By the time these young children enter school they have already absorbed a number of important concepts. They have learned which are girls' toys and which are boys' toys, that prettiness is important to females and power is important to males. As they mature and watch television shows aimed at older children, they see beautiful women always acting with their appearance in mind and bouncy men adoring them, courting them for their bodies. Why should this make a difference to the curriculum of a school? Can students not learn their school subjects regardless of the lessons they learn from the imaging? Many studies demonstrate that children are strongly affected by how they imagine themselves as learners. Children who feel that they are intelligent and can do well usually do so. Those who feel they cannot succeed often do not. When children internalize messages that women are merely objects of desire, that power makes women ugly, that only beautiful women achieve wealth and that men have to dominate to succeed in life, they build their images of their own success or failure on these assumptions. Although girls in school now can speak clearly about the need for equality and their own ability to find and maintain a job, many still act on the belief that their main goal is to get married. Television and magazine ads tell them that a woman without a man is a person without a purpose, and that to attract man they must be thin, well-dressed, made-up and sexy. Another issue that is starting to be addressed in education is the belief that boys cannot sew and cook, and girls cannot do well in science and mathematics. The institutionalized gender bias in the first subject is being addressed largely through its disappearance from the curriculum. But science and mathematics are the subjects that many business and "back to basics" interests are calling for added attention to. If these subjects are the symbols of the success of our schools, then girls need to overcome the images of themselves as unintelligent or of these subjects as unimportant to them. Changes are beginning to occur in the images we see of each other, and this involves a new perspective of not just how we look but how we see. Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth that, "Though women can give this new perspective to one another, men's participation in overturning the myth is welcome. Some men, certainly, have used the beauty myth abusively against women, the way some men use their fists; but there is a strong consciousness among both sexes that the real agents enforcing the myth today are not men as individual lovers or husbands, but institutions that depend on male dominance. Both sexes seem to be finding that the full force of the myth derives little from private sexual relations, and much from the cultural and economic megalith 'out there' in the public realm. Increasingly, both sexes know they are being cheated" (2). In the meantime, we as educators must raise the conscious critical viewing skills of students to lessen the impact and control of the visual images they see. By pointing out the inequities, unrealistic expectations, senseless pressure and inherent biases of these images, teachers and instructors can continue and perhaps speed up the slow process of change in the portrayal of women. The question is: when do we have the time? Schools are supposed to teach children to be successful in the world. Perhaps our concept of that success needs to change to incorporate the 'new' curriculum of acceptance, equality, understanding and respect. Debra Attenborough is Curator of Education at Rodman Hall Arts Centre in St. Catharines, Onto and is an instructor in Visual Arts and Women's Studies at Brock University. Dorte Deans is a visual arts teacher for the Hamilton Board of Education and is the author of In the Mind's Eye (1992) a textbook for media literacy.
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