That’s when I realized that being media literate involves a whole lot of nothing. Literally, no thing. I don’t mean in a Buddhist “Everything is no thing” kind of way. (I wouldn’t go from zero to zen on our first blog trip together.) It’s that reading media messages requires noticing what’s not the thing we’re supposed to be noticing. What are you not seeing, hearing, reading? Who’s been left out? Or at least pushed to the sidelines?

"He Can No Longer at the Age of 98" by Francisco Goya

It’s much like the concept of negative space in art which the Getty Museum summarizes this way: “The area around the primary objects in a work of art is known as negative space, while the space occupied by the primary objects is known as positive space.”

For example, in this drawing (left) by 19^th-century Spanish painter Francisco Goya, the disproportionate amount of negative space accentuates the figure’s vulnerability and isolation.  So the negative space helps the artist express something he wants us to know or feel about the primary object–the positive space–which is the man.

Okay, so that’s fine for paintings, but how does that help us read media messages? In this iconic 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson presidential campaign commercial, the camera is trained on a little girl counting the petals of a daisy she’s plucking. The negative space here is the sky around her head, possibly also the trees and flowers. Since the girl takes up much of the positive space, she’s more important than anything else in the frame. Now if we go a step further in identifying the negative space, we could say it includes adults, the city, all that isn’t children or nature. Take that one step further and consider what children and nature mean: purity, innocence, goodness, that which we want to protect.

Still from the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign 'daisy ad,' created by Tony Schwartz

So what is not in the picture increases the importance, and the value, of what is in the picture. Once she’s counted to ten (not exactly in order, but she’s multi-tasking so we’ll cut her some slack), a male voice begins an eerily familiar countdown. The camera zooms into the girl’s eye and dissolves into the harrowing silhouette of a mushroom cloud. While the explosion is the primary object in that frame, it’s contrasted with the primary object first established–the simple sweetness of a little girl in a field of daisies, the picture of innocence, peace, hope. Even without the soundbites of Lyndon B. Johnson and narration giving the political context, the message is clear. Daisy girl, and those who prioritize her: good; atom bomb, and those who prioritize arms and the military: way bad.

In a mass media universe, the primary objects tend to be the people, ideas and practices that align with the dominant culture. In this case, a little white girl picking daisies illustrates purity and innocence. Now, what if this little girl was black? Or in a wheelchair? Would we only think “innocent” or would we also think “poor” or “helpless?” And how might that influence the impact of the message?

It can be so hard to notice the negative space of our mainstream messages and what’s missing from the public eye, that one filmmaker decided to make what’s missing actually go missing. Director Sergio Arau highlighted the invisibility of Mexicans in America by making them truly invisible in A Day Without a Mexican, a mockumentary in which all Mexicans mysteriously disappear from California overnight. The non-Mexican characters, especially those who unconsciously rely on Mexican labor, only notice how vital a role our Latin neighbors play in daily life when there is no one there to cook the food, work the farms, pick up the children. The invisible become visible by becoming invisible. And by doing so, the hope is that the invisible can take up positive space, moving from the margins towards the focus of our media, our awareness, and our communities.

And whereas in artistic terms, the “negative” in “negative space” doesn’t necessarily mean derogatory, in a mass media context, by repeatedly making someone or something missing or secondary, we convey that the person or thing is less valuable, less desirable, or just doesn’t belong.

Often, what’s chosen to be primary objects in the media tap into social and cultural beliefs which are so ingrained that noticing them can be like asking a fish to describe the feeling of water. Men in leadership positions, wealthy people who are white and straight, women as caregivers…the list could go on for days. Naming the communities, ideas and realities that typically inhabit the positive space while acknowledging that which is relegated to the negative space of our media landscape may feel uncomfortable, pointless or just mean-spirited. I’d suggest this comes from a primal human impulse to belong–we don’t want to seem critical and be out of step with the mainstream, with the world we’ve always known. Back in the day, when we roamed with our tribes, not belonging meant no food, no shelter…until finally, curtains for the outcast.

