Essay about Exploitative Commercials in Children’s TV...

Alcohol. Obesity. Violence. For kids today in the United States, these are only a few of the problems linked to the child-targeted mass media, especially the multi- million dollar business—television commercials in children’s programming. With the disappearance of a TV-free environment, a typical American kid sees about 40,000 television advertisements each year, most of which are for soda, candy, video games, fast food and their free toys. In order to collect some information, I sat down on a Saturday morning on July 16, 2004, and recorded several kids’ TV ads for further analysis. Needless to say, the results were quite shocking—aside from the obvious, I also noticed that most ads featured active and aggressive boys while†¦show more content†¦On the other hand, boys are active and assertive, care most about sports and war games. In the Pull-up diapers commercial that I taped, a little girl intently plays with her teddy bear as she waits in a fit ting room for her mom to finish changing. As her mom twirls around in front of a mirror again, the girl steps onto the pile of clothes on the floor and whispers, â€Å"Mom, can we go now?† The next scene takes place in front of a public restroom, where the girl holds her mom’s hands and smiles. Not far away from the girl, a little boy holding a Pull-up diaper hurriedly runs into the men’s bathroom by himself. This seemingly harmless commercial can actually be very misleading to young children. The mom is not only playing the traditional role of a housewife, but also suggesting to her daughter that appearance is very important to women because they have to attract men with their charming looks. Just as O’Connor states, â€Å"Little girls must be prepared for a life of buying clothes and cosmetics and all those other wonderful things that will make them irresistibly alluring objects.† In addition to the emphasis on materialism and a need for the perf ect body image, it also seems that girls are always associated with tender loving dolls such as the teddy bear, and toy cars and video games are certainly out of the picture. The little boy running to the bathroom is another subtle example of â€Å"rampantShow MoreRelatedChild Obesity Paper2748 Words   |  11 Pagesoverweight! (Child Obesity Facts, 1999, para.2) Childhood obesity has lasting psychological effects, due to parental knowledge, lack of physical activities, and food advertisement; which has made obesity become a major health issue in many young childrens lives today. First, what is child obesity? 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