The effects of media on hips don't lie!

One of the most obvious signs of how the media has influenced our world today is the effect it has on the perception of beauty, or more specifically the size of the body considered beautiful. During the Renaissance in Europe, being fat was all the rage. Women should have wide hips and a large behind. Pale skin was also in fashion, the whiter the better.


Lets take a look at why previous beauty ideals have been in fashion. Who was fat during the Renaissance? The lords and ladies. Regular people just couldn't afford enough food to get fat. Who had white skin? The lords and ladies, who spent most of their time indoors or under an umbrella. Thus both fat and pale skin were signs of wealth. Large hips on women were a sign that they could bear many children. Children were necessary to secure your lifestyle at old age.

In modern western society those beauty ideals seems to have been flipped. Women should be thin as sticks and men should be the same, but with a six-pack. In modern society both men and women work and there's welfare at old age, so children are less desired. Hence large hips aren't as fashionable either. Most of the work is done indoors and isn't very physical. People don't get six-packs unless they actively pursue it. There's food in abundance so for most people it's actually easier to get fat than to put in the time and effort to be thin.


However, to dive deeper and observe society nowadays, are geeks the new in-thing? Are factory workers, the police, or the social worker attractive with their natural six-pack? Hardly. No, the high steady income goes to the highly educated nerd clattering away at his computer as the media teaches and potrays. He's the one who will go on to become president of his company, a politician or even the next Bill Gates. Being good with technology is more important than being physically strong nowadays. Is this media influence and powerful effects theory at its finest?

Insecure Collectivism

To go a level deeper than the surface of just labeling the culture of Asian countries as collectivistic, and Western countries as individualistic, I tried to dive deeper into the effects of such labels, and find the source. Observed from an experiment by Ryan and Deci, these labels largely touch on the issue of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (2000).

One of the most fundamental principles of extrinsic motivation, like operant conditioning, is to give a reward each time a desired behaviour occurs to increase the frequency of that behaviour. Say for example you announced to an entire state, for any child that read a book, the child would receive a coupon for a free pizza. There is no doubt that rewards are powerful motivators and that pizzas will get kids to read more. However, the effects of the rewards not only stop there, but also affect the children’s thoughts about themselves, their self-concept, and their motivation to read in the future. Does getting money for reading, for example, change people’s ideas about why they are reading? The danger of reward programs such as this example is that kids will begin to think they are reading to earn the pizzas, and not because they find reading to be an enjoyable activity in its own right. When the reward programs end and pizzas are no longer forthcoming, children may actually read less than they did before. This is especially likely to happen to children who already liked to read. Such children have high intrinsic motivation, which is the desire to engage in an activity because they enjoy it or find it interesting, and not because of external rewards or pressures.

What happens when the children start getting rewards for reading? Their reading, originally stemming from intrinsic motivation, is now also spurred by extrinsic motivation, the desire to engage in an activity because of the external rewards or pressures, not because you enjoy the task or find it interesting. According to self-perception theory, rewards can hurt intrinsic motivation. Initially, many children read because they enjoyed it, but now they are only reading so that they will get the reward. This unfortunate outcome occurs when intrinsic motivation is replaced with extrinsic motivation; it makes people lose interest in the activity they initially enjoyed. This result is called the over-justification effect, which results when people view their behaviour as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which their behavior was caused by intrinsic reasons.

This speaks volumes to Singaporean culture today. We often look at western kids and wonder why are they so outspoken. Or perhaps wonder why the opinion of family and friends matter so much to us, to the extent that sometimes a person's perspective can make us alter our decision altogether. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying individualism is clearly superior to our culture. They have problems of their own.

However, to find the sweet spot on the middle of the spectrum, we have to identify, what is the root of the problem? Is it really the culture that we have been shaped by, or our unwillingness to explore and find our identiy in something other than the impressions and expectations our community have for us?

Uniquely Singapore!

Does Singapore have an unique and distinctive culture?

Many elements of Singapore society fit the bill of what sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander refers culture as – an organized set of meaningfully understood symbolic patterns. In olden times, ancient cultures would worship a certain deity, following strict customary law and practices. Today, we're still a collectivist culture, but how things have changed. Most Singaporeans now collectively worship a new deity namely, money. The importance of money is ingrained into our minds from birth, our parents knowingly assuring us the practicality of living in this day and age. The Singaporean way – study hard, memorize your lessons well, get a good grade, get a good job, earn a lot of money; and surely this will bring you happiness. In Singapore, the pursuit of being number one is the most noble of goals one can have in his life. To put it bluntly, most mothers from other countries will normally be overjoyed if their child managed a ninety-eight for a test, but in Singapore, the child is prepared for caning if he knows that his ninety-eight was only second to another child’s ninety-nine.

On the other side of the coin, people are arguing that the world is affected by influence from various sources, and each country is beginning to lose its distinctiveness. Globalisation has caused racial, cultural and lingual barriers to be broken down, and one may argue that we are facing the eradication of distinct cultures around the world. Economic emphasis in most countries has caused negligence in cultural growth. Heritage is lost in our constant struggle of twenty-first century advancements. Media influence seems to be the bible for our young these days. The world seems to be moving towards one giant, global culture that seemingly has the word “consumerism” written all over it. However, despite how many cultures ebb and flow into each other like paint on a canvas, there will always be room for smaller scale cultures to flourish regardless of how that mini-culture is set in the bigger picture.

I believe that a unique Singaporean culture is alive and well today. Our totems are our cell phones; our altars are our office cubicles and “4d shops”. Our national heroes are the financially successful, and the path to nirvana is a fat one hundred on a test paper. Yes, this is the Singaporean culture. Like it or not, this is what we have created. The slogan on our national tourism campaign proudly proclaims: “Uniquely Singapore”. However, it is definitely not for the reasons others think we are.

Love, love, love!

What is love to you?

Does love equate to interpersonal relationships? Is attention love? Sacrifice? Or perhaps warm tingly feelings in your toes, followed by the fluttering of your insides? The world teaches us that love's a deep intense feeling, the one thing that can free us from all the weight and pain of life. However, H.L. Mencken discerns that to be in 'love' is merely to be in a state of perceptual anaesthesia. On the other end of the spectrum, we have fields of knowledge trying to give love a definition. Psychology portrays love as a cognitive phenomenon with a social cause. Communication's contemporary view of interpersonal relationships is that we're establishing relationships with another individual just to satisfy our social needs and realise our personal goals (Gamble and Gamble, 2005).

I believe all these views/theories/insights/blabber-of-the-experts have missed what love truly is by a long shot. To me, there are really 4 general types of love. There is Stergos, the parental kind of love. There is Philia, that's really friendship love! There's Eros, the romantic, emotional kind of love. And then there's Agape, God's never-failing, ever-faithful, love-without-condition.

The world pretty much subscribes wholeheartedly to the Eros kind of love. Love is all about the perfect Hollywood scene. They glamourise the expensive restaurants, holding the door for the lady, and (literally) the romantic walk-in-the-park. They exhibit proudly the infatuation and the lust, but never really seek to investigate the true foundations of a long-lasting relationship.

Some ask what love truly is. Others argue that views on love are always limited by context, that you can never truly define it. Well let me share the bible's interpretation of any and every kind of genuine love: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (The Holy Bible, NIV, 1 Cor 13:4-7)

LOVE IS NOT SELF-SEEKING!! Perhaps its time to stop asking ourselves if we'll ever find the 'perfect' guy or girl of our dreams. One that will chase all the troubles away. One that would truly bring happiness. One that would truly satisfy.

Maybe we've all been too concerned about FINDING the right one, when all along we should have been concerned about BEING the right one for someone else!