Postcard from Media World: Wish I Wasn't Here

While babysitting just yesterday, between feeding Cheerios to the ducks, admiring the sunset, eating 10 pieces of salt water taffy, and playing board games, I reflected on the different kids I have babysat. Sometimes I bake with Miss A and resort to TV watching when we are eating lunch. A & M finish their homework straight home from school so we can all play wii together or hop on the pogo sticks. And M & B, well, we mostly engage in intense would-you-rather battles.

This particular evening with M & B was charming. We spent nearly two hours strolling through the park, deciding that the rock garden near one of our favorite ponds is inhabited by the "Cookie Goddess." I was charmed that the kids weren't tempted to reach for the TV remote while we were home. Heck, we spent so much time in the park that they didn't even want to go home! Most of all, I appreciated the live concert performance from little B who played "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music on his guitar.

So this has to do with the media how? Well, whenever I hear this song, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, I immediately ask myself, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens / brown paper packages tied up with string / these are a few of-- what are my favorite things? When I narrow it down to simple things, like the delicate items in the song, I realize that moody clouds, cats, and glow-in-the-dark stars all have one thing in common: they have nothing to do with media.

One could argue that I must've seen these things advertised to me in one form or another, and I'm sure that person would be right, but having taken a semester of critical thinking, my view of the media has come into focus. I am not a fan... yet I am. It is quite interesting to observe from afar, yet the more I watch (and I am a diehard people-watcher, so I can watch intently), the more it saddens me that our society is so critically shaped by the media. 

My parents, who raised my brother and I to mute the commercials, have recently experienced me blurting out "Oh! That's the testimonial technique right there!" It is nearly impossible to look at an advertisement without seeing a techniques/appeals handout faintly hiding behind the image. It is almost the same sensation I felt in middle school. Having left my smallish elementary school to attend a large middle school, it was as if I realized there was more to this world than the world I knew. Media is a whole new world that I am just now beginning to explore. Before critical thinking, it was as if this Media World had been a place I knew from a "Wish You Were Here!" postcard. I always knew what it looked like, but I had never walked the streets and listened to the words of the people so deeply rooted in this Media World.

Though I do like watching movies, listening to music, and binging on TV shows, Media World has turned into this planet of stereotypical aliens who seek to overrun our world. I like walking to the duck pond on cloudy days. I like sleeping. I like the sore feeling of working out and the first day of each season. I like living, and I like living on planet Earth not on Media World.

Greetings from Media World

Camp Free-From-Technology

This weekend I vanished into the forest of Nevada City, trekking up and down hills and singing camp songs with 5th graders also while performing goofy, improvised skits. I, along with the other 10-12 teen volunteers, had the duty of teaching these children science lessons not only about our beautiful lakefront environment, but also about science all around us! I had the fun (and slight stress in the beginning) of leading kids in water testing. Group to group, the kids varied when asked to participate. I was impressed that the majority of the kids had heard the terms we used in our lesson. When asked what they thought certain woulds meant, they were not afraid to make educated guesses based on the clues I gave them. My partner and I felt proud as the lesson came to an end because as we reviewed the four terms of our teachings (salinity, temperature, turbidity, and pH of water), every kid had their hand up to tell US what the words meant, what causes it, how we measured these in water, and what tools we used.

What I enjoyed most about my weekend was the grand escape from technology, media, and my day-to-day life. It was a blessing to have zero cell phone service. No one felt the obligation to check their phone every ten minutes to see what's happening in the world. Without the buzzing of phones, both the staff and the kid campers endured a period of genuinely living in the moment. We embraced the sunlight, the dirt, and the bugs. We laughed. We sang. We ate together. We entertained ourselves without the presence of screens! Children, the freest spirits, clasped their freedom without batteries powering their minds!

I was startled by one thing: the kids' phones. A few kids dared to carry their phones throughout the days. Most of them were excited to take pictures, but I was in awe that the devices were bigger than most of their heads! Before the buses departed, the kids exchanged instagram usernames with friends and staff they met along the trip. We're talking 10-11 year olds! WHAT?! Even though it is bizarre that kids these days have social media accounts as early as fifth grade, we should acknowledge that they are willing to keep connections through these accounts.

