The day after seeing the first TV commercial for the December holiday gift potlatch seems like an appropriate time to consider the point at which the celebration of Halloween transformed from a secular celebration of a religious holiday to a major factor in the infantilization of American culture. Infantilization occurs when adults continue to act […]
Nowadays adults collect My Little Pony dolls and play with Legos. They read Harry Potter and comic books. They go on sleepovers at museums and down Gummi Bear vitamins. It’s called adult infantilization, adults maintaining hobbies and interests that are created specifically for children and which are relatively uncomplicated and unsophisticated compared to adult experiences. […]
I was dismayed to learn that a new study published by JAMA Dermatology, a respected scholarly publication, finds that 62% of a representative sampling of 3,316 American women said they completely remove their pubic hair. I was also shocked, as in my decades as a heterosexual adult male, I never encountered a shaved vagina. (I […]
It’s Saturday night. The kids are in bed and their early-thirties parents are finally alone. She slips into a negligee while he opens a bottle of wine. She turns off the lights and waits for him on the sofa by the soft flickering light of a few candles. He programs some smooth jazz into the […]
Read More… from Kellogg’s adds to infantilization of American adults with Fruit Loops TV spot
The American news media may finally be starting to cover a trend that they helped to create—the infantilization of American adults. The infantilized adult continues the pursuits, hobbies, predilections, opinions and thought processes of youth instead of growing into mature, adult pursuits and activities. Reading Harry Potter and comic books, playing with Legos or My […]
The title of Alexandra Alter’s Wall Street Journal article on adults reading fiction written for middle-schoolers describes the situation perfectly. “See Grown-ups Read. Read, Grown-ups, Read” suggests not middle school, but an elementary school reading level. Alter’s story describes one of the many ways that our mass culture is infantilizing adults, turning them into oversized […]
My generation read comic books growing up: Superman, Batman and their various ancillary Supers and Bats. Green Lantern and Green Hornet, Archie and Jughead. And then most of us stopped at about 12 or 13, and moved on to other literature. In those days, any movie based on a comic book was a Sunday serial […]
Read More… from Movies from comic books are one more sign of the infantilization of American adults
A number of times over the past few years I have made derogatory references to video or electronic games, always as substantiation of my theory that our mass culture encourages adults to hold onto childish entertainments and habits. But I was only partially right about computer games. As it turns out, only certain types of […]
After signing off yesterday, I realized that I forgot to mention one of the most subtle forms of infantilization of American adults, one that has led to the current deep recession (which I won’t believe is over until there is some job growth). It’s the “buy now, pay later” mentality that makes people use high-interest […]
Read More… from Buy now, pay later turns infantilization into debt slavery.
Paul Sheldon pointed out to me a recent op/ed piece published in the New York Times by an Oregon high school senior, who tells of the many times in visiting college campuses that she heard the tour guide compare some aspect of the school to Hogwarts, which I understand is the imaginary school for apprentice […]
Read More… from The infantilization of the U.S.: more adults are behaving like children today.