Last Day

So today is our last day of class and I hope I have enough blogs. I also hope I can learn to attach files to blogs. Eeeeck! This semester has really opened my eyes to advertising and media. I am a women's studies minor and was faintly aware of the negative depictions, but being an advertising major kept me on media's side. I am graduating this month so these topics will be fresh on my in when I go out into the real world. I will try and do my part to keep advertising fair and respectful for all people. Thank you for this semester.

HH

African American good or bad?

While I watched the video in class of the black children choosing the dolls, I couldn't help but start to wonder where they were getting those kind of ideas at such a young age. I know, even at 3, that avoiding the media is impossible, but I work at a day care and know that my children do not watch TV other than children's shows. I have also noticed that children's shows are non-discriminating and always have an equal racial balance. Based on that observation, I can only assume that children such young ages are getting the ideas of black being bad from their parents. Of course, I cannot say this with 100% certainty cause I did not grow up in an African American home, but I do not find this to be so far fetched. I am not saying they are doing it intentionally but as we all know, children hear everything. If their parents or older siblings speak badly about their own race then what are the young ones eft to think. It is simply a matter of rising above the facade of racism. I know somewhere out there someone would discriminate against me, for the reason of my being white, or part indian or a female, but I believe in myself and rise above the thought. I agree with "Bamboozled" in this, RISE ABOVE and get over it.

HH

Sitcom Families

Today you mentioned again the funny trend that is the sitcom family. I can remember my father about a year ago saying, "Now that is ridiculous that woman would never be with that man. He is fat and stupid and she's gorgeous!" Touche papa! I can only assume and hope that sitcom writers are pushing the idea that TV is a showing of a false life. If I chose to take it personally then oh no! If the hot women get the stupid, fat ugly guys, where does that leave me?! You see, I have no choice but to stress to myself and others that yes, TV and advertisements have no reality to them. We need to rise above them.

HH

Khasi Matriliny

Post for 11/30/07
The Khasi article stated that the women have the upper hand in their society. I think that if the women did not have the land or were able to keep their family name, then they would have no monetary/concrete value at all. All they would have would be their duties to their parents, their home, children, husband etc. I am not surprised though to read that the men want to take it away.

It seems odd to our culture, this situation. But I cannot decide what would be best for their culture. I believe that both men and women should have equal opportunity to own land, have careers and raise their own children. If only there were a way for each family to choose their type of life, Khasi or not and have legal documentations to back up any legal issues.

HH

Hollywood Asians

Post for 11/23/07
I was looking at three different brochures today and noticed that each version displayed a person of a different race, all but Native Americans. It got me thinking that I rarely even see Asians on the covers of anything, much less on television. So, it was interesting for me to read this article in the same day. I am a huge fan of Sandra Oh, and am so happy to see her succeeding, but I am sad to think that none other of my favorite actresses are Asian, that may only be because there are so few. When I watch TV I see people not colors, just like when I am walking down the street. I don't see why Hollywood producers do not want Asians to have a larger role on screen. It doesn't make sense to me.
I also love to watch Heroes which shows people of all races and languages. I only find it to be more entertaining and even try to repeat some of the words; who knows maybe I can impress someone one day by knowing how to say "cool" in Japanese. I hope something can be done about this sad lack of culture and race acceptance on TV.

HH

Music Video Censorship

Post for 11/16/07
I am relieved to hear about someone doing something about the disturbing visual images found in rap videos today. I am even more pleased to learn that the people demanding it are African Americans. My opinion on music videos has changed over the past few weeks due to my class project. I am not a fan of BET or really any show that plays music videos, but for my project my group chose to observe them. I watched 10 videos and only found the rap ones to be bothersome. I can imagine the outrage the white community would have if the majority of practically naked girls dancing on TV would have if those girls were white. I am a firm believer in not whining but doing something about your situation and that seems to be what the protesters were doing. Congrats to them!

HH

To-Do List

For 11/9/07
I watched the video for to-do lists. I think that women stole another one of my famously ingenious ideas! I could have written that book and made lots of money...but I did not. I make to-do lists everyday it seems. I have grocery lists, task lists, chore lists. And among those they vary from food to clothing, people and what I need to say to them. Lists after list. Another list I am fond of is the things to say to someone in a confrontation list. a big red star next to something I find particularly witty. The most interesting thing about lists is the insight into someone's world and mind. Lists are just as fun to read as a lost and found letter. The things that are the most private are always the most entertaining. That's why we have reality TV. I can learn something from this video in terms of research. To get the best research you need as many examples as possible. The woman did that.

HH

P.S. As it turns out the to-do list video was not posted by you, I got confused. I hope it's okay.

Music videos

Today we discussed music videos and the degradation of women. I personally do not think that music videos degrade women but I do think that the women choosing to submit herself to performing in the video is degrading herself. If a man or women watching the video decided to believe in the fictional fantasyland of music videos that is their own problem and I will choose not to associate myself with them. I also think that the blame for children who are watching the videos should be placed upon the parents not the people who are involved with the shooting and television placement of the video. Our culture is more exposed to sexuality more than ever before, but parents are aware of this and should take extra precautions. For now, I believe that all ads and television are ok, but if it continues to get more scandalous then I think we should take action.

