them because they’re your parents. You could walk in with two heads and they would still think you look wonderful. There has to be an outside source. When you really want to know what you look like, you go to somebody who’s not so close who doesn’t have a problem saying you don’t look so good.

Christine: Do you think celebrities and athletes have a moral responsibility to young people? Did you see the article in People about Britney Spears and the revealing clothes she wore to the American Teen Awards. Do you think she has a responsibility to be more modest?

Peter: I think if 12- and 13-year-old girls look up to her she’s got to be aware of that. What’s more important, selling trillions of albums or not ruining 10 girls lives by being absolutely skinny? People are more important than money.

Emily: Her main audience is young girls who want to grow up. It’s just like the fairy tale princess thing. Her main audience is these tiny little girls who think that’s how they are supposed to be.

Elana: The celebrities have to know that the little girls who watch them are gonna wear what they’re wearing. I guess she could not wear revealing clothes. It’s her own choice.

Emily: It’s kind of the same about younger siblings. I have an older brother and a younger brother and everything my older brother does my little brother wants to do, whether it’s play football or switch sports teams. I don’t know if he fully understands that everything he says is being memorized by my little brother because he idolizes him. He wants to be just like him. … And, the Super Bowl commercials, the Budweiser frogs. They didn’t have them this year and my little brother made the comment “Oh, I missed the frogs.” I mean he’s not saying he’s going to go out and drink or anything - he’s 10. But by having something funny to relate it to maybe a few years down the road when confronted with the situation he might remember that and say “Oh, those frogs are funny; maybe one drink or something.”

Danny: It’s kind of weird. I have a 7-year-old sister. One day she comes home with our neighbor and they’re listening to Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys downstairs and I was like “What?” She doesn’t know what half of it means anyway. It’s kind of scary because they get the words in their head and they don’t really know what it means. It seems like they’re growing up too fast. She’s so young and the media can do whatever it wants with their minds.

Our Gen editor: Please summarize your thoughts about media and image.

Katelyn: I think media has almost everything to do with the styles and what kids wear and what they do. I think it starts out younger than teenagers.

Emily: People are so impressionable when they’re young. And even more so when they’re teenagers because there is a time when you’re little when you don’t care. Then you’re teenagers and you care. We’re targeted a lot with cigarette ads and things like that because were more impressionable.

Nicole: I think the media does play a large role in how you think of yourself. I think it has a lot to do with your family. I know that when I was in elementary school or junior high I really cared about what I wore and I tried to fit in. I see my younger sisters and brother and they are really concerned about that, too. But my mom, she would always tell us that it doesn’t matter what you wear and stuff. Now that I’m in high school that’s how I feel and my two older sisters are like that, too. I think that if your parents tell you, you might not believe them at the time. But when you get older you realize that they were right.

Peter: I think the media and pop culture affect everybody’s lives by either saying “I’m not gonna listen to what pop culture has to say because I really don’t care” or saying “Yeah, so-and-so is great and Britney Spears rules.” Once you get in junior high everything changes. It was just a shock to me. I think one of the reasons I see ninth-graders wearing Abercrombie and Fitch is because it’s the in thing now. They’re just finding themselves and starting to see their personalities. The reason you don’t see as many juniors and seniors wear that stuff is because they made the comfort zone. They’ve made their impact and know people will like them no matter what.

Danny: I think media has a big impact on people, mostly younger people. I think people who get caught up in it don’t really have anybody to relate to. I have a best friend I can tell everything to. We’ve been best friends forever so I don’t really feel impacted a lot by what the school thinks about me or whatever. Insecure people can get caught up in it because they just want to be liked. Who doesn’t want to be liked? You see people who are popular and everybody likes them. So you do what the people who are popular do.

Elana: As soon as I hit high school, that was the worst thing for me. That was when all the girls started worrying about their weight. I know a lot of guys don’t worry about that. I don’t like eating a lot at lunch. I don’t like that feeling of being completely stuffed at school. It’s the weirdest thing going into high school. In junior high I would go and fill up my tray. I couldn’t wait for lunch. I see girls now who go to the snack bar and get Sour Patch Kids and are like “Whoa, I’m done for the day.” It’s the worst thing about high school. In high school I started reading those magazines and started watching more TV. Now I’m a lot more worried about my weight. I see people around me reading the back of Nutri-Grain bars to see how many calories are in it.

Brittani: I definitely think media has a big impact. I was raised in one of those families where we were taught Barbie and Ken are not realistic traits of what the human forms are. Like in Sleeping Beauty, the Prince didn’t have to save her, she could’ve gone and GI Janed her way out of the tower and saved the Prince from the mean lady. With all that since I was born, I still see images and hear people talking. It’s still always there and it’s one of those things where I keep saying, “Will I worry about body weight when I didn’t really before?” So I definitely think media has a huge impact. If it wasn’t for media I wouldn’t have any of those ideas in my head at all.

Illustration by Palmer Davis/Lewis and Clark

The full text can be found at http://ourgen.spokane.net.