Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Advertising and the Construction of violent Male Masculinity" --Jackson Katz

In reading the chapter on the constrution of Mal eMasculity I find myself agreeeing with many of te points that he makes regarding te manner tat te media constructs Malet masculitity. For example, in His conclusion, he points out that we neeto to take an intensive look at te manner in wic males are reperesented in the media is imposrtant since te image of wome is already scrutnized from the pores on their faces to the size of their hips in various popular magazines.

He also points out tat 90% of crime is committed by males. To this I would like to add the not only is this true, but violent crimes tend to dominate in te male sectio of te prisoners. I fact, the crimes mostly comited by women relate to larceny and embezzelmet rather than more violent criems such as, what I consider the most viokent of crimes: Rape.
I thought that it was important to mention this statistic here; 6% of rapist will ever spend a day in jail ( 15 of 16 rapist walk free) ( from the RAINN website) just to highlight te importance of this prolem in society.

I concurr with this atatement: "And while he may not realize it, every man-every accountant, science nerd,clergyman,
or cop-is engaged in a dialogue with muscles" (p. 16). (Kratz 139)" just looking back at my previous blog about the vitamine commercial.



Again time constraints keep me from continuing the analysisc of this Chapter reading.

Advertising and the Construction of violent Male Masculinity" --Jackson Katz

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

IRPand Sex, Lies and Advertising

My topic for the IRP is the U.S. Foreign Relations and Immigration.
Tyler, Andrew, and I will be focusing on the realtions with Russia, Cuba, and the Immigration movements witin the U.S. They we will be looking at these through the disciplines of History, Economic, and Political Science.

My question is Why are te 1980s immigration reform movemente so rarely addressed in comparison to the Cold War and post-Cold War movements?


In this past reading, I see a relation when they address the fact that different magazines only produced adds specifically toward hispanic, African-amarican, asia, and other minotiry women because they thought that their white audiences would only focus on these women. This is a situation that I'm particulartly interested in since I am a Latina woman who is concerned about how the media portays women, and specifically, minority women, now and ow it has changed, since the Cold war.


I thought this video was relevant to I added the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUk_a7SqlgA&feature=player_embedded

Sex, Lieas , and Advertising

First of all I would like to start out by staying how great this piece of literature was. I am somewhat familiar with Ms. Magazine, since I am a feminist, but I was unfamiliar with the history behind it.
One of the most interesting features of the magazine that I wound what their strength in publishing because without accepting advertisement of other companies that had a negative portrayal of women. In my opinion, this is quite admirable that the publishers kept with their purpose.
The editors, Gale dines and Jean M. Humez did an excellent job in presenting their experience and the struggles tat they faced in a patriotically society that has so long kept women in the boundaries of domesticity, especially in the media. I strongly feel that even tough women have some a long way throughout history in gaining more positive recognition in the media, we still have a long way to go. In fact, one of the problems that they bring attention to is the notion that certain markets can only target specific genders. For example, she talks about her ideas about how toy companies only lightly tapped into the girl market with only "pink cars". The idea that Blue, Strong, and rough things are for boys and pink, delicate, soft tings are only for girls is still seen today. For example, I recently saw an commercial for vitamins (One A Day) targeted towards teens and what bothered me most about it was the fact that the vitamins designed for the boys stresses tat it is for strong muscles and the vitamins designed for girls stresses that it is for healthy skin. Why can't girls want Strong muscles too? Why can't boys want healthy skin as well? Is our society still so sexist that we can't break away from the idea that women can't be both beautiful and strong without having to be dependent and delicate?
Finally, it is amazing that they still have the success now and I find it most fortunate that Dale Lang, owner of Working Mother Working Woman, bought the magazine and was smart enough to give them complete