In the last post I mentioned that the media’s goals are to get you to follow the latest trends. This has been the goal since the first advertiser paid for the first space in the first magazine.
Going back to WWII when most of the male work force was overseas fighting for our freedom, the factories needed workers to produce the goods to keep up the war effort. Where was this work force to come from and how where they to get the public to support it? Hence an American poster woman was born, Rosie the Riveter.
She was on the cover of magazines, posters of her hung on walls and the message was “Women do your patriotic duty”. So women hit the factories, they stepped up to the plate and did what was needed of them.
Then, thank goodness, the war ended and the men came home. Now what do you think the media popularized? Stories of the good stay at home wife and how children of working mothers were neglected, hanging in alleys, doing drugs and joining gangs. Now it was a woman’s patriotic duty to stay at home and raise her family; leave “the work” to the men.
Move along some 30/ 40 years and we have the 70’s and 80’s when a woman could “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never, ever let you forget you’re a man”.
That stereotype almost wiped out a whole generation. My point is that the advertising we see at every turn is meant to make us think that what we are seeing is the norm and we are out of sync with “everyone” if we don’t own it, do it and think it.
New ways and new gadgets are just different, not necessarily better for you. Only you can decide that not some ad in a magazine directed at a demographic of society. You know you are more than a statistic.
The economic downturn is hitting everyone differently and people are forced to reevaluate their choices. Turning the clock back on our lives is not easy and it can be seen as doing without instead of just doing life differently. So close the magazines and infomercials and let’s compare how it used to be to how it is and make your own decisions.
