Do we value celebrities and playboys more than poets, scientists, and inventors?
Dresden Schumaker wrote a piece on The Huffington Post called, “Raising a Son Within the Princess Culture” about how girl power in the media tells girls that they can do anything, but boys are mean, stupid, and rough. So while young girls are receiving messages about how they can be a tomboy or play sports or wear a tiara, boys are constantly degraded.
Someone on Reddit posted Schumaker’s link with the comment: “this kind of kind of confuses and concerns me.”
A Reddit user, Agent00funk, came back with a brilliant reply:
I think it has a lot to do with what we consider achievement. Can you name more than two astronauts from the modern era? Can you name any great inventors, scientists, or engineers from recent years? Can you name painters and poets whose work has touched the lives of millions in recent years?
I’m sure you can name a few, but you are also an (assumingly) educated adult. Can you name powerful CEOs? Overpaid movie stars? Can you name athletes and singers? Politicians? I’m willing to bet you can name more of these people than of the previous list. American society values money. It doesn’t value hard work, or talent, or genius, no, it values money. Modern day heroes are those who have the money, those who live the lives we wish we could have. Many of our heroes and role models from when we were younger weren’t wealthy. Neil Armstrong probably doesn’t suffer from financial problems, but he isn’t wealthy either. Einstein wasn’t know for his wealth, and although Picasso’s paintings sell for millions now, he never had the wealth of today’s super-stars.
We used to cherish people for what they did, for what they contributed to society. Those people were role models, they showed the youth how to live an interesting and productive life while also generally being a good person. Today we no longer value achievement, but instead we value worth, we no longer value contribution, we value selfishness. The problem with contemporary role models is that they are all filthy rich. Being rich isn’t a bad thing, and someone like Bill Gates is a good point for that. Bill Gates, in my opinion, is one of those classic role models–a decent guy who worked hard pursuing his interest and arguably made the world a better place. I’m not saying we should stop being fans of athletes, singers, and stars, but we should consider if they are fit role-models.
Then you get this “princess” mentality. Which is the epitome of valuing worth over achievement. Princesses don’t do anything unless they are feeling particularly charitable. The popular conception of a princess is a girl who can do as she pleases not because she earned that right, but because she is a princess. Its a horrible role-model. We’ve seen bright young minds flee from subjects that aren’t profitable and go into things like finance. We value the millionaire playboy more than we value the struggling scientist. That millionaire playboy is the male equivalent of “princess”–somebody who enjoys rights and privileges not because of their contributions, but because of their perceived worth. Contemporary role models are rich, but most of us will agree that many of those role models shouldn’t be as rich as they are because we all roll our eyes when we hear somebody is getting payed millions to throw a ball around or to act like they are crying on film.
The people who are looked up to today are over-paid and contribute very little of value to society (obviously, this is my opinion). Children gain role-models through society, and our society has changed values. Adults and parents no longer tell their kids about the deeds of men like Neil Armstrong and encourage their kids to work/study hard to do the same, no, well them they have to be “special” so that they can be rich and/or famous, because only “special” people can be rich and famous. Contemporary role models do not extol virtues of hard work and decency, no, contemporary role models emphasize net worth.
TL;DR We now value celebrities, playboys, and princesses more than scientists, artists, and innovators. Materialism sucks.
What do you think? Are we putting too much emphasis on children doing whatever they want because we tell them they can, instead of putting the emphasis on what they contribute to society? Are we ignoring the people that will move the world forward and instead obsessing over dollars?
If so, how do we go about fixing it? What messages should we be sending our kids to value each other and to value innovation? If not, why do you disagree?
Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons
About Deanna Ogle
I can name Elon Musk and SpaceX. I can do that much.
Umm…we value celebrities, playboys, and princesses more than artists and innovators NOW? At what point was there ever a society where this didn’t happen?
