Sergetalks Blog ~ The Official Blog of Serge LeClerc

As we looked at the mind meld by the alcohol industry via the media advertisements aim at young people to pick out a brand of beer or alcohol before they are old enough to drink, you must remember to juxtaposition this effort to the reality of the developmental life cycle and the creation of identity – and its importance for this age group. When you do, then the reasons that young people gave for drinking – and for being the heaviest drinking group of young people in our country’s history – give insight to the absolute effectiveness of the campaign by the alcohol industry.

Young men, before the legal age of being able to drink, gave as their number one reason for drinking; that when they got to a party where their friends were at that they didn’t want their friends to think they were a ‘geek’ or a ‘wimp’ – ‘not cool’. I want you think of it this way – young men on the way to manhood, gave as the number one reason that they drink something that taste like ‘horse-pee’ was so that their friends didn’t think they were ‘unmanly’ ……wonder where they got the idea that not drinking was unmanly? And the number one reason that girls gave; well it really was more like two reasons – 87% of teenage girls who drank below the legal age limit to drink said that they drank because their boy friend drank and 83% of the girls who said they didn’t drink had a boy friend who didn’t drink – and for the girls that drank – the highest number of teenage girls who drink in the history of North America – all below the legal age of drinking – they said that they did so because they were unsure of themselves; weren’t sure whether they were outgoing enough, pretty enough, smart enough ….. and that they needed a few drinks to let their real selves come out! (more…)

We ended the last blog entry speaking to the ‘mind meld’ used by advertisers on a major target market – our teens and pre-teens – one which has the highest amount of ‘disposable’ income in our society today. A target market which represents billions of dollars to the retail market – and they fully know it. I spoke to the issue of sexual imagery used to sell products such as clothing and cosmetics – and the resulting number one medical problem for girls of today being eating disorders. I will now expand on the further damage caused by the media and the churning wheel of damage for profit caused by advertising industry in partnership with the media juggernaut – in the current social milieu of moral and ethical “uncertainty” founded by and implemented by the Me-ism generation. (more…)

In my last chapter of my blog, I was speaking to the destructive influence of media, advertisements and violence, upon our teenagers. Let me explain how it is done.

Allow me to bring you back to a yesteryear – in your own life of growth and development. Let me fellows bring you to the Saturday evening bath, when after the water turned cold and you emerged wrinkled as a prune, you wiped the steam from the mirror to review yourself and your body from the previous week. And at the grand age of 13 years, you would stand there and bring your arms up in a pose, then flex those mighty biceps and upon close review, wonder when they would actually begin to grow larger than your sister’s? You would turn this way and that, looking closely at your upper lip to see if anything had sprouted during the previous week, check underneath your armpits for any growth, and check whether any pubic hairs had erupted in the movement towards manhood. You wondered whether your thighs would ever become larger than your knees. More importantly, you wondered as young boys do when one begins to move towards the next phase of developmental life cycle, whether you were smart enough, handsome enough, and manly enough – whether girls would like you, find you attractive, would you fit in with the other guys and would they find you cool. Would you be popular and successful…..would you be happy. (more…)