"Rosie the Riveter" in WWII morale-boosting ad

Until we acknowledge what’s missing in the messages and images we encounter every day, those people, ideas and practices will remain invisible and less than. The result? Those who are unrepresented must work harder to become empowered to take up space in their own lives and communities. Those negative space ideas and practices don’t gain a foothold to become worthy of mainstream exploration or resources. Consider how we’d feel about women in the workplace, let alone the women themselves, if the image of Rosie the Riveter never existed.

Taking a cue from paintings, if we begin seeing the people and ideas that typically inhabit positive and negative spaces in the media as complementary and then see complementary as meaning equally valuable, interchangeable, we might become more flexible in our thinking and in our lives. A Latina at the head of a boardroom table in a magazine ad for JPMorgan Chase, a white father grocery shopping in a Cheerios commercial, a differently-abled person playing the summer blockbuster Rom-Com lead… the obstacles to these becoming common symbols in the media are real and pervasive.

So perhaps the first step is in our imaginations, and in our willingness to put on media-literate goggles and ask, “What’s the primary object here? Why should that occupy the ‘positive’ as opposed to the ‘negative’ space? What makes it more important than what’s left out or secondary?” It’s when we start asking these questions that we liberate our minds. By questioning what’s given, considering whether we agree or disagree, deciding whether these values support the world we desire, or help us wake up to what’s important, we can imagine alternatives that don’t yet exist. We can find the inspiration and the courage to take action in some way: to voice dissent, demand different versions of our world than what we see in the media, become more empowered members in our communities.

–Angela Martenez

Angela Martenez is a non-fiction writer, documentary maker and community mediator. Follow her on Twitter: @AngelaMartenez

A recent article on YPulse covers the rising industry of Tween salons, specifically one suburban salon called Sweet & Sassy Salon and Spa, where girls are encouraged to be “Diva for A Day.” A quick search on Google and you’ll find similar tween salons and spas that offer any spa service you could possibly imagine. These businesses are capitalizing on a manufactured girlhood that centers on beauty (this one even relies on gossip rhetoric). The YPulse article claims (bizarrely), when you’re a tween, “as Britney put it, you’re not a girl, not yet a woman.” I disagree on so many levels, and not only because Britney was twenty years old when she came out with that song.

When I first read the article, and after discussing it with LAMPpost editor Emily Long, we talked about how problematic it is to encourage girls to emulate the “diva” mentality. “Having fun with the way you look and expressing yourself doesn’t need to mean you’re a diva, or pretending to be a diva or celebrity, and adheres to this message that caring about fashion/beauty equals vanity, snobbery and brattiness as opposed to things like creativity and identity,” points out editor Emily Long, “This salon is clearly funneled toward one very narrow brand of beauty.” In fact most of the tween spas and salons I found were pretty unadulterated about this diva shtick. Yet many of them offered services for children younger than tweens.

Sadly, these salons think they’re providing a positive service. The narrow brand of beauty they’re selling is misinterpreted as empowerment while they claim they’re providing spaces for bonding between girls and their mothers. Yet girls need empowerment and female relationships that run much deeper than the vanity of red carpet fashion show and pop karaoke that comes with the Sweet & Sassy salon packages. These salons are selling the same poisoned Kool-Aid as the problematic beauty industry while masking it with a facade of pink and glittery girl-power. In the end, all they learn is that looking good matters more than anything else.

This photo of Sweet and Sassy Salon is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Through the rhetoric of tweenhood, the beauty industry is reaching girls at alarmingly young ages. With it comes the struggle to figure out how to manage expectations of beauty that encourage these children to act much older than they are. The video (top) for Sweet & Sassy salon eerily reminds me of TLC’s infamous show Toddlers and Tiaras, with young girls prancing down the red carpet and nervously eyeing the camera taping their fashion show. This practice of self-display feels contrived for most adults so it’s especially bizarre when 7-year-olds are doing it. Peggy Orenstein  discusses the princessification and girlie-girl culture of these salons in her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter. In her first chapter  she explains, “In one study of eighth-grade girls, for instance, self-objectification — judging your body by how you think it looks to others — accounted for half the differential in girls’ reports of depression and more than two-thirds of the variance in their self-esteem. Another linked the focus on appearance among girls that age to heightened shame and anxiety about their bodies. Even brief exposure to the typical, idealized images of women that we all see every day has been shown to lower girls’ opinion of themselves, both physically and academically.” This is not surprising, yet places like Sweet & Sassy create entire business images that–to their credit, probably unknowingly–profit off of these depressing realities.

