Underage Drinking and 'Alco-Pops'

For my final blog entry I’d like to arch back to an issue I first alluded to in my first post, teenage drinking. In that post I discussed how clothing retailers were not-so-subtly encouraging young women and girls to consume alcohol in excess by marketing T-shirts printed with slogans such as “I’m Drunk, You’re Cute,” and “USA Drinking Team.” This week I’ll examine the issue of underage drinking itself more closely. Do such messages affect young people’s decision whether or not to drink and to what degree? What other types of marketing affect similar decision making? Do young girls consume more alcohol than young boys and why? And, what are the consequences of excessive underage drinking? These are the questions I’ll aim to answer in the paragraphs below.

            So how much do high school aged kids drink alcohol? According to the website for SADD: Students Against Drunk Driving, a national organization of high school students which distributes educational material about alcohol’s negative effects, about 72% of students, roughly 3/4, have been intoxicated at least once by the time they graduate. While teenage drinking is anything but a new phenomenon, this statistic, borrowed from a 2009 NIDA report, provides perspective to the current prevalence of the problem.

            It is also widely observed that teenage girls consume alcohol at dangerous levels more than do teenage boys. An article in Newsweek from 2010 reports that “the number of middle- and high-school girls who say they drink has increased by 11 percent in the past year, from 53 percent to 59 percent. Boys have stayed at about the same level, hovering around 52 percent.” But why is this? One reason, as the Newsweek article goes on to point out is that “for years, boys were the focus of underage-drinking intervention.” Once observed to be bigger drinkers than their female peers, boys became the subject of myriad educational campaigns, and their rate of incidence correspondingly dropped. Girls, in turn, outpaced their male classmates in the area of underage partying.

            Another reason for girls’ increased drinking might be the ways in which the alcoholic beverage industry has responded to the interventions targeting teenage boy drinkers. As these business giants saw inroads being made into one of their key demographics, the industry began targeting girls.  The Newsweek article notes a drastic upsurge in the marketing of “more products devoted to making drinking easier and tastier—the sugar-laden beverages known as alco-pops.” These beverages, which proliferated the market during the time when teen boys were the target of prevention campaigns, are heavily marketed to females. 

         Education.com, a resource for teachers and parents of teenagers, reports that “with their sweet, sugary taste, alco-pops have become girls' drink of choice.” Highlighting the associated dangers of the popularity of these drinks, the website points out that “Teen girls also report drinking alco-pops more than other alcoholic drinks. Alco-pops combine a sweet flavor with the kick of malt liquor to create a taste that often appeals to teens…These drinks often contain more alcohol than most beers.”

            This new trend is especially troubling in light of the newest research surrounding the lasting effects of alcohol on the teenage brain. According to an article in the New York Times, “mounting research suggests that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than was previously thought, injuring them significantly more than it does adult brains.” The research details the higher occurrence of teenage drinkers to experience forms of alcoholism in adulthood as well as lasting neurological consequences such as memory loss.

            While there are some who advocate lowering the drinking age as a means to curbing problems associated with teenage drinking, evidence like that described in the paragraph above will likely hold the legal drinking age securely at 21. But perhaps more protection is needed for teenage girls. The statistical record indicates that the rate of underage drinking went down for boys when they became the target of educational programs, and went up for girls when they became the focus of targeted ad campaigns. Therefore advocates for high school aged girls should work toward creating similar intervention programs for teenage females. At the same time, parents’ groups should work to hold beverage manufacturers accountable for the role they play in intentionally aiding and encouraging young people to break the law and put themselves in danger. 

Student Athletes Celebrate 40 Years of Title IX

In my last post I discussed the immigration and citizenship issue as it pertains to the identity of students. The selection of that topic, as I mentioned in the post, was motivated in part by the issue’s prominence in the current Presidential election. After that post was made, Mitt Romney delivered his now infamous “binders of women” remark during a Presidential debate. He made this remark during a discussion about our nation’s failure to achieve pay parity among men and women which signals gender equality as another major issue in the election. Because of this, I’ve decided to use this post to examine what is arguably the most significant law in American history for achieving gender equality in public schools. I’m talking of course about Title IX.

Back in the summer of this year girls and women’s athletic organizations celebrated the 40^th anniversary of Title IX. The famous law was passed in June 1972 as part of the Education Amendments in the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. In the decades that followed, one clause in particular proved to be of great importance in the lives of American girls:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance...”

