Nov3
Sep22
Assignment #5: Media vs. Self Image
Research suggests that the average person sees 500 advertisements a day. Most of those advertisements are for products that are “guaranteed” to make you just like the person in the ad. That beautiful girl in the ad? That ‘hot’ guy on the screen? They are just like the people they are targeting, but they have the power of photoshop behind them. 99% of the things that we see coming from the media are not real.
I think that everyone (and I am guilty, too) gets caught up in the whirlwind that is the media portrayal of the human body. Teenage girls are supposed to be thin, tan, tall and beautiful. Teenage boys are supposed to be tall, tan, and muscular. When you have a bar set that high, you wind up with statistics like: 35% of preteen (age 6-12) girls have been on at least one diet, the number of eating disorders has risen 400% since 1970, 4 out of 5 ten year olds are scared of being overweight….. Does that strike anyone else as wrong?
The ultimate object of the companies that produce the destructive ads is money. If a girl thinks she is fat, she buys diet pills. If a boy needs giant muscles to impress that girl he likes, he is going to turn to steroids. If a woman believes that her eyes aren’t pretty enough, or that her freckles are ugly, she is going to buy makeup to hide it.
But what if that girl was assured that she was beautiful? What if that boy believed that muscles weren’t what made him special? What if that women knew she didn’t need to cover it all up? Wouldn’t that be something?
Aug31
My Word Project: -hood
This is the photostory I made about the suffix ‘hood’…. 
Aug10
Racism?
The ‘sorting people’ exercise was much harder than I expected. Out of 20 different photos, I only identified 7 correctly. That’s not very good, and not what I was expecting.
Most people assume that it’s pretty easy to just look at someone, and lump them into a certain category. For the purpose of the United States, there are only several categories, but if you wanted to be accurate, you would have to have hundreds of categories. Most people have multiple ethnicities that they claim, and it’s nearly impossible to guess what all of the may be by just looking at someone.
I was surprised by my score, but after seeing everyone else’s, it is pretty obvious that everyone did the same thing. We all used stereotypical views to categorize the people…. That’s pretty interesting.
At the end of the exercise, all of the photographs had a little information blurb that told the correct race of the person, and a quote from them. Most of the quotes said that people usually guessed their race as something off-the-wall and totally wrong. They also said that people assumed their race and then made assumptions about their character and life. I like to think that I don’t do that, but unfortunately, I think I have. I’m pretty sure everyone has, even if it was subconcious.
I think that sorting people in general is a little unnessesary. Do we really HAVE to know what race you are? Nope, not really.
Aug8
Contemporary Novel – Next
I chose to read Next by Michael Crichton as my contemporary novel. I thought it was a very good book, and it definitely kept me on my toes while reading it.
The basis of the story is genetic testing and experiments. There are many main characters: including Dr. Bellarmino, (the corrupt ‘Christian’ doctor), Rick Diehl (the founder of BioGen, a major genetic company), Jack Watson (the powerful investor in BioGen who wants control of it), Frank and Alex Burnet (involved in a lawsuit against BioGen and also the target of a bounty hunter later in the story), Marty Roberts (the corrupt Coroner involved in illegal sales of human body parts ), Gerard (the transgenic African Grey parrot who is sent around the world and left on his own), Henry Kendall (the father who gets his entire family involved in old genetic research that is dragged up when he is informed of a terrible secret), and Josh Winkler (the lab technician who finds himself in deep trouble when he misuses the drugs he is testing).
This book is very confusing at first, due to the amount of characters and the constant switching of stories. However, it was extremely intersting, and it really makes you think about developments and the future of genetics while you read a very suspenseful story.
May20
First post
I think that making a blog is a great way to express yourself, and I’m pretty excited about using one. It’s a little confusing, but maybe I’ll figure it out. I’ve never used one for a class before, and it’s a neat idea. The only problem I have is time. I have barely enough time to read the books assigned and answer the questions/write the essay that goes along with it, without having to write in a blog during the summer break. Half of my summer I won’t even have Internet access, so a blog isn’t ideal. Granted, writing in the blog isn’t required… but I still think writing in a blog is a good idea if I had more time to do so. Well, I’m a blogger now…
