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Part II: Speed
Article2
How Barbie Affects Career Ambitions
[Time 2]
Among the things to hate about Barbie is that she's styled such that no woman could ever have her proportions and remain bipedal. Many say she's too thin, too made-up, and too passive-looking to be a role model for the modern girl. (Barbie's response, of course, is #unapologetic.)
There's already evidence that Barbie affects girls' body image. But through her many iterations, Barbie has now been a paleontologist, a pilot, and a Marine. With options like those, surely she doesn't cause any lasting damage to girls' career aspirations? ... Right? Right? A duo of researchers at Oregon State University hypothesized that playing with sexualized dolls not only hurts self-esteem, it influences the way young girls think about their adult lives. Past research in the U.K. has shown that nearly a third of female teenagers want to be models, while only 4 percent wanted to be engineers. Adolescent girls, it seems, are drawn to careers based on appearance, not knowledge. Is Barbie the one steering young girls away from the Python code and toward the catwalk? For the study, published in the journal Sex Roles, 37 girls between the ages of 4 and 7 were randomly assigned to play with one of three dolls: a typical Barbie doll wearing a fancy party dress; a "career" Barbie, decked in her career-ready lab coat, stethoscope, and "low-heeled shoes" (look out world!); or a Mrs. Potato Head doll, who comes adorned with chunky high heels and hot-pink purse, but otherwise has the countenance of a tuber, like her husband.
Regular Barbie (left); "Doctor" Barbie (left); Mrs. Potato Head (right). (Sex Roles) On average, the girls had 3.89 Barbie dolls at home. Because, you know, sometimes you cut their hair, or you accidentally amputate their toes in tragic accidents involving the "can-opener-is-a-pony" game. [286 words]
[Time 3]
Aurora Sherman, an associate professor in the School of Psychological Science at OSU, told me that Mrs. Potato Head was selected because "I wanted to have a control group that would keep the femaleness in tact," but wasn't as sexy. And "In terms of finding a doll that's remotely the same size as Barbie and is not sexualized, you would be hard-pressed to do that." Indeed, though she is similarly tawny, female, and supple, not even the most confused child could mistake Mrs. Head with the teetering, quixotically statured Barbie. Not even if they were both wearing lab coats. Not even in Lena Dunham's America. The children played with their respective toys for five minutes. Then they were presented with photos of 11 male- and female-dominated professions, so appointed according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The female dominated occupations were teacher, librarian, day care worker, flight attendant, and nurse. The male dominated occupations included construction worker, firefighter, pilot, doctor, and police officer. The neutral occupation was a server in a restaurant. The girls were then asked, “Could you do this job when you grow up?” and "Could a boy do this job when he grows up?" Depressingly, all of the girls thought a boy would more likely be able to do more of both the male- and female jobs:
But the girls who played with the Mrs. Potato Head doll thought they could do more of both kinds of jobs than the girls who played with either kind of Barbie. And the "Doctor Barbie," they found, did not yield better results than "Standard Barbie."
The paper has a few limitations: The sample size was small, as was the effect size. Still, it's ... icky. Why does a plastic spud make your daughter more likely to think she can be a scientist than an actual scientist doll does? [310 words]
[Time 4]
Maybe there's something toil-oriented about the potato; handling it might have put the girls in the mindset of an industrious young Komsomol, dutifully tilling the fields of Dzerzhinsk. Or, the researchers speculated, "perhaps five minutes of play is not enough to allow the accessories and story of the Doctor Barbie to take effect." (First, driving my pink Porsche to my dream house; then, getting engaged to Ken; next, my gerontology rotation...) "Perhaps Barbie can 'Be Anything,' but girls who play with her may not apply these possibilities to themselves."Women have been shown to perform worse on math tests when they wear swimsuits rather than sweaters. Barbie, then, might act like a perpetual swimsuit for the brain.