Popularly interpreted to mean that boys’ and girls’ school-affiliated athletic programs must receive equal funding, this sentence changed the narrative for girls about what kinds of achievements are possible. Millions of girls who once would have been denied the opportunity to participate in athletics, were now given the same chance as their male peers.

            In the weeks surrounding the anniversary, organizations like the NCAA held events celebrating 40 years of the law. These events were generally organized in the style of retrospectives, honoring women athletes who have benefited from Title IX. Among these women were tennis legend, Billie Jean King, and basketball coach, Pat Summit. Likewise the media focused on the law’s legacy and outcomes. Maha Atal wrote in Forbes magazine about the effects the law has had on women’s lives which have in turn impacted society as a whole. She says, “that participation in sports at a young age correlates to higher wages, greater educational attainment and overall professional success in adult life.” Title IX was also a hot topic of conversation during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, as a generation of female American athletes broke records with their collection of medals as Ann Killion discussed in Sports Illustrated.

            While the anniversary received a certain modicum of coverage in the press, I would argue that the amount of attention it generated doesn’t fully reflect the monumental impact Title IX has had. Perhaps the law has so effectively changed Americans’ perception of girls in regards to sports that it is now completely taken for granted. This attitude might make Title IX seem less revolutionary in the contemporary context than in did in 1972. What is more likely, in my opinion, is that Title IX’s anniversary didn’t garner more attention because it remains controversial. Perennially voices of opposition emerge and make the bogus claim that the law represents legalized discrimination against males. It is hard for me to understand how this conclusion is formed since the law is characteristically gender-neutral. It is this way of misguided thinking, no doubt, that has also resulted in the national pay-inequality which inspired Romney’s “binder” comment.

Young, Bright, Undocumented: Saving America's Future Leaders from Being Deported.

By now it should be apparent that the theme of this blog has taken the shape of a consideration of issues pertaining to the lives of high school aged girls and within the sphere of attending school. For this post I’d like to consider briefly the experiences of undocumented, or non-citizen students (I avoid use of the term “illegal” because I find it derisive.) I decided to examine this issue in my blog in the spirit of the upcoming national elections that, in many races, take immigration reform and immigrant rights as a key issue.

           I hope that this entry doesn’t seem like a re-focus or shift from the issues of high school girls because many of the undocumented students discussed in the articles I’ve found are, of course, girls. Furthermore, the combined experience of being both an immigrant and female represents what the theorist Robyn Warhol terms “intersectionality” in the assigned reading. This being a compounding of disenfranchisement when marginalized identities are experienced simultaneously.

         According to a report published by the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, an estimated 65,000 students graduate from high school in the U.S. each year. Of course this number may actually be much higher since their undocumented status makes arriving at a precise count almost impossible. The authors of this report point out that, “many of these students are honor students, athletes, student leaders, and aspiring professionals. But because of their immigration status, the majority of these young people are unable to access higher education and even if they do, they are not legally able to obtain employment upon graduation.” Thus undocumented students are denied in-state tuition, scholarships, and financial aid for attending American universities even if they excelled while attending American high schools.

         If this seems counter-intuitive to planning for a prosperous future, that’s because it is. Fortunately there are signs that a culture shift is underway which will change the way America views and undocumented immigrants, especially those who were brought to the U.S. as children. A Time Magazine article titled, “California Dreaming: Will the State Give Scholarships to Its Undocumented Youths?” by Jens Erik Gould described that state’s passage of a bill that allowed privately funded scholarships to be awarded to undocumented students making higher education more accessible to this group than ever before. Many hope that the bill will be replicated in states across the country and be expanded to include public scholarships as well.

         But would these bills go far enough in insuring that non-citizen students reach their full potential? Why should bright, young, leadership be stifled because of a bureaucratic technicality? If students like these have lived in the U.S. most or all of their lives and consider this to be their home country, then their citizenship status is just that- a technicality. This is the logic behind the DREAM Act which would allow undocumented young people a path to citizenship in exchange for social contributions like military service or attending college.

         As I mentioned before, immigration issues like this one are a big issue in the upcoming elections and candidates nation-wide are seeking the allegiance of Latino and Hispanic voters. As far as the Presidential election is concerned, it is clear which of the two major party candidates would do more in encouraging the passage of this bill. The Huffington post has reported that President Obama not only advocates for passage of the DREAM Act, but responded to the failure of Congress to pass the bill by issuing a plan of “deferred action.” Under the plan, immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before the age of 16 and are currently under 30 may avoid deportation by applying for work visas.

