Mass Media and Socialization

This week in Sociology we talked about the mass media as a socializing agent. We started out the week by doing an UNTV assignment where we did all sorts of experiments with turning the TV volume off and staring only at the TV. Then on Tuesday we discussed it and came up with some ineresting realizations. Like the fact that the camera angles switch so frequently but it's not noticable because of how much people watch tv, it has become normal. Also, watching the tv woth the screen off has showed me how much tome I waste spending tv and how little I actually do while watching tv.
Another thing we talked about this week was how the media creates these perceptioms of how girls vs boys should act and the types of things they should like and play with. We looked through a toy catelog and saw that all the girl pages were pink and had toys like kitchens, then went to the boy pages and realized thatthey were all filled with kids being active and getting dirty outside. They were playing with tools and strong machines that associate with masculinity. It was so weird because up until then, I has never noticed the blatently obvious messages that commericals and toy catalogs were sending. We have just grown up in a world accepting those things and paid very little attention to them.
This made me start to reflect on my life, I have lived in 6 different houses and in 5 of my 6 houses my room has always been painted pink (the one other time it was purple). It started out when I was born, my parents knew they were having a girl so of course, they had to paint my room pink because that was the normal thing to do. Then as I got older, although my favorite color wasn't always pink, I felt like my room had to be that color because all of my friend's rooms were pink and I was a girl and that's just what we do. So room after room, they were all painted pink.I don't think I ever conciencely thought about why I painted my room the color I did though, up until now and now I'm realizing I am just as much a product of the media socializing people as any of my other friends with pink rooms are.