HH

Hip-Hop

"For clues on Teenage Sex, Experts Look to Hip-Hop" was an interesting approach to the hip-hop issue. Usually all you ever hear about is how bad hip-hop is and the terrible influences it's having on teens. It was nice to read this. Every generation has that one genre of music that pushes the limits, ours is hip-hop. Being a person that attends bars and clubs and dances to hip-hop I have to say that it they are places where "dirty dancing" is allowed and yes expected, but if a girl doesn't want to dance with someone then that is that. Boys, not men, in clubs are there to watch pretty girls shake it and the girls going to the club know this, there is no harm in it. What happens after the club has nothing to do with the dancing but the alcohol, even the personal decisions of the individuals. Overall, it was a good article and I agreed with it.

HH

Sexploitation

Women are portrayed as sexual objects in most advertising, and men are beginning to be seen as this also. The chapter on beer advertisements especially caught my attention. I do not agree with exploiting women sexually, but I also can't disagree with what is effective. I honestly am not that bothered by the advertisements that are shown by the media directly to the public. I believe advertising is only meant to be seen inadvertently by people for a mila-second and then not really thought of again. Ads are not meant to be dissected and stared at for hours. Our culture has become almost immune to advertising and partial nudity by now. Yes, there is a message being sent to us that women need to be skinny and mean need to be buff, but I do believe that anyone that has half of a brain and that I would actually want to talk to can distinguish the real world from the fake ad world. Airbrushing is no big secret. I will say that once I see advertisements that have animals "humping" each other and anything more disturbing in any way is when I will blow the whistle.

HH

10/5/07-Simone, Simulation One

I had the best time in class yesterday! The video we watched made some very good points and I can't wait to finish it...I might even buy the sucker. One thing I thought was interesting was when she made the joke about penis enlargement and everyone in class, and on the video, laughed. I found this interesting because the thought of making an ad about a man's penis like that was absurd, but the ad about a woman's breast size was normal. Yes, it was offensive, but not "out of the blue." Another thing I noticed was that the majority of the audience members were women. Maybe it was an all-women's college, I don't know, but it was sad none the less. Men need to here what the media is doing to us more than we do, I think. Men have an unrealistic image of the perfect woman and though females know she does not exist, I'm not sure males do quite yet. Something to think about.

HH

Speaker

We had a speaker today, Karen, who was a fairly renownd journalist. Her main focus was to talk about her experience at a protest in Gena, LA. I do not want to be a reporter, but I did learn alot from what she had to do as far as being one. She went to the town trying to be as open minded as she could and get all of the information she could to write the best and most accurate story. In the end, most reporters wrote stories focusing on the main, most famous speakers and did not represent the town in the light they felt was fair. We also discussed the recent murders in Denton. I knew Melanie and honestly wish people would stop reminding me everywhere I turn that she is gone. I want to say one thing though that I also said in class. We need a better system of getting our campus news. I had no idea two other girls were murdered, and maybe if Melanie had known that she might have been more careful. I know I am now, I have a new pepper spray keychain. That's something that needs to be fixed for safety sake. I know the universities main goal, accourding to my own perceptions and from the mouths of the parking dept, is what they're going to build next and not the overall safety and convenience of the people paying for it, but I think their priorities are just a bit mixed up. I can't wait to graduate. Sorry I got so angry there, your class is great.

HH

Facism

It seemed like our main focus today was on facism. We read about it in our handouts and could see it being used in the chapter. With facism, if you show more face you have more credibility, of you show more body then you have less. There seems to be a "body disturbance." In the chapter we read about the planned parenthood ads, I honestly cant say I agree with any of it. To me it just seemed like someone was trying to find something wrong with it. Non-profit organizations do not have the money or ties to large ad agencies and therefore take what they can get. Obviously the person creating them didn't know what they were doing based on the quality of the ads. I wouldn't read too much into it personally. I do agree facism exists though.

HH

Maxim

The second day of class we discussed magazines and ever were asked to bring one to class. I thought it was odd to actually look at the foremost mens magazines and see the same "formula" on the front cover. Maxim is the most popular men's magazine having over 2.5 million readers (and that was in 1997)! It made me realize the standard at which women are held, there is no way we can look like those women on the cover, even they have to be airbrushed! Our assignment was to go do our own content analysis on a newspaper or news magazine from before the 80's. I was excited to do it and see what I could find.

HH

First day of class

Since I didn't even have a blog the first day of class I thought I would go ahead and tell about some of my feelings from then. The class seemed to be an easy going one with exciting assignments. I love to analyze ads and articles and it seemed that the projects we had were to do just that and more. I couldn't wait to come back the next week.

My first blog

So far I'm really enjoying my class. We had a project where we had to look at old newspapers or news magazines. I don't have any family nearby so I turned all of my hopes over to a recycled book store...called Recycled. They saved my life and I bought four Life magazines ranging from the 1960's to the 1970's. I really enjoyed the articles I read. I read one about a Charles Manson murder before they knew it was him, creepy stuff. The pictures they had shown had blood in them, it wasn't very pretty, rather sad actually. But, I finished my report and now I'm off to bed to get some MUCH needed sleep.

You rock my socks,
HH