I can breathe .... well maybe after a conversation about sexism in advertising

The semester is finally over and I can almost take a breath. I have 35 final exams to grade and one take-home final to complete and the semester is over for me! I am stunned that I have completed a semester of graduate school - it is such a blur I can't even confirm that I remember enough of what I learned to say I have been successful. But I can say that once the papers were handed in and the exams were graded I did not embarrass myself (this was very important to me since my professors are also my colleagues).

So, the time has come to step back and begin observing my crazy world again and spend some time with my blog. As I began thinking of things I wanted to write about I remembered a recent comment by Sarah Palin that particularly annoyed me .... "I love the commercialization of Christmas because it spreads the Christmas cheer the most jolly holiday on our calendar ... obviously." I can't make this stuff up people! See for yourself ..... and giggle with John Stewart as you do.

The Daily Show

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I was going to go on a rant about what Christmas means to me ... how the commercials I am seeing every day make me feel sad and angry and kill my Christmas spirit and I realized ... been there, done that:

What happened to Thanksgiving?

Perhaps Christmas Means a Little Bit More .....

Family Friday ~ It is Christmas .... Let the Games Begin!

With no desire to be repetitive I started looking for something else that could start dialogue. Lo and behold in my Facebook newsfeed I found this gem:




It is great that someone is out there saying these things. The objectification of women to sell products is a time-honored tradition that really needs to end. When I heard her say she had been talking about this for 40 years I decided to do a search and go back to see if we have made any progress. I am sorry to say that I don't think we have.

 

 

 

It is a vicious cycle .... young girls see these advertisements and think this is the way women should be treated .... in turn media makes more risqué advertisements ..... more young women see them and so on and so on. It is not surprising that each semester the girls I have in class are wearing fewer and fewer clothes. It is no wonder that eating disorders are skyrocketing, and depression and anxiety is increasing year after year among young women.

 

I wish I had the answer on how to end the cycle, how to make men see women as more than a bunch of body parts, how to make women see themselves as more than a bunch of body parts at the beck and call of the men in their lives. I put some of the blame on the magazines sold to women as essential guidebooks on how to be feminine and beautiful: Cosmo - Vanity Fair - Vogue .....

 

   

 

And don't even get me started on Teen Vogue  or Seventeen ....

I remember reading these 30 years ago and feeling like I couldn't compete and that was before photoshop! I could never afford the clothes or do the make-up quite right and I never had the cute fabulous boyfriends they said I would have if I made myself up to look like a clown.

 

 

 

But in my search for what is wrong with media and it's portrayal of women and it's brainwashing of young girls I found this, a bright light in the midst of all of this: Julia Bluhm, Seventeen Reader, Petitions Magazine To Feature Non-Airbrushed Photos;  Teen Vogue Next In Anti-Photoshop Battle Waged By SPARK Summit Teens. There is hope. 

 

So in the end maybe we can begin to reverse a trend hundreds of years old.

• If we can teach our sons to appreciate women for more than their bodies.
• If we can teach our daughters that they should treat themselves with respect so that others will treat them with respect.
• If we can get women to stop buying magazines that are ultimately going to make them feel bad about themselves.
• If don't purchase products that advertise in sexist ways or buy magazines that publish these advertisements.

Then maybe - just maybe change will happen.

 

So much for a blog that started as a celebration of being able to breathe at the end of a long semester. Maybe breathing just isn't my style.

 





I remember ......

I went back to look at whether or not I had written about my experience of 9/11 before and I had. But as I looked back I realized that I have been writing this blog (I know, not on a regular basis) for a few years now. So much in my life has happened in these years ... so much has happened since 2001. And yet the remembrance and the pain is the same today that it was on that morning twelve years ago.

When one of my classes happen to fall on 9/11 I start class with The Daily Show. So many people made powerful statements but Jon Stewart's really is the one that still gets to me, still gives me a lump in my throat and still makes me remember what life was like after .... when we came together, when we were, but for a moment, one nation again.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Many people remember 9/11 as a tragedy - the number of lives lost - the people that took out their vengeance on us. It is a day of pain and anger for many. I try and remember this day as the first time I realized what it really means to be American. Not enough people know that today is a National Day of Service, a day to give back to the community and come together as a people.

I teach a concept in my course about the rearview mirror impact on social change. Basically it is that current social change is impacted by recent history. So I wanted to take a look at how September 11th has had an impact on the debate on whether or not we should get involved in Syria. I think is has. Americans are what reporters are calling "war weary." George Bush's "War on Terror" (continued by President Obama) hasn't made the change people thought it would. We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq is still damaged. The impact of the decisions made on 9/11 have increased the probability of a terrorist attack on American soil by lone jihadists ~ American born, American made. And then there is what we have lost since 9/11 the Patriot Act has created a country where in the name of national security we can no longer trust in the tenets of the Constitution - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

~ Benjamin Franklin

It is unfortunate that the US government waited so long to attempt to help the people of Syria. Had this been two years ago when innocent people were being killed by their government I think there would have been more support - before Al Qaida went in to give rebels the support that American was not giving. Now our involvement would do nothing more than allow people who dislike us to gain power in a frantic nation - reaching out desperately and willing to support whoever will help them survive.

I recently lost a very good friend. The band of misfits I called my family in high school came together to help each other process and deal with the loss. There were tears and hugs and laughter and memory. But together we buried our friend and grieved as one. That is how I felt on 9/11. Like I had an entire nation of family and together we grieved, buried our friends, and dealt with our loss. And so today I remember that and that is what I will share with the students in my classroom this morning - students who were too young to experience the nation coming together.