Welcome To Comics101Edu!!!!!!!!!!  This site is intended to be an introduction into the world of comic books as seen through the eyes of Nancy Lesko, whose book Act Your Age!: A Cultural Construction of Adolescence asks that people examine the ways in which cultural influences affect perceptions of young people. Using this text as a primary source this website will introduce some ways of viewing comic book culture as it applies to the construction, perception and social function of adolescence. In order to fully appreciate the following website it is important that some things are understood regarding Lesko’s claim that adolescence is a social construction, so please read the introduction below before continuing on to the other parts of this site. Once you are familiar with some of the ideas below any part of this site should make sense as a stand alone discussion, therefore, there is no specific order in which to view this site once you have read the introduction below. I hope that you—whoever you may be—enjoy my site!  A Brief Introduction to Act Your Age! by Nancy Lesko Lesko’s central argument in Act Your Age! is that the social age of pre-adulthood—commonly called adolescence—is something that has been constructed by society and is not an inherent and unavoidable fact of growing up. She shows, through in depth analysis of too many factors to list here, that social factors required that adolescence be constructed as a means of controlling the youth of the United States to ensure that they become profitable members of society and not a “…[threat to] the further evolution of the race and…material growth of the nation” (LESKO pg 56). The worry was that as times changed—the construction began in the late nineteenth century—the nation’s youth would face greater and greater challenges that could derail them from having productive adult lives. Thus, the category of adolescence was created to stall adulthood and give adults a more commanding presence in observing young people and a greater degree of control over their lives. Lesko spends much of her book discussing how adolescence has come to be seen as a natural evolution towards adulthood and how this common interpretation impacts young people in the adolescent category. Of the many arguments she makes those with the greatest bearing to this website are her ideas concerning the unnatural prolonging of boyhood (LESKO pg 63), advancing toward adulthood on schedule (LESKO pg 64) and age standards (LESKO pg 121). Lesko argues that boyhood—and eventually girlhood as well (once girls were seen as equal enough to be considered)—was being forcefully prolonged so that young people were made to remain children for longer than they had in previous generations. Advancing toward adulthood and age standards are interrelated as the both deal with the “proper” speed at which children should be advancing towards becoming adults. The difference between the two is that “advancing toward adulthood” provides a pace at which all adolescents are expected to mature whereas “age standards” provide benchmarks as reference of how mature a child should be and when.Having this brief summarization should increase the readability of the following pages but to truly grasp the arguments made by Lesko and by this website it is recommended that you read Act Your Age! The "Seduction of the Innocent" The CCA and the Panoptical Gaze Fanboys Possible Future Topics and My (Current) Thoughts Regarding Them Some Good Reads Bibliography |