"Barbie may be one way that ideas about a girls' place in the world is communicated to the girl," Sherman said. The journal article wryly concludes, "Perhaps Barbie can 'Be Anything,' but girls who play with her may not apply these possibilities to themselves." Possibly, but that could be too much of a leap. Maybe a six-year-old who gets the chance to play with a pretty, new doll doesn't exactly have firefighting on the brain for the next few hours. And obviously, even after their Barbie years are over, the girls are sure to encounter other demoralizing influences. It's worth remembering, though, that Barbie has been remade before. In 1971, her eyes were changed to face forward, rather than to be perpetually glancing sideways demurely. Mattel has defended Barbie's look by saying that her proportions make her easier to dress in miniature doll garments. But it could be that those clothes, even when they're sciencey and professional, aren't quite doing their job. [278 words]
Source :The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/how-barbie-affects-career-ambitions/284411/
Article3
How to Adapt to American-Style Self-Promotion
[warm up]
Imagine you’re at a networking event in the United States and you hear your colleague make the following statement to a potential employer:
“… I’d be very interested in learning more about your company to see if there might be a fit for me. Before doing my MBA, I worked at Bain Consulting and then prior to that was an officer in the army…” Understanding that this is only a portion of the conversation, how would you judge what you happened to hear? As: (a) Too self-promotional: the person is speaking too positively about himself for the situation. (b) Not self-promotional enough: should give more details at this point in the conversation about specific accomplishments at Bain (such as projects completed or impact on clients) as well as additional information about military service. (c) Just about right: This is self-promotional, but the context allows it and the person is providing appropriate and relevant information to position himself in a positive light. [168 words]
[Time 5]
Typically, most Americans choose option C. Sure, it’s a bit self-promotional, but this is taking place at a networking event, so the potential employer is probably expecting comments like this. What’s interesting, however, is the reaction Andy often gets from his foreign-born MBA students about the same scenario. To many of them, the language feels overly self-promotional — like the person is really boasting about himself in an inappropriate manner. And this points to a thorny cross-cultural challenge many foreign-born professionals face here in the United States, especially when networking or interviewing: the challenges of American-style self-promotion. It’s hard to quantify, but we believe the United States is the most overtly self-promotional country in the world. Certainly there is variance among cities, regions, industries, and especially individuals. But overall, American professionals are often quite comfortable promoting themselves, especially in a business environment — and that behavior is actively encouraged as a sign of competence and self-confidence. That’s simply not true in most other countries and cultures, from East Asia to Latin America to most of Europe. Even in the United Kingdom, where we share a language, Andy’s research has revealed that overt, American-style self-promotion is taboo. But here’s the challenge: Many young professionals strive to find work and progress up the organizational ladder here in the United States. And to do that, they need to learn to self-promote. In interviews and at networking events, they need to emphasize what they themselves have achieved and accomplished (opposed to emphasizing only what the “team” has accomplished). And when on the job, they need to self-promote to a certain degree, to establish a reputation as someone who can add value and contribute to the bottom line. So how can young, foreign-born professionals learn to act outside their personal and cultural comfort zones to promote themselves and their accomplishments? [319 words]
[Time 6]
First, as we discussed in our previous post, “Self-Promotion for Professionals from Countries Where Bragging Is Bad,” it’s important to reframe your concept of personal branding. If you think of it as phony show-boating, you’re never going to want to even attempt it, which means you’re missing out on the professional benefits of being recognized by others. Instead, focus on the big picture — such as making a difference and helping your company — and you’re far more likely to want to make an honest effort. Next, make sure you understand the actual level of self-promotion that’s acceptable and appropriate for the specific situation you find yourself in. Because many foreign-born professionals are so shocked by American levels of self-promotion, they often overestimate how much is being done. The danger is that when they dive in and attempt it themselves, they risk overcompensating. What they miss is that there is a zone of appropriateness and acceptability for self-promotion, even in American culture, and that when you go outside the zone, you’ll be seen as arrogant and boastful. So make sure you recognize the “zone of appropriateness.” It’s also critical to learn your own “personal comfort zone”with respect to these rules. How much of a gap is there, for example, between how you’d naturally and comfortably act in a given situation and how you need to act to be effective? And if there is a gap, as there is with so many foreign-born students and professionals we work with, you will need to develop a strategy for bridging this gap. Perhaps you can create rules of thumb to follow in certain situations. For instance, if you meet someone at a networking event and they ask a question about how you’re spending your time, you can be sure to mention your involvement in your alumni group — which simultaneously shows that you’re an active and engaged professional, and highlights your affiliation to a top-tier school. And at a very basic level, don’t be caught flat-footed when someone asks, “What have you been up to lately?” Be sure to have a good answer ready, so you can demonstrate your expertise. Finally, find yourself a cultural mentor who is familiar with how self-promotion works in the US and, ideally, who can also empathize with the challenges that you face as an outsider to this culture. Good cross-cultural mentors are worth their weight in gold. They can help you master the new culture code, identify your own personal comfort zone, diagnose the gap you experience between how you need to act and how you’d typically act, and then help you strategize solutions. In no time, with these pieces in place, you’ll be able to self-promote in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re losing yourself in the process. [504 words]
Source : HBR
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/how-to-adapt-to-american-style-self-promotion/
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发表于 2014-4-30 22:46:27
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