This was the best taste of pre-summer.

No, I'm NOT Interested in "Mingling"

Dear Pandora,

I appreciate your concern for my love life, but if you would so kindly shy away from advertising dating websites, I would dearly appreciate it. You are constantly interrupting my flow of music with your gnarly ads. I like that you offer ad-free listening, but I'd rather not waste my money. Particularly, I'm not a fan of your pop-up ads. "Interested in white guys ages 40-50?" No. "Single women around you, come check 'em out!" Yeah, no thanks. "View single black men, click here!" Honestly, thanks for your worries, but I pass up these options every time they come around! Maybe if the companies behind these social websites made the ads look less janky, then I wouldn't be as grossed out! Stop assuming that everyone is looking for romance.

Sincerely,
A Girl who doesn't need to date adults right now

Not my picture but a similar ad to what I have witnessed on Pandora

Faith, Trust, and Pixie Sex Appeal

When I watched Peter Pan as a child, I didn't notice that Tink wore a teeny tiny green dress. I didn't notice that this dress hugged her hips and outlined her figure. I didn't notice that this dress was just inches below where her legs met her hips. Sometimes I noticed that she had tiny cotton ball looking things on the toes of her shoes. Sometimes I noticed that she was stubborn and did not like Wendy. Why would I have paid much attention to her dress when she is only three inches tall and lighting up rooms with her fairy magic? Why would I have cared about her body when the slightest sprinkle of her pixie dust could make ordinary people fly?

Faith, trust, and Pixie dust sex appeal is flashed before the eyes of young viewers.

The documentary Miss Representation examines this problem within our media called "sexualization." Rather our society is so accustomed to bringing out the "sexy" in characters, on billboards, or modeling our clothes that this problem has grown larger. It has become "over sexualization." Never had I thought before watching this film that female characters in G-Rated movies wear just as sexualized outfits as female characters in R-Rated movies. To prove this point, the film showed images from Disney classics: Tinker Bell, Jasmine, Ariel. The speakers compared the cartoon pictures of the young women flaunting their breasts and wearing revealing clothing to R-Rated women doing just the same thing.

Our society has okayed G-rated sex appeal because our media conveys that women are just here for the eyes of others. This is shown through everyday activities like watching the news. Female newscasters, hair primped and eyelashes batting, wear low-cut shirts and reveal their legs from beneath their tight skirts while their male counterparts look like ancient grandpas who have not bothered looking in the mirror before heading to work. Even when women run for congress or political campaigns, what is mentioned about their work first is not how well they presented this or how they did that, it is who wore it best, it is how her hair looked, it is how many wrinkles she has. Our media holds female beauty as an achievement. Women are not praised for their brains or accomplishments, they are praised by how well they look. 

Even when a woman is feeling confident or is considered beautiful in the eyes of the media, she is still attacked by others, she is still the victim of our ruthless society. Miss Representation argued that women are natural enemies with the bodies our society puts on display. It was said that women spend more money on cosmetics than they spend on education. So-called "models" and cosmetics put men in the dominate position because women and young girls are so concerned with their image that they are willing to put beauty before anything else just to live up to society's ideals. Beauty in the media leads to self-objectification. Self-objectification leads to a lower GPA and lower cognitive functioning. Teens, whose brains are not fully developed until the early twenties, have the same stress, hormonal, and emotional levels as adults today. And to think that over sexualization is taught to us as early as the years of watching Tinker Bell fluter around in a tiny dress.

In Peter Pan it is said that "The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” Our society teaches women that they cannot fly, and when women believe it, they never try.


Why does Tinker Bell need to wear such a tiny dress? Oh of course, because she lives in Neverland with the lost boys, so doesn't that society, too, need to cater to horny teenage boys?

Foreign

Rapper Trey Songz released the music video "Foreign" last June. The video can be praised for its cultural appreciation, for it shows many women of many skin colors. It is positive that he doesn't stick to the oh-so-typical shades of the media, yet he uses these women as props in his music video. The song is about how he "cop[s] that foreign" (women), so naturally he had to use a few women to express how he gets all the girls of all the national origins.

Of course this video has been viewed by teens! And of course it teaches teen viewers that if you are a male, you can get all the foreign women with the swipe of your credit card, no problem! 