When I see places like tween salons that conflate the diva mentality of fashion with self-empowered creativity I get really frustrated. It’s difficult enough for girls to negotiate issues of beauty without an entire industry driving it. Don’t get me wrong, I think self-expression and dress-up play is really important. If kids (read: all genders) enjoy colorful nail polish or dress-up, they should have the space to explore these things. But this sort of play doesn’t come without implications. Parents must help their children to contextualize it through the scope of self-empowerment instead of through this snobby, celebri-fied diva mentality. While the issue isn’t exactly new, it appears to be growing ever more dire.

–Emily Breitkopf

Emily is a contributing writer for The LAMPpost. You can find more of her writing on her blog, “Kids and Gender.”

Families gather for a Punch and Judy on a beach near Dorset, England

It seemed innocent enough. My husband and I thought we’d take our two year-old son to one of the nearby parks in our neighborhood in Rome, Italy for some fresh air and some TV-free, iPad-free, sans-electronic-glowing-screen-of-any-kind family fun. What could be more wholesome than watching a traditional Italian puppet show, run by Carlo Piantadosi’s family in the little red booth theater for over forty years atop scenic Gianicolo Hill?

Now don’t get me wrong. The show is absolutely charming. Charming, but also mind-numbingly violent. The star of the show is Neapolitan hand-puppet Pulcinella (known to English-speakers as Punch, of Punch and Judy fame). The show is in Italian, but you don’t need to speak the language to understand that every ten seconds or so, Pulcinella and the other characters are beating the crap out of each other with bats and other assorted objects. The babies and toddlers in the audience found this delightfully amusing (as did their puppet-show viewing predecessors hundreds of years ago), particularly the part where Pulcinella takes the fresh corpse of the puppet he most recently clobbered and turns it into a weapon to beat up another character who then also dies. My apologies if I’ve ruined the plot.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies not watch any television until they are at least two years of age. For older children, they suggest “no more than one to two hours per day of educational, nonviolent programs, which should be supervised by parents or other responsible adults in the home.”

We miraculously were able to keep our son Lukas away from television for his first 18 months of life and look warily towards our 8-week-old son Nico, wondering if we’ll be even half that successful. We’re not bad parents. Lukas watches hand-picked educational videos (Sesame Street, Mother Goose Club, etc) on an iPad and plays interactive age-appropriate games for about an hour or so a day. He gets more screen time on rainy days, weekends, when he’s sick, or when we’ve just plain run out of ideas. I realize that this is not horrible, and yet I always feel like somewhere out there are better parents doing better, more lofty things with their children such as finger painting, churning butter, or recreating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with hand-colored macaroni noodles to the soundtrack of Rossini’s operas.

Imagine then, how smug I feel whenever I hear about children’s entertainment from the not-so-innocent days of long ago before glowing screens were invented. Steven Pinker, author of the book I’m currently reading, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined” argues that human beings are actually becoming less violent over time. In one section on children’s entertainment, he cites how nursery rhymes and Grimms Brothers’ type fairy tales were tabulated for violence in a recent study. Apparently, there were 52.2 incidents of violence on average for fairy tales and nursery rhymes, but only 4.8 incidents per modern television cartoon. Pinker also notes that popular forms of family entertainment in medieval Europe were to attend public hangings, view “witch” burnings, and to participate in pummeling caged accused criminals with stones, rotten food, and even excrement.

Does this mean that parents everywhere should just throw up their hands then and let their children watch as much television as they want because the nature of entertainment has evolved for the better? Well, no. Of course not. There’s still plenty of nastiness out there in TV-Land and on the internet that should be hidden from young eyes. That said, can we parents at least cut ourselves a little slack and stop beating ourselves up whenever we’ve run out of rainy day indoor activities and turn on the television in a moment of desperation?

The 1989 Ken Follet bestseller, “The Pillars of the Earth” about life in 12^th century England begins with the line, “The small boys came early to the hanging.” I may not be the perfect 21^st century parent, but at least the worst thing my small boys will see today is Elmo singing the alphabet song with Grover. Or if I turn my back, perhaps “The Jersey Shore.”

