Boys To Men
Entertainment Media Messages About Masculinity, September 1999

Boys to Men: Entertainment Media Messages About Masculinity - 1999
This 28-page companion report analyzes the role that entertainment media plays in boys' development.
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Introduction
At the end of 20th century America, we live in a society that often sends confusing and conflicting messages to men and boys. They are bombarded with information that reinforces gender expectations no longer consistent with the diversity of current family and workplace roles.

Many of the nation's boys are also in jeopardy. Boys are more likely than girls to fall behind in school, to commit suicide, to be involved in violent crime.

As boys pass from childhood to manhood, they develop their moral and ethical code. While young people have traditionally been guided in these paths by familiar sources--family, friends, religion--today's boys are increasingly influenced by an ever-expanding and pervasive media.

From an early age, boys are especially active users of media, watching hours of television, movies, music videos, and sports, listening to radio and CDs, surfing the Internet, and playing computer and video games. Researchers have suggested that the cumulative impact of these media may make them some of the most influential forces in their lives, especially during adolescence. Yet there is remarkably little research on media's influence on boys.

To explore this important issue and to expand on our previous research on gender, Children Now commissioned research into the media's messages about masculinity and their impact on boys. In-depth content studies analyzed messages in the prime-time television shows, movies, and music videos most frequently watched by boys. Included in the research is a national poll of 1,200 young people (ages 10 to 17) and focus groups in which boys offered their own insights into the media they consume.

We learned that, in spite of the complex and changing work and family experiences of real-life men, media portrayals do not reflect this complexity. Rather, messages and images remain strongly stereotypical. Those who are admired share predictable and timeworn attributes.

Today's young people, while consuming unprecedented quantities of media, experience a contradiction between their own reality and media messages about masculinity. While they identify the characteristics and behaviors so familiarly attributed to men, they also recognize that the men and boys they see on TV are not like themselves nor the boys and men in their own lives.

This groundbreaking study provides valuable insight into the identity formation of boys. How young people absorb and integrate the media's images along with their personal experiences will have a profound impact on the expectations and behavior of a new generation of men.

Highlights
Key findings from a national poll of children and a content analysis of television programs, movies, and music videos most watched by boys.

Vulnerability and Emotions
Although male characters in the media displayed a range of emotional behavior, including fear, anger, grief, and pain, they rarely cried.

Violence and Anger
Almost three-fourths of children describe males on television as violent and more than two thirds describe men and boys on television as angry.

One in five male characters employs some form of physical aggression to solve problems.

Work vs. Domestic
Across boys' favorite media, men are closely identified with the working world and high prestige positions, while women are identified more often with their domestic status.

Over one-third of children say that they never see television males performing domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning.

Race
Men of color are more likely to focus on solving problems involving family, personal, romantic, or friendship issues; while white men in the sample are consistently motivated by succeeding in work, preventing & managing disaster (i.e. "saving the day"), and pleasing non-romantic others (e.g., family members, friends, co-workers).

TV vs. Reality
Across race and gender, the majority of children believe that the boys and men they see on television are different from themselves, boys that they know, their fathers, and other adult male relatives.

Many kids believe that financial wealth is an over-represented sign of success on television, and that their ideas of real-life success are underrepresented on television.