After we leave girl, you know where you going
Straight to the 'tel, you ain't leaving 'till the morning
Same old thing, yeah you know that shit's boring (that shit's boring)
American you know I had to cop that foreign (cop that foreign)
American you know I had to cop that foreign
(She got on a bad bikini, when we in the Lamborghini)
American you know I had to cop that foreign
(She from another country, I brought her to the city with me)
I know it's never boring
American you know I had to cop that foreign
Uh huh

These lyrics allow one to assume that when you leave a place with a girl, of course she's going to want to head back to your place without leaving "'till the morning." 

The youth is not taught to appreciate foreigners for settling in our diverse country and making a new home, rather they are taught to "cop that foreign" and take advantage of those who are unfamiliar with their new settings.

This loop started with teens' sexual desires. The media played into teen temptations by showing them that you can "have" foreign women if American women are getting boring. 

In fifteen years, I am optimistic that the media will have this diverse image of celebrating the different skin color beauty of women minus the objectifying part.

"Perfect"

One reason I love Modcloth, aside from their colorful clothes and funky footwear, is their variety in models. This winter, the company stayed from photoshopping thin models to an unattainable thinner body shape. Instead, the clothing site used its own employees to add some shape and size to modeling.

These women didn't just display their confidence by wearing t-shirts or frilly skirts... These stars modeled swimsuits! This picture proves that any body type can rock a polka dot bikini!

It is important to pay tribute to all body types, especially those of women, because our media spends too much time telling us that we need to slim down to attain a "perfect body." If you google "perfect female body" your results will include:

AND 

If you can't read the words in tiny print, they mention women and men's ideas of the "perfect female body"

How many people do you see in your day to day life who look this way?

When you look at these Victoria's Secret models (yes, they're gorgeous, and yes, it's somewhat empowering to feel sexy in your undergarments), you see a minute population! This is the group of long-legged, slim women who happen to be the models of "perfection" in our society. I am glad that our society praises this minority body type and respects the occasional interesting recessive gene traits, but the fact that it has been over-praised has grossly shaped our cultural views. Women feel dissatisfied with they bodies based on our ideas of how women should look. Such a handful of women look this way, yet such a great number of women feel oppressed by these taunting images. 

It is important to see people of similar body types, skin tone, gender, and even background because it is truly inspirational to feel like you can connect to one based on their physical appearance. It is sad that we feel the need to judge the outward before the inward, but seeing people who remind us of us makes us bound to love or hate them. When we realize we love them, we feel uplifted and inspired by how much people like us have achieved. 

We don't all look the same and we sure as heck won't all achieve the same things in life, but the more we take steps toward modeling like Modcloth, the more we can reshape our society into praising shape, size, skin, and gender.

This is one step toward the new perfection

LANA DEL BAE

I thank Pandora for exposing me to the one and only... LANA DEL REY! Years and years ago, the first song of hers that brought magic to my mind was Radio. Had it never popped up on my Pandora station, I would have never developed my love for this Coney Island Queen.

Born to Die. Paradise. Ultraviolence. These albums are just the basics! Thanks to YouTube I even know her unreleased songs as if I wrote them myself!

I am nearly peeing my pants over how excited I am to see her live in concert next week! I already know that I will wear my heart-shaped sunglasses, perhaps some blue jeans, and a white shirt or blue velvet! Although, a part of me is sad that when the concert is over, I will no longer feel like I am off to the races (I mean, I have other things to look forward to, but I will not be as ecstatic as I am now) and will be stuck with summertime sadness.

Tumblr has excited me this week, for I found footage of Miss Lizzy Grant (you're a real fan if you know her real name) singing a song that reminds me of the many times I watched Roger Rabbit growing up. This movie combines elements of cartoons and "real" people.

Now that I am older, I am realizing how Jessica Rabbit is used as a sex icon... Anyway, she sings the song "Do Right."

I heard this song many years later because my very Lana Del Bae performed it at one of her recent concerts, and I was lucky to hear her exquisite twist on the song through media gateways.

I love that I am able to somewhat keep up with her Endless Summer tour and give myself room to think of what songs she may sing when I see the young and beautiful star myself.

Oh Lana, what would I do without you?