            Among the loudest voices calling for immigration reform, passage of the DREAM Act, and in the meantime, upholding Obama’s “deferred actions,” is the journalist Antonio Jose Vergas. Vergas, who was a featured keynote speaker at UofL’s PRIDE week last month, won the Pulitzer Prize before losing his job when he “outed” himself as an undocumented American. He has also founded the organization “Define American” which works to raise awareness for the millions of Americans who are classified as none citizens. On DefineAmerican.org, users may upload videos describing their own experiences encountering this issue. The one I’ve reposted below describes two girls, friends since high school, and one girl’s fight to save the other from being deported. I chose this one from the site because it demonstrates how the issue is felt by the group I’ve been examining with this blog, but also because it illustrates how entire communities are affected. All of us have something at stake when it comes to reforming our immigration policies and something to gain from making sure our brightest minds aren’t deported. 

Dollars for Ignorance: Federal Funding and Abstinence-Only Sex Ed.

Continuing with my theme of issues relating to girls in public secondary schools, I’d did some research this week on sex education. I chose to specifically consider abstinence-only sex ed, and the effects it has been found to have on teendaged girls’ sexual and reproductive health.

“Federal guidance requires all programs to adhere to an eight-point definition of abstinence-only education and prohibits programs from disseminating information on contraceptive services, sexual orientation and gender identity, and other aspects of human sexuality.”

This quote if from an article in the scholarly journal Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology titled, “Abstinence and Abstinence-Only Education.” The article also states that this type of sexual education is the only form currently funded by the federal government. In the first decade of the 21^st century, the US federal government spent approximately $178 million per year funding such programs. Curricula for these programs “must have as their ‘exclusive purpose’ the promotion of abstinence outside of marriage and may not in any way advocate contraceptive use or discuss contraceptive methods or condoms except to emphasize their failure rates.”

So, with a forced ignorance built into the mechanisms for disseminating information about teenagers’ sexual and reproductive health, how is this affected?

An article in the HuffingtonPost reports that, “Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state, has the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate. Yet until this year, the state allowed schools to forgo sex education entirely.” This statement highlights two important considerations surrounding this issue: 1.) that a correlation exists between missing or incomplete sexual education and high teen pregnancy rates, 2.) the trend is aggravated by variables such as poverty.

The maps below illustrate the correlation between states’ acceptance of federal funding for Abstinence-Only sex ed. In the top map, the orange states have refused such funding while the gray states have accepted it. The map below illustrates teen pregnancy rates throughout the US. You’ll notice that states which allow for federally funded sex ed programs, particularly those clustered in the south, also boast the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rates. Conversely states concentrated in the north and west have lower teen pregnancy rates and have rejected federal funds for abstinence only sex ed. in favor of more comprehensive forms of information.

In addition to the ineffectiveness of this type of information, the authors of the article in COOG also claim that the implementation of this type of sexual health curricula is widely unpopular. They conducted a nationwide survey that found “81% of adults believed that sex education teaching both abstinence and other methods to prevent pregnancy to be (most) effective. The same survey found that 51% of adults opposed abstinence-only, whereas only 10% opposed teaching contraception and condom use.”

So why is an ineffective and unpopular policy which adversely affects the health of young people receiving such dramatic sums of public money?

It is a question for our nation’s elected legislators and the interests which back them, yet I doubt it will soon be answered.

Boys and Girls: To Segregate or Not To Segregate?

My last post focused on controversial clothing, marketed to young girls, and decorated with gendered slogans such as “Future Trophy Wife.” As I noted then, retailers such as Urban Outfitters hide from potential outrage over these products in the claim that they’re intended to be sold to a college-aged demographic, presumably one that is 18 and over. Yet under the banner of “Back to School” shopping, that intention is vague at best. As we all know from the experience of being in High School, what’s cool to 18-22 year olds is irresistibly cool to 15-18 year olds. It would be crazy to assume that none of these types of T-Shirts, with printed messages like “I Drink, You’re Cute,” have ended up on the backs of girls still “safely” occupying the K-12 zone. Reflecting on this discovery I began to think about other gender issues as they exist within the realm of the educational environment, specifically in public secondary schools.

This train of thought eventually led me to the public debate currently taking place over “Single-Sex” education, or “Sex-Segregation.” I came across the Time Magazine article “Ew Boys: TheGrowing Legal Battle Over Same-Sex Education.” According to the article’s author, Adam Cohen, the number of public school systems which separate boys from girls in the class room grew from about 12 in 2002, to “as many as 500” a decade later. But why? What are the perceived benefits of this trend and does it pay off? That is very much the question at the center of the debate.

