Unlearning the Myths That Blind Us by Linda Christensen

1. "Our society's culture industry colonizes their minds and teaches them how to act, live, and dream."
Television shows, along with other forms of mass media teach us from a young age what it is that we're supposed to be. It teaches us what we should strive to become.
2. "Both of these tales leave young women with two myths: Happiness means getting a man, and transformation from wretched conditions can be achieved through consumption."
This statement proves how detrimental fairy tales are to young girls. They teach us the wrong lessons. As a young child, I personally wasn't a fan of the Disney princesses, but I know that many little girls do indeed suffer from the Cinderella complex. Disney is single-handedly destroying the self-esteem of girls all over the world.
3. "Students have also said that what they now see in cartoons, they also see in advertising, on prime-time TV, on the news, in school."
I agree with this statement. In my writing class, we have been discussing stereotyping in the media and I have viewed various movie and commercial clips demonstrating this exact thing. Take, for instance, a commercial for beer. Beer commercials typically portray women as being good-looking, thin, and blonde. Overall, this is how men think women should look.

This article was very enlightening. Although the topics discussed were not new concepts for me (I learned about gender stereotyping in children's television shows in a developmental psychology class and in my current writing course), I thought it was interesting how the author asked her class to examine these same ideas. Now a days, the television shows catered to children are not as evidently sexist or racist, but elements of these two "-isms" can be seen. Did you know that cartoons for children generally have more male than female characters? It's true. Watch a popular children's tv show and count how many characters are male and female and how these characters are portrayed. It's shocking what you'll find.