Barbie: A Doll or A Role Model?

A lot of the articles we've been reading in class have to do with the image that Barbie promotes and how she has become a bad role model for the young girls that play with her. There is one question I have regarding these articles: who decided that dolls were role models for young girls? I see Barbie as a way to play out the imagination of children. Almost every child likes to pretend and imagine what it would be like to be an adult in the world. They "play pretend" and "make believe" that they are older. Playing "dress-up" is putting on the clothes in your mother's closet and acting like a woman, instead of a girl. Playing "mommy" is taking a doll and pretending it is your baby. They even sell baby dolls to young girls that do almost everything a baby does so "playing mommy" is more realistic. Barbie is a way to play out the life of a grown-up. Barbie can be anything you want her to be. She can be a doctor one day, and a teacher the next. I don't want to speak for every girl, but I never once looked at Barbie and thought, "I want to look just like this doll." The only thing I every thought about when I was playing with Barbie is, "what will Barbie do today, and what outfit is she going to wear." I think Barbie is more about playing out the imagination of young girls, and less about how her appearance is setting a standard for young girls.

Mean Girls

While watching mean girls you enjoy the humor of all the things the girls do to each other to be popular or liked. The plastics, the popular girl in school, use their looks and their money to get what they want. They don't care how they treat people and who they will hurt along the way. They Say they are friends but they trash each other behind their backs. These three girls are the icons of girl world. When Kadi comes to school she pretends to like them at first but only finds herself turning into one of them by disobeying her parents and hurting her real friends.

In middle school is where it all starts for most girls. The girls have this notion that they have to get in the popular group. The popular group in middle school is the girls that wear the cute clothes and that every boy thinks is cute. All of the girls will try to wear and act like those girls, losing their personalities on the way. But those popular girls always made fun of the ones that were not wearing the cute clothes or ones who were inferior to them. This all just starts drama and causes girls to be mean to each other. People wonder why more girls today are having eating disorders is because of society, but mostly it is the girl world. The pressure we feel from the other girl we go to school with. As middle school progresses these girl problems really never really changed.

When high school hits there not so much as the same drama as in middle school but there’s drama. When you enter high school you get a new crowd new people. Everything that happened in middle school is forgotten for most. The drama now is about boys and if you fit in the right place. Everybody in high school is trying to find what they like to do and how they want to spend their time. So you end up switching groups and people get mad because you just ditched hanging out with them but it is not really that big of a deal. There is a reason for your life to go that way. It may be because though people are more like you or you just want to make new friends somewhere else. But in the end always causes people to talk about you. But the biggest thing people talk about or cause drama for boys and girls dating, liking each other and hanging out. It seems to be a competition for who can get the most guys and what guys like you or who you are dating. This is the biggest thing that causes fights and friend ships to end. Girls will talk about how you look with the guy or how you don’t deserve him. The factor of jealousy plays a huge part in this problem and the only way girls deal with it is trash the girl.

People say mean girls is just a movie well it is based off of the girl world . Every girl goes through it. There is no way to avoid it.

'Our Barbies, Ourselves'

In the article "Our Barbies, Ourselves" by Emily Prager, Prager discusses the creation and impact of the Barbie doll. She starts off by saying that the Barbie doll was designed by a man and, calls attention to many controversies caused by the way the doll looks. Prager says in the article "..her breasts are so out of proportion to the rest of her body that if she were a human woman, she'd fall flat on her face." She goes on to say that besides the look of her body, "...Barbie, in feminist terms, is definately her own person...a liberated woman, a gal on the move." This raises an interesting question, why would a doll be designed to fit the male fantasy, but have the lifestyle that would be accepted by the feminist ideas? Barbie is famous for her out of proportion body and endless resume (she can go from flight attendent to doctor in one outfit change), but how many unrealistic expectations can you set for an impressionable young girl?

Dowd Article

In the article "Men Just Want Mommy" by Maureen Dowd, Dowd discusses how old movies used to focus on the "...snap and crackle of a romance between equals..." but today movies and media tend to focus on the romance of unequals. In the article, Dowd says that this is "art imitating life..." when, in my opinion, it is art inspired by life. The screenwriters of today's movies had to get the idea of the romance of unequals from somewhere. In this case I think that art has also helped to fuel the craze. Not only do you see older men of power taking up with the maids, nannies, and secretaries; you see women doing the same. The classic example was made famous by Eva Longoria on the show Desperate Housewives, where her character is a housewife that is having an affair with their teenage gardener while her husband is at work. This example has become a pop culture cliche and imitated on several other shows. I think it is very interesting that more than a half-century ago people thought that a romance between equals was exciting and now, it seems as if people have become bored with the normal love story and have resorted to other more interesting romantic situations for entertainment.

The Gender Issue: Suffragettes

I was recently watching an episode of Cold Case that took place in the 1920s and involved the women's movement. In the episode, the girl that was killed was from a wealthy influential family and she was a suffragette. They showed her going to secret meetings and going through the trials of being a woman for change. Her family, including her mother, seriously disapproved of her beliefs that women should be given the same opportunities as men. Her father even threatened to disown her at one point. Although the episode is only fiction, I can imagine that the experiences of real suffragettes was similar. Many of them had to choose between the ones they loved, and what they believed in. Watching this episode made me realize how many rights I take for granted. These women gave up so much to fight for freedom and I can't say that I've never taken some of these freedoms for granted. Like the freedom to get a college degree, have a career, and vote. All of these rights have become common place and no one usually thinks about how hard it was to get them, but it was the suffragettes that gained respect for women and fought for most of the rights women have today.

College Essay Mania

After spending many hours on the weekends sitting in front of a blank computer screen, coming up with nothing but bad ideas, I have come to one conclusion regarding college essays: it is simply impossible to write. The idea that you have to describe who you are in one well-written 250-500 word essay is pretty much crazy. While there are many people who say college essays could make or break your chances of admission, I recently read a statistic that says 3% of essays help your application, 2% of essays hurt your application, and 95% don't even make a difference. If 95% of college essays don't make a difference why even put the essay on the application at all? This statistic kind of threw me and even made me a little mad. I'd been working so hard to get this essay just right and there's only a 5% chance of it actually making a difference on my application. After thinking about it, I realized that the statistic made sense. Most kids, when writing their essays, write what they think colleges want to hear and by putting essay questions on the applications, colleges doom themselves to thousands of similar essays, all making pretty much the same point. So if the colleges end up reading thousands of basically the same essay, they have to rely on teacher recommendations and the rest of the application to tell them more about the applicant. It turns out that colleges essays become a small part in the mania that is applying to college.

2009

This is our final year of high school, it took so long to get here but we all did it. We went through making friends, losing friend, crazy party, finals and just plain old drama. But in the end we all did it, together and even thought everyone might not be as close to some of the people at this school we all stayed strong with one another and that’s because were class of 2009!!!

Moore's Film

While watching Moore's film i felt annoyed by how he twisted the situation. This situation is a very serious and touchy subject for many. I got the feeling that Moore made fun of how it was handled. He twisted every fact that he had to tear down the government. There were somethings the goverement could have done differently to get the people out of the building and protect others but it is nothing to make a joke about. I agree that we should have gotten the people in tower two out but looking back they did not know what else was coming. He talked about Goerge not leaving the school when he heard about the attack but in his defense he was just as shock as the country was. He needed to make a calm exit and staying a couple minutes longer was needed to do that. Also when he talked about how Bush was re elected because he knew people in high places. Well most politician know people in high places and have connections. Micheal Moore Trashes the goverentment and events to make himself feel better but it does not help the situation. He makes fun of things he has no business making fun of. If he thinks the goverenment should have been run or be ran better he should have thought of that and gone to school for that. Bush acted for what he thought was best for the country and anyone in his position would have struggled with the challenges he had. Not saying everything was handled the right way but it is history and we are dealing with it in the best of our ablities.

Bias in the Media: Fahrenheit 9/11

I learned alot about how the media can spin and twist the facts to point the viewer or reader in the wrong direction. There are examples of how Moore does this in his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore's voice over in many scenes provides a tremendous amount of bias throughout the movie. In the scene where President Bush first hears about the second tower of the WTC being hit, Moore does a voice over of what the President might be thinking in that moment. Really, Moore is simply expressing his ideas of what President Bush might be thinking. Anyone can take that piece of film and make it look like whatever they want. I think it would be best to simply show the piece of film and let the audience draw their own conclusions. The same goes for any piece of information revealed to the public, whether it's an article in the news paper, or a documentary on 9/11.

Reaction to On Native Soil

The events of September 11, 2001 forever changed the United States and the lives of its citizens forever. The initial reaction of 9/11 was shock, horror, and overwhelming sadness, whether you knew a victim or not. When I saw On Native Soil, I was surprised by what I found out. I was young at the time and didn't understand what was going on. Watching On Native Soil was like watching a big news story, some of which I was hearing for the first time. It was very hard to watch the planes hitting the towers, especially knowing what was coming next. People weren't aware that it was a terrorist attack when the first building was hit, and it was frustrating that the people in the second tower were told not to evacuate. On Native Soil was not only very sad to watch, it was frustrating as well.

On Native Soil

The film On Native Soil was very moving and had a lot of good information that I did not know. I mainly didn’t know all this information because I was in 5th grade when these events occurred. One thing that really shocked me while watching this film was that when the first plane hit the first tower everyone thought it was just a plane crash and did not think to evacuate the second tower. If we thought to evacuate the second tower thousands could still be alive. But instead thousands of loved ones died, and we got to see their families and friends fighting to get answers because no one could say or wanted to say what really happened that day. Viewing the shots of the September 11 terrorist attacks crushed me, and it made me think did this really make the United States stronger or weaker?

What Really Happened

While watching On Native Soil you experience the most uncomforting feeling when you see these images. I was only in 5th grade when this happened. Back then I had no idea what a terrorist was or about all those events that lead up to 9/11. Watching this movie opened my eyes to many of the things i had no idea about. Hearing the flight attendants talk to the flight control was very scary. The feeling that something bad was going to happen and you had no control. All you could do it wait. Watching the first plane crash into the tower and later seeing the second tower being hit after those people were assured they were safe. The police and fire fighters rushing to help, putting there lives on the line. Bring hope to those people and the families. The worst part is waiting and seeing what was going to happen next. I can't imagine what it felt like to have a love one in there. As the tower burned and people rushing to get out other felt no hope, they did not want to see what would happen next. So they jumped ending their lives. After a couple hours of having the towers hit and they fell to the ground was so heart breaking. Thinking about all of the people who died and at that point went missing was so hard. After reflecting about this movie watching it change many thoughts and feelings i had about 9/11.