Society has made an historical flip-flop in two paired values we hold about teenaged girls, especially aged 12-16. In the old days, there was little wrong with a 32 year old man courting a 14 or 16 year old girl. As a citizen of the 21st century, I personally find it both distasteful and weird, […]
As part of his glorification and ascent to the Valhalla of dead celebrities, Hugh Hefner has received far too much credit for the positive impact he had on American society and far too little condemnation for the negative. True, he advocated for abortion and took other liberal and progressive stands, typically from the standpoint of […]
While OpEdge is on a two-week hiatus, we are running some of the more evergreen columns from past years. This blog entry originally appeared on May 13, 2013. Adults read the New York Times. While the Times does not release readership demographics segmented by age, it lets potential advertisers know that the median age of […]
The latest marketer to cash in on the trend of adults wanting to remain children is a museum. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), that venerable icon to the natural sciences, is now offering special sleepover parties—for adults only. That’s right, for a mere $375 a person ($325 for members), you can snuggle up […]
With “22 Jump Street” one of the most popular movies of the summer, it is instructive to remember how the two bros of this cop bromance met in “21 Jump Street,” the first of the Jump movies. The Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum characters knew each other in high school, but only as acquaintances. Seven […]
For 30 years, children, primarily girls before their teen years, have played with plastic dolls called My Little Pony. The first My Little Pony hit the toy stores in 1983 as a single doll. Now manufacturer Hasbro sells dozens of models, each with its own name and distinct look; plus My Little Pony doll houses, […]
Everywhere we turn nowadays we see mass culture infantilizing adults. Here are some other examples of infantilization of American adults, by which I mean adults in late 20th century and early 21st century America behaving like children and enjoying the entertainments of their childhood: Disney’s EPCOT Center, a theme park for adults, opened in 1982 […]
Adults read the New York Times. While the Times does not release readership demographics segmented by age, it lets potential advertisers know that the median age of its readers is 52, meaning that exactly half of all readers are older than 52. By the way, that’s about 15 years older than the U.S. median age […]
Read More… from Oreos decides that a “Sesame Street” approach will sell cookies to adults
Now that “The Big Bang Theory” has moved ahead of “Two and a Half Men” into second place among non-football related television shows, I think it’s time to critique what may be the most ideologically-driven entertainment on TV today. In its premise, its characters, its jokes and its plot lines, “The Big Bang Theory” constantly […]
The death of Steve Jobs led to a tidal wave of sympathetic news coverage. Jobs the entrepreneur. Jobs the visionary. Jobs the entertainer. Jobs the philanthropist. Jobs the college dropout who showed those pointy heads that college isn’t needed (while creating thousands of jobs for the college educated and virtually none for anyone else). Jobs […]