Blog 5

In the recent video we watched in my Race, Gender and the Media class we discussed how women have been portrayed in the media for the past forty years. Over the years women have been silenced through large advertising campaigns for make up and clothing. Not only have they been silenced, they've also been picked to pieces in images that only show them as objects. Now that media are portraying women as silenced objects, men look at women as sexual objects who should be submissive in every situation they are put in.
Recently I watched a documentary over Russian mail-order brides. Men who are too lame to find a woman who will put up with them in America have started finding women online to date from other countries, such as Russia. The main reason that these men are looking towards Russia for their future spouse is because the women are more submissive, said the documentary. Not only are they more submissive they haven't had the feminist rights movement over there, the way America has. One of the sad stories that the documentary told was about a man who married a woman from Russia through mail order. Once she was in America, she wouldn't have sex with him. One day he raped and murdered her. Through this one act of violence towards mail order brides, the state of Washington decided to place a piece of legislation on the mail order bride websites.
Women shouldn't feel they need to be submissive, from America to Russia. We should be able to express our opinions in our relationships and our careers. The way the media has portrayed us is disturbing and should be changed. Women should be able to be who they are, however they want to be, no matter what it is and the advertising companies should learn to deal with this.

Blog 4

In my recent Race, Gender and the Media class we watched a documentary on the "black newspaper." From the late 1800's to the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans had their own newspaper. Of course, back then, racism was a huge factor because African Americans had just been freed from slavery. Nowadays, African Americans are supposed to be portrayed equally in newspapers and magazines next to the white man. Although we have integrated the two newspapers together, I do not believe African Americans are treated equally.
On every woman's magazine cover around the country, white women are displayed. Rarely do we ever see an African American displayed on the front cover. I believe that African Americans fought for their right's a long time ago, yet the media is treating them like a minority.
In all honesty, this is wrong and something we should change. African Americans should be free to have a newspaper if they feel they need it, and should be able to be displayed on the front of a magazine.

Blog 3

In the recent movie that we watched in my Race, Gender and the Media class we discussed how race and gender are portrayed, not only poorly in the media, but in advertising as well. Women have been taught through different advertising ploys that being beautiful is the only way to reach a certain level of success in careers. Not only have women been taught that beauty is the only way to reach the top, they have extended this to many different aspects of women's lives.
Women have been taught through advertising that they must buy this certain product to look this certain way and this, in a way, is a poor area of advertising. They not only have targeted women, they have also targeted young girls that they need to be a certain weight to be accepted in the world.
Ads, such as the new Dove body campaign, have brought their viewers back to reality. They are teaching girls at a young age that they should accept who they are and strive to whom they want to be, but that they can beautiful in their own skin and do not have to strive to be modelesque.
As we saw in the video, advertisers have made the people in their ads so perfect, that women can not feel beautiful in their own skin, ever, because they have placed such a high standard on what an "average" woman should look like.
This is poor advertising and it should be changed. Women shouldn't only be looked at for their beauty, but also for their personality. Women of beauty have been so successful because advertisers make companies standards higher than what a "normal" person could ever achieve.
In saying this, advertisers have placed too many standards on what a woman should do to achieve what they want to look like, smell like, and what these women should wear, putting much emphasis on brand names and make up that is very expensive and not accessible to women in this economic downturn.
Why should we strive for what they want us to be? Why can't we just be who we are, without the standards, and allow all of us to be unique and not a size 0.

Blog 2

In the recent video we watched for Race, Gender and the Media, it focused on how the media has portrayed different races and gender throughout television history. Through shows such as I Love Lucy, the media portrayed Ricky Ricardo as a mean husband who always found fault in his wife, Lucy. But I must say, the comedy in I Love Lucy is great, even if they portray Ricky as a mean husband and Lucy as the generic housewife who always gets into trouble.

Although television still plays old shows like I Love Lucy, the media has evolved from portraying females as housewives to extraordinary women who find jobs in the corporate world. Such as the show, Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw is a renowned writer for a small newspaper in NY who makes a decent living and can afford her fabulous lifestyle. Far from the female role, Lucille Ball played in I Love Lucy.

Though people may find I Love Lucy humorous, times have changed. Women don't play the ordinary housewife role anymore, and to even think that the media would put women in such a bad light as only being able to be a housewife, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Women nowadays are capable of picking the lifestyle they choose, but the media still hits the nail on the head when they place beauty as the number one priority for women. Through make up ads and clothing ads directed towards women, they have caused an outburst of teenagers who think they have to look a certain way and act a certain way all of the time.

I guess the times haven't really changed, they've just placed different ideals into the media for women to catch on to. Back when I Love Lucy aired, it was common for women to be the housewife who take care of the kids. In our modern era, women are now shown as sex symbols and that beauty will get you far. But I really don't believe beauty should be the main priority of women, but because the media has placed such a demand that a woman must put so much effort into their already busy schedules, women believe that without beauty they will not find a husband or a job.

In the end, we're the one's who make our decisions, but when the media is throwing ideas out such as these, how are we supposed to do our own thing if everyone else expects a certain image?

Blog 1

In a country where we’re all supposed to be treated equally, the media has done more to separate society into classes and races than to treat everyone fairly. They treat the rich better than the poor by giving them more airtime and portray African Americans as belligerent criminals who are out to get anyone.

            Although the media has put more emphasis on stereotyping certain minorities, what would happen if they didn’t target minorities and only discussed what whites are doing? If they didn’t resort to targeting the minority, I believe that it would create more problems. The minority would be upset because they didn’t get their airtime and begin to wonder if the media only cared about reporting on the white society, inevitably leading those groups to have an even stronger disliking towards people who are white.

            Honestly, I believe that if they didn’t target certain groups and give people something to think about, someone would have a problem with it. No one is going to be 100% happy with what the media has to say about anyone or anything, for that matter. People have the choice whether to watch the news or turn it off, no one’s shoving it down anyone’s throat.

            The media has been around for over 100 years and they haven’t done much to change their slogan: reporting on what’s important to Americans. Yet, how are they to determine what is and isn’t important? For what may be important to one group of people, may not even come across a certain group of people’s minds.

            We’re set to believe what we see and what we hear. We have been given a set of guidelines from our parents and the media of what to think about certain groups of people: stereotyping. People have began to have such a negative outlook on certain minorities because the media has represented them to be terrible people, so whites think that every Mexican in this country is probably here illegally stealing our jobs to thinking that if a black man is walking down the street, he will probably draw a gun and steal their precious possessions. We think all of these things because the media has placed such a negative set of guidelines into societies minds.

            Is the media really giving us something to think about or are they putting ideas in our head to continue the racism that this country started with?