According to the National Associationfor Single Sex Public Education, “The single-sex format creates opportunities that don’t exist in the coed classroom.” This school of thought operates on the assumption that boys and girls are psychologically distinct from one another. Because of this, according to advocates for single-sex education, both girls and boys benefit from being separated in the classroom and educated along different trajectories according to how each gender learns best. The NASSPE emphasizes this last part as the key to their argument. Simply isolating the sexes and teaching the same curricula to each group simultaneously wouldn’t be effective, they claim. Instead the group advocates special “training” for educators that will allow them to tailor lesson plans to the specific educational needs of each gender propelling them to reach their maximum potential.

Others, however, aren’t buying NASSPE’s stance. The assumption that girls’ brains work differently from boys’ brains is seen by many to be just that, an assumption, not backed by any scientific data. National Public Radio’s Neal Conan hosted a debate forum on the subject on his show Talk of the Nation. In this episode he cited an article in the scholarly journal Science, which found “that there’s simply no empirical evidence that segregating boys and girls improves education.” The American Civil Liberties Union has been active on the issue in recent years, filing lawsuits against school districts in Louisiana and Mississippi, condemning the practice of sex segregation as discriminatory. In a statement published on their website they say, “We have seen time and time again that sex segregated programs are inherently unequal for both girls and boys” and “can shut students out of the best classes simply because of their sex.”

My opinion aligns with the ACLU which cites Title IX and the Equal Education Opportunities Act as the legal basis for bringing these districts to court. Even though groups like NASSPE seem well intentioned and claim to be working to break down gender stereotypes, they lack crucial supporting evidence. Without academic research to conclusively prove that separating girls from boys raises achievement levels, I’m left to assume that this is another example of gender biases appearing in public schools.

Back to School Marketing: What Retailers Are Teaching Us a Girl Should Be

Each August, as the summer season finally comes to a close, the first signs of autumn bring the perennial "back to school shopping" ritual to many of America's young people. Year after year retailers and educators inundate enrolled families with messages touting the need for new supplies: notebooks, pens, pencils, binders, book bags, art supplies, rulers, compasses, calculators among them.  (According to Forbes Magazine, the average parent of a K-12 grade student will spend close to $700 per child on this kind of merchandising.) Least of all on this list is a brand new, fresh off the shelf wardrobe, replete with the latest fall fashions.

Unfortunately, the "back to school shopping" season also perennially brings with it clear and hard to mistake images of a young-Americanhood which many find to be more offensive than idyllic. This week the retail chain Urban Outfitters, which opened a franchise in Louisville this fall on Bardstown Road to a mixed reception, has been in the hot seat for images appearing in their online catalogue of a young girl, possibly underage, sporting a T-Shirt from the company's fall inventory with the phrase "I drink, You're cute" emblazoned in large, blurry text across the front. The message here is an obvious acknowledgement of lowered sexual inhibitions brought about by excessive consumption of alcohol. Of course this T-Shirt isn't the first to raise eyebrows among potential buyers in such a way, last fall J.C. Penny found themselves in similar trouble over a shirt, marketed to an even younger demographic than Urban Outfitters appeals to with a shirt which read, "I'm too pretty to do my homework, so my brother has to do it for me." Again and again disempowering slogans appear, apparently labeling young women (literally) as being enrolled in school not to obtain an education, but to be attractive and even subordinate to their male peers.

As you might have imagined, the teenage consumer archetype isn't the only group susceptible to this type of gender-biased marketing. As older (and younger) American women are indoctrinated to believe that their late teens is a kind of gold age, apparel in other markets begins to resemble and follow the trends set by youth fashion. Nike was recently scrutinized for it's "Gold Digging" T-Shirt marketed during this summer's Olympic games in London, available ONLY in women's sizes. 

"I'm intoxicated therefore, I'll probably sleep with you." "My brother is smarter than me because being 'pretty,' and being smart are mutually exclusive." "I'll trade romantic favors for riches and status."

What's most interesting to me about these particular products is the way in which the messages they convey relate one gender, that of American girls and women, to another: American males. Of course there are other examples of controversial clothing marketed to girls reinforcing the idea that they can't succeed academically, but not all so directly involve boys as a contrast. 

The good news, perhaps, is that each of these shirts mentioned have received such objections from consumers that retailers have been forced to pull them off of shelves.