Kiosk - The Weight of Reality

The Weight of Reality

by Jamie Bodie

GO INTO ANY public elementary school in the country and you’ll find kids clad in advertisements. Dora, Spiderman, Batman, Power Rangers, Bratz, and a seemingly endless list of specially marketed merchandise aimed at the fidgeting bodies and pliable minds of elementary school kids—synergy in its most successful form. These kids don’t just wear the clothes of their favorite characters; they have the movies, watch the television shows, play with the toys, video and computer games, eat the official food off the official plates, sleep on the sheets, decorate their rooms with their images and occasionally read the books. Their bedrooms may become shrines to their favorite characters, their free play a reenactment of the roles and attitudes those characters portray. I didn’t quite understand how disturbing this was until I watched a preschooler pout her lips and sway her pint-sized hips in mock-sensuality as she sang Britney Spears’ anthem to the guise of innocence, “Oops, I Did It Again.” Seeing this elicited an entirely new hybrid emotion: protective sympathetic disgust. The kind of feeling that makes you want to simultaneously shake and hold a child. Then my own son grew past babyhood and I realized how ubiquitous this influence was, and how hard it is to control.

You may think it won’t happen to your kid. But odds are, it will. One day, they’ll be laughing with you as you chase them around a park, or listening intently as you tell them all about what mammals are, and then BAM! The next thing you know their faces are scrunched up in twisted agony because you refuse to buy them the newest action figure that comes with three guns, a cleft chin, and steroid-bloated biceps—or the entire action figure collection (with accessories) so they can reenact the same pivotal battle scene they saw in the latest superhero movie in their very own home, which happens to be your home. You may stand firm in your refusal, but come some Christmas or birthday they’ll get that toy, or one like it, having managed, perhaps, to wheedle it out of an unsuspecting or thoughtless relative, and the battle will be lost. Some Benedict Arnold of a Grandma will beam as your child showers her with love and affection and eternal gratitude for giving him just what he wanted. Never mind the idyllic notions of raising kids free from the taint of commercialization and material-driven dreams. You never had a chance. When this struggle began with my son I quickly found myself practicing more censorship than the People’s Republic of China.

Of course, forbidding something only gives it more power, and not wanting to drive my son into the actual arms of G.I. Joe, it soon became apparent that the only healthy way to curb his consumption would be by helping him to understand just why it was, exactly, that he wanted those things so badly, (along with helpful all-purpose phrases like: “That’s too violent” or “That’s inappropriate” or “Is it Christmas? Your birthday? Then no.”) Setting guidelines and providing children with a well-rounded education is the traditional framework for raising informed and empowered citizens, right?! The problem is, the commercial culture is teaching them in a much more engaging way than most parents can teach, and the purpose of this secret but very effective educational campaign is not to produce healthy, secure citizens but to instead produce hungry, insecure consumers.

With the exception of sleeping, most kids born today will spend more time watching television than doing anything else. Over $15 billion is spent annually on advertising directed at children. It’s no fluke that kids seem more intrinsically drawn to the lessons taught to them by the television than teachers and parents. Marketers have spent good money learning how to cultivate kids’ most narcissistic traits. A whole industry has grown around applying theories of child development and psychology to the methods advertisers use to shape the way they market to children. Many, many books have been written on the subject. Books like Creating Ever-Cool: A Marketer's Guide to a Kid's Heart written by the “nationally recognized expert on youth marketing,” Gene Del Vecchio. His book offers chapters brimming with insight, covering topics such as touching the boy’s and girl’s psyche, embracing their fantasies, gratifying their senses, and understanding their connection to “cool.” On the jacket cover is the tender tribute to his own two children, who give him the “best kid credential” he has.

I wonder what Saturdays are like in the Del Vecchio family? I imagine a child’s fantasy of soda-pop wishes and fast-food dreams realized, as their father conducts focus group-style daytrips to the mall.

“What do you like best about this doll, honey?” he may ask his daughter, handing her a Bratz doll whose eyes and lips are so big and sultry there isn’t even room for a nose on her face. He watches his daughter’s reaction, his notebook and pen at the ready.

“I like the way she dresses, and her pretty make-up. Can I get a midriff top and platform shoes, too, Daddy?”

“Not yet dear, but look, here’s a t-shirt with her picture on it!” He scribbles in his book.

“OOOH! That’s sparkly, pink and ruffly…”

Then Del Vecchio might give her $50 to spend on whatever she wants (you can’t go very far with less these days, and besides for Del Vecchio, it’s deductible), taking more notes as she reaches for the shellac-strength lip gloss.

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