Boyhood: It’s Complicated, Too
Girlhood: It’s Complicated is an exhibition currently on display at the Minnesota History Center through June 1, 2025.
Created by the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, it is supported by a program of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
This just in: It turns out the luxurious period of youth— or 18 years modern society has set aside to allow young people time to grow & mature into responsible adults— is fraught with high-stakes events upon which the fortune of their lives can turn. What’s most troublesome about these events is how they can be disguised as opportunities for fun, while simultaneously standing to make things very complicated for girls and boys alike.
A case in point is offered by an educational video titled How Much Affection? at the exhibit titled Girlhood: It’s Complicated at the Minnesota History Center.
In a 2 1/2 minute 1957 video vignette, a mother helps her daughter sort out issues of progessing intimacy in a relationship she has with a young man:
“First, well it all seems quite a lark. You like someone, he likes you. Everything is fun and affection,” she observes.
But then, one’s reason lapses, and “those fine thoughts of love and affection can get suddenly twisted,” the mother continues.
When the daughter perplexedly inquires about the appropriateness of feeling warm and affectionate toward someone she really likes, the mother responds it isn’t wrong since such feelings can be the foundation upon which a happy marriage can be built.
”But,” the mother replies, “if these strong feelings lead you into behaving unwisely, the outcome can be guilt and frustration. And these are the things that can spoil your chance of finding the very love that you’re looking for.”
The mother-daughter dialogue concludes with the mom advising her daughter to use “judgment” and to find a way “to make emotions work for you and not against you.”
Impaired Judgment of Problem Video Gamers
As the incidence of video-gaming problems contained in other posts & pages of this site suggest, romantic relationships are not the only life activity where people can have trouble with their emotions working against— not for— them.
The gamut of examples in which violent video gamers let their emotions get the best of them runs wide: from the problem gamer caught in a “compulsion loop” that brings them to neglect relationships & responsibilities to the desensitized & severely addicted gamer capable of causing bodily harm to loved ones or people in their community.
In addition to being the basis for a gamer’s caving to emotion, piqued gaming passion can seal off good judgment like any other drug or mind-altering substance.
All too frequently, a “win at all costs” mentality takes shape in the gamer’s mind that sees an abandonment of morals— like lying, hacking or theft on the ordinary end— to ill gotten gain (in support of the gaming habit), verbal abuse, comorbid drug use and threats or acts of bodily harm on the other end.
(To be continued)