i thought this week's class was pretty eye-opening. i've never really thought advertising had much effect (affect? i need to find my stylebook) on me. in high school, i did feel pressure to dress and look a certain way, but that was more peer driven, not advertising. i wanted to wear the cool clothes, and have my hair a certain way, and i looked to the cool girls to figure out how to do it.

but during class, i realized that while advertising hasn't had much pull on me, another form of media has. television. and not commercials, the actual shows. i was a pretty shy kid (still am, actually), and i looked to tv for role models. i aspired to be these outgoing, sassy, super confident girls like buffy summers, rory gilmore and joey potter. but even then, it wasn't completely looks based. i admired their strength, wit and intelligence. (and how they all got their boys using those things.) even in elementary school, i wanted to be like topanga from boy meets world, because she was smart and funny. (and had really fabulous hair.)

when talking about a solution to the image problem, i sadly don't think there is one. the fashion industry is a huge influence on advertising (especially fashion/womens magazines) and the fashion industry is rock solid in it's beliefs. they might have starting the whole "minimum weight for runway models," but i think that's mostly to save face with the general public. fashion is a manipulative, deceptive industry, and they pride themselves on their inclusiveness.

i did have a problem with the way some people were talking about the little girls in the single ladies video. i heard someone say that they were "trashy" and someone else said "skanky" and i hate that those words were used towards 7 and 8 year old girls. i am a dance teacher, and have lots of girls who compete (like the girls in the video), so i feel like i have a different perspective than most people in our class.

these girls did the choreography they were given, and did it flawlessly. now, i don't think the choreography was appropriate at all, but you can not fault the girls for that. i actually think the costume was more scandalous than the dance, i don't know who in the world thought it was a good idea to put thigh-highs on a 7 year old. i just wish that people would watch what they say about these girls, because they have very little control over what they do. it's the adults (parents, teachers) who showed poor judgement, and who should take the fault.

jon stewart explains journalism to MSNBC

this doesn't really cover the race/gender section of the class, but it does hit on the "media" part of the class, and it's a fun video.

this is from thursday's episode of the daily show. it's a wonderful example of the silliness of the 24 hour news channels and how they pick and choose what they think is "news". i took democracy and democratization as one of my poly sci classes last semester, and we could write about any topic relating to democracy. i chose to write about the evolution of tv news and how it effects democracy, and it really opened my eyes to how crazy and biased all the cable news networks are.

(the part about the 24 hr news channels starts around 4:00 minutes in, but the whole thing is pretty much magical. )

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there were lots of things said during class last night that i disagreed with. maybe it's because i'm pretty easy going, and don't get offended easily, but i thought some of the reactions were pretty extreme.

first off, the thing that did offend me happened at the beginning of class, when talking about the mizzo magazine. when we were comparing the pictures of the girls to the football player, there was comment made to the effect of "well, the football players are ATHLETES, and the girls aren't." i've been a dancer since i was 4, and dancers are athletes just as much as football players are. college dancers do stand on the sidelines and look pretty and cheer during the games, but most of them also compete nationally.

this is university of tenneesse, who was been in the top 5 at UDA nationals for years. they are a wonderful example of the athleticism needed for college dance.

i really enjoyed the vanity fair article.

i didn't have as many problems with it as some of the other people in our class did. i was kind of shocked by the reactions to the photos that went

along with the article. they were a little bit on the sexy side, but you would've thought they had them in pasties and a thong laying spread eagle on the table based on the way people in class were talking about them.

i think a lot of people were forgetting the source. this was an article for vanity fair, which is a fashion and culture/society magazine. this is also the magazine that had miley cyrus in a bedsheet with smeared lipstick on the cover. (that one i did have problems with, especially since she was 15 when the photos were taken.)

they have a definate, somewhat edgy style for their photography, and the ones in the queen b article fit right in.

overall, i do think there are very specific gender stereotypes in the media, but i think it will be hard for them to be broken. i do think the way you are raised has a lot to do with how susceptible you are to the media. my parents were wonderful, and always pushed for me to get an education, and i could be whatever i wanted to be.

i thought class on thursday was interesting. (interesting is one of my most overused words. i'm going to apologize in advance for overuse.) i had never given much thought to the youtube video we watched in class. i'd seen it before, and i thought it was funny, but the fact that it was playing into racist stereotypes had never crossed my mind. i do think our media plays into racial stereotypes, and uses them too often for jokes, or in place of character development.

right now i'm watching friday night lights season 1 on dvd. a new quarterback has been brought who's been displaced from katrina. but his development never really goes past "angry black guy" and he is just brought in to create trouble. friday night light tends to be really good about stereotyping it's characters though.

i was surprised no one had brought up the whole dr. laura incident that happened a few weeks ago, but i guess that was more about racial slurs, not sterotyping. but that is the most significant event that i could think of that would relate back to class.