Teen Dreams & Adult Pleasures

Angela Record, “Born to Shop: Teenage Women and the Marketplace in the Post-War US”

Henry Giroux, “Nymphet Fantasies: Child Beauty Pageants and the Politics of Innocence”

The Invention of Childhood

• Concept of “childhood” is a reasonably new invention

• Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, (1960), multiple-volume study argues that “chidlhood” is a modern development

Middle Ages

Ariès:Children as small adults;Nuclear family was not as it is today;Bonds not evident, parenting detachedChildren not protected from sexuality or treated as delicate;Children with adults outside of family structures.

Transformation

Change takes place with developments in thinking about human development (eg. Piaget)Formal schooling as a reflection of these changesAlso changes in the way the family was imagined and role of nuclear family

• In Canada from informal and voluntary system to “free” compulsory education from 1870 to 1920s

• Abolition of child labour in Canada (by 1929, children under 14 prohibited from factory and mine employment in most provinces)

The Century of the Child

• Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood (2006)

• 20th Century• Future of a nation

dependent on its children

• Attention to welfare of children, issues of poverty and education

1950s

• Rising standards of living

• Greater disposable income

• Increasing expenditure brought about by reliance on borrowing, debt

Inventing the Teenager• Identification of a lucrative

market by Eugene Gilbert in mid-1940s

• “The George Gallop of the teenagers”

• Generation of statistics and created the teen-ager as a demographic

• Market researcher, included hiring high school students to do peer research

Gilbert’s “Discovery”

“No established pattern…No inventory of treasured, and to many an adult’s way of thinking, irreplaceable objects. Youth…is the greatest growing force in the community. His physical needs alone constitute a continuing and growing requirement in food, clothes, entertainment, etc. It had definitely been established that because he is open-minded and desires to learn, he is often the first to accept new and forward-looking products.” ~ Gilbert

• The untapped market in mid-1950s of 16 million teenagers estimated to spend between 7 and 9 billion dollars

• Question: How to develop brand loyalty among these consumers at a young age?

American Bandstand

• Showed teens using sponsors’ products

• Sponsors like 7-Up, Dr. Pepper, Clearasil, and Rice-A-Roni, Mounds

• Direct connection of products to markets by way of popular culture consumption

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8W20h4kpk0

Gendering Consumption

• Producing ideals of gender

• Young men and women as consumers of ideals of beauty, social role, etc.

• Capitalizing on insecurities?

Seventeen’s “Teena”• "Teena [the teenage girl

archetype] means business—don’t pass her by. You can’t afford to overlook the high school girl…She’s an important girl and bound to be quite a woman. Sell her now—for now and the future—in the magazine she reads and believes—Seventeen.”~Estelle Evans, promotional director, 1940s

New Markets: The Tween• Conventionally aged 10 to

12 years, the concepts has expanded to include 8 year olds

• Share some characteristics of teens, including sexual development, but a period of conformity rather than rebellion

• http://www.packagedfacts.com/Tweens-235652/

Problems of Definition

• http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tween

• Urban Dictionary• 2000s – market

segment 33 million strong, worth estimated $150 billion a year

• Is the tween gendered?

Merchants of Cool

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaHRmOjOuTM

ExerciseWhere would we look to find “cool” today? What does “cool” today look like? What does it tell us about “masculinity” and “femininity”?

In your group, go online. Locate 2 examples of tween culture today that illustrate extreme gender ideals. Explain how you decided where to look. Explain how you decided on which examples were extreme and why.

Be prepared to present your examples to the class.

The Social Tween

• http://www.adweek.com/sa-article/social-tween-141314

The Disappearance of Childhood?

• Neil Poster, 1982• Children increasingly

inserted into adult world• Example of television

viewing• Is this another example? • Deeply problematic

insertion of children into sexualized contexts, erosion of “innocence