–Kristen Palana

Kristen Palana is a Professor of Digital Media at The American University of Rome. Visit her online at kpalana.com.

Nicholas Kristof at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2010. Photo by Monika Flueckiger/World Economic Forum.

New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof is revered by the public for his work highlighting humanitarian issues, in particular the plight of women worldwide. Having won two Pulitzer Prizes, his journalistic integrity is fervently defended by his supporters.  However, due to the tenuous grasp that trafficking and prostitution have on the American socio-political arena, the issues at hand are often misunderstood, and his philosophies remain largely unquestioned.  Specifically, in writings which highlight the worst abuses within the sex industry, at times Kristof creates the perhaps unfair characterization that all sex workers are victims.  While he is adept at constructing a compelling narrative for his loyal readers, his writing style and manipulation of statistics distort the public understanding of prostitution.

In Kristof’s January 25 op-ed for the New York Times, he introduces us to a 13-year-old girl, whom he refers to as “Baby Face, because of her looks…” She was forced into selling sex by her pimp, who posted ads to clients on the website Backpage.com. Kristof’s decision to call her “Baby Face” is disconcerting, because it only further victimizes her. While Kristof’s intention was undoubtedly to elicit an emotional response from reader over the young girl’s ordeal, is their outrage worth using a nickname that a pimp or john would have given her? It would have been better to allude to her by some generic name. Instead, Krisof relies on sensationalism to get his point across. The emphasis on her youth reduces her to an object, something she has already endured at the hands of her pimp and the johns he sold her to.

In addition, Kristof quotes Lauren Hersh, a Brooklyn prosecutor who asserts that “The average age where a girl is forced into prostitution is 12 to 14.” This statistic is from a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, and the research methodology has proven to be flawed. Emi Koyama, a sex worker activist explains how “[t]he major problem with [this] data is that it is based on survey of minors who engage in prostitution. Since the study does not include anyone who is over the age of 18, it is natural that the average age…at which respondents entered prostitution is below 18.” According to Ronald Weitzer of George Washington University, “[c]ontemporary studies have reported varying percentages of individuals who started selling sex when they were minors. These studies…have documented that only a minority began to prostitute before age 18 and an even smaller percentage before 14.”

Obviously, there’s a problem here – Kristof is just one of many journalists that includes the age 12-14 statistic in their articles. This distorted knowledge has become widespread, and the misappropriation of statistics does little to assist those who are truly victims truly in need of assistance because resources are not properly utilized as a result. It only serves to fuel media sensationalism. The prominent use of the Internet in the sex industry is, in part, a consequence of anti-prostiution sentiment. It provides an environment for artifice and deceit, something that those who force individuals into selling sex rely on. While we must obviously do what is necessary to combat those who utilize the internet to force individuals into selling sex, we must also acknowledge that the media needs re-evaluate how they approach the issues arising from the sex industry.

–Caitlyn Garcia

Caitlyn Garcia is a student at William Paterson University, double-majoring in French language & literature and political science.

Having been a twelve-year-old girl myself during the years of AIM, I know how media and online interaction drove my self-worth. And I know how things have evolved.  The use of new media by kids 8-12 is growing exponentially and, according to the Stanford study, kids are watching multiple screens at once. YouTube and Google are verbs for most American ten-year-olds and today the tween years are a huge marketing target. From Hannah Montana to Winx Club to iCarly, television doesn’t offer the best role models for young girls. On the Internet, the girl-positive sites are often difficult to find. Unless kids are looking specifically for empowering spaces, girls are bombarded with challenges to define themselves as women much too early. Their bodies are being sexualized and their brains are being sidelined. The more media they consume, the more girls are given images that tell them their self-worth should revolve around other people’s perceptions of their body.

Sure, the Stanford study tells us we should nurture face-time and interpersonal interaction for girls. It’s something that’s important for all humans. Regardless, kids are going to use media and that’s why education is so important. We aren’t going to change the system in one day so that girls can feel empowered through their media use. It’s not possible. But there is empowerment through media literacy. If we educate children to be able to contextualize stereotypes that affect their self-image, there’s less chance they’ll recreate them or rely on them in their own lives, and as adults. And who knows? Maybe they’ll find spaces online that will inspire that positive interpersonal interaction we know they’re missing.

–Emily Breitkopf

Emily is a contributing writer for The LAMPpost. You can find more of her writing on her blog, “Kids and Gender.”

A few teasers are already starting their leaks, along with the various finalists from the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. The big ones right now appear to be “The Bark Side” by Volkswagen (below) and the extended Honda ad featuring Matthew Broderick as an adult Ferris Bueller-type. But there are others–like the Doritos finalists, a new E*Trade baby ad, an Eskimo who trades in his dog sled for a Suzuki, and the Audi “Daylight” commercial taking on the neverending teen vampire craze.

One of the most popular ads to come out of last year’s Super Bowl was Volkswagen’s “The Force,” and I have to say it looks like they may have done it again. Maybe my favorite thing about “The Force” is the way it proves that ads don’t have to be insulting or over-the-top to get our attention and do their job. LAMPlatoon doesn’t want to just take apart ads that are offensive; the project aims to pull back the curtain on how all commercials–vomit-inducing or not–try to persuade us and create want. There’s a way to do it without relying on negative stereotypes or statements which are just barely true, and I’m hopeful that the rest of the Super Bowl ads we see pop up over the next week follow in the footsteps of Darth Vader.

–Emily Long

Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc

Follow me on Twitter: @emlong

The Colbert/Stewart Super PAC experiment is certainly enlightening in its own way, but don’t let that be the only source of information for the depth of inanity within the Supreme Court decision, or the threat it poses to a free and open democracy. Even if you’re like me, and not getting the political ad onslaught, you are/will be impacted by Citizens United. Just wait til the GOP primary comes to your hometown.

–Emily Long

Follow The LAMP on Twitter: @thelampnyc

Follow me on Twitter: @emlong

LEGO Friends Emma's Splash Pool kit, featuring LadyFigs

The Lego petition is an interesting one. How many toys have been made that reinforce these gender stereotypes for children without such a vocal complaintfrom this many consumers? What is it about Legos that makes them different enough to inspire a petition signed by thousands? The creators of the petition, Bailey Shoemaker Richards and Stephanie Cole, run an movement called SPARK that works to end the sexualization of girls. It wasn’t until their petition that I’ve seen a unified criticism of gendered marketing discussed in mainstream spaces. What is it about Legos that brought us here?

For many adults now raising children, childhood was filled with the basic brick Legos. I remember my big red bucket of Legos. My sisters and I would dump it out and build and pretend for hours. Why don’t we expect children to do this today with the simple bricks? It seems the market is consistently trying to create fantasy worlds for them, trying to provide characters that will help them construct an identity. Yet so few of these characters are positive role-models for children.

Screenshot from the online Lego store

The new Lego LadyFigs are a case in point. They’re a a feminized response to “minifigs,” the little people that come with their kits. The Lego Friends kits they come with are already assembled and allow the LadyFigs to brush their hair, sing in a club, shop with friends, even lounge in the pool with a drink. The toy demonstrates Lego’s expectations for how girls play and it’s undeniably offensive. Sure, some kids want to play with pink things that have a hair brush and some want to play with black and grey things that crash but the problem happens when we polarize these types of play into gender categories.

I heard an interview with co-creator of the #LiberateLegos petition, Bailey Shoemaker Richards, on NPR where she did an excellent job bringing to surface the fact that this is not a “war on pink” as many consider it to be. It’s the way that pink has been used to reinforce gender stereotypes that limit girls’ ways of being. It was interesting to hear the comments she was asked to respond to during the segment, many of which seemed to miss the point that gendered marketing is marginalizing for children and adults.

Search the Lego website and you’ll find -under “categories” in the product section- a section for girls, not one for boys. The Lego company not only assumes their products are inherently made for boys but creates a separate category for “girls,” reinforcing the marginalization that happens when maleness is viewed as normative. When we frame toys through the gender binary, a tool that marketers use constantly, we restrict the ways children play with them. As we’ve discussed before, this isn’t just an issue only Lego faces. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that petitions like this draw vital attention to. Now if we could only petition the whole market….

–Emily Breitkopf

Emily is a contributing writer for The LAMPpost. You can find more of her writing on her blog, “Kids and Gender.”