Hate to break it to you, but it’s really hard to find any society in which artists, inventors, and other intellectuals are the most popular, most heroic figures. Maybe Florence during the Renaissance, but that’s a very rare case. Most of this idea is patently false nostalgia for the mythical good old days when people supposedly cared about ideas and exploration and intellectual greatness. There are some great individual examples of great reputations, but they are the exception and not the rule. Sure, Isaac Newton was buried with full national honors, but Galileo most certainly was not.
Unappreciated artists and inventors who die in obscurity is practically the rule across history. They tend to get more respect after they’re dead, like Van Gogh.
I totally agree that our society needs to have more role models from the worlds of art, invention, academia, science, etc. But, let’s not perpetuate the myth that our society is all that worse compared to previous generations. Depressing as it may sound, we may be living in the golden age of American creative heroes. Shakespeare would have been shocked at how much prestige the Oscars generates – international acclaim for being a good actor? That would have been inconceivable to him, living at a time when actors couldn’t even get a decent burial when they died.
We may need to look to the future, not the past.
Finally, really nitpicky here, but astronauts are not really in the same category as scientists, inventors, and artists. Nowadays to be an astronaut you have to have a good grasp of science, but being an astronaut is not the same as being a scientist. In the days of Neill Armstrong, astronauts were definitely not scientists. They were highly skilled test pilots. In the earliest space program, they called themselves “spam in a can,” because they had very little to do except stay alive. Being an astronaut doesn’t make you a scientist any more than being an airline pilot makes you a scientist. Astronauts do heroic things all the time, but they aren’t really science heroes.
This is the great public relations victory of NASA, that people associate NASA so much with science that people assume that astronauts are scientists, therefore keep funding programs to send people into space and using “science” to justify the expense. Who could possibly say no to science?
“Who could possibly say no to science?”
The Republican-dominated House Committee on Science and Technology springs to mind….
Yeah, that was a stupid question on my part. : – )
Perhaps Galileo was not living in such different times from ours…..
Astronauts: Chris Hadfield (Canadian!) and Tony Antonelli (I met him!)
Arists: Ai Weiwei (coming soon to an art gallery near ME) and Wolfgang Laib (with his crazy pollen installations)
Inventors: Does Steve Jobs count? How about my husband? He invents apps sometimes.
Scientists: Bill Bye (duh) and Neil DeGrasse Tyson
This is disturbing. I am trying not to look at anyone else’s answers to do this.
This is going to be bad.
Astronauts: Gabby Giffords’ husband. (that’s all I got)
Scientists: Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan
Inventors: Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, etc – they really are inventors, even if they aren’t inventing lightbulbs.
(I did used to work for an inventor – invents industrial solutions to safety hazards, but he’s not famous).
As far as painters… What’s a painter? You can’t count like Julian Schnabel or any other sculptor or multi-media artist? I know lots of amazing painters who are in my life, but not many famous people who are just “Painters” like Monet, etc.
Astronauts: Nope, sorry.
Scientists [trying not to cheat since I am one...]: Steve Chu (former Secretary of Energy and Nobel Prize winning physicist), Grigori Perelman (the crazy Russian mathematician that proved the generalization of the Poincare conjecture and lives with his mother in a small apartment)
Inventors: Elon Musk, Bjarne Stroustrup (does the guy who invented C++ count?), Amar Bose (as in the headsets)
This is surprising me how hard this is. It’s sad to watch news agencies cutting their science reporting due to budget constraints, and the state of post-NASA-ownership TLC is a fine symptom of what society “wants”. There is a cynical part of me that thinks people shun these types because seeing them work that hard on difficult things is challenging, and makes people feel bad, while watching oversexualized children prancing around gives them a certain smug satisfaction that at least they aren’t THAT bad. The less cynical part in me wants to believe people want to be inspired to go out and do things. But even the television networks that might inspire that, such as the Travel Channel, end up as a vicarious proxy for actually climbing a mountain or swimming in the ocean.