Annette.
Psychologists posit something called the “cognitive schema.” It’s a mental framework, a scaffolding, that
we use for organizing our experiences and observations. The framework, of course, forms in infancy,
and new input is added to it throughout our lives. If it doesn’t fit into the schema, we tend to
discard it.
Annette.
We construct cognitive schema about people, events, roles,
and even ourselves—they enable us to evaluate what’s happened and to predict
what comes next. They help us apply our
values and to judge others’, and they make sense of the vast, chaotic mess of
daily life.
Annette.
Behavioral scripts are learned through organizational
socialization and on the job experience
According to Charles T. Schmidt of the University of Rhode Island, one
of the ways we build this schema is to learns from “stories, myths, films,
movies, conversations, role models.”
They even play a part in romance:
we tend to fall in love with the people who most closely match our
cognitive schema for the “perfect” mate.
I built a huge chunk of mine from television. And, as my schema of the ideal woman began to
take shape, she looked and acted increasingly like one TV personality.
Annette. Annette
Funicello.
I was seven. She was
twelve when the Mickey Mouse Club
debuted in 1955. Of course, millions of
male baby boomers were around the same age, too, and subsequent experience
tells me that many, if not most, of use developed a huge first crush on
Annette. She was the tallest of the
Mouseketers and arguably the most
talented—a singer, a dancer, an outgoing extrovert. Dark black hair, round face, ebullient
personality and full of charm, she was the embodiment of the nascent bobby
soxer of the ‘50s, and she even wore a rather tight turtleneck sweater as she
grew and, um, developed.
And then, in the ‘60s, as I hit puberty, she hit the
beach. At first, Walt Disney insisted
that she wear a demure, one-piece bathing suit for her “Beach Party” movies
with Frankie Avalon, but she eventually donned a two-piece—still demure and
modest, but a harbinger of the rebellions of the 1960s. She exuded joy, good cheer, and the kind of
innocent purity that the 1950s demanded of female role models. And she held onto the complete image even
after so many of use rejected it.
Then came the stunning part: this avatar of energy and good, clean health
had Multiple Sclerosis, the same disease my own mother had battled for over two
decades and which finally killed her. She
faced it with dignity and courage, speaking publicly about her affliction,
establishing a foundation to research neurological diseases, and providing a
very different role model to both women and
men.
Annette. Like Ricky Nelson and Beaver Cleaver, she
grew up on screens—and gave us a powerful framework to guide our own
adolescence.
A ten-minute documentary about her life can be seen
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_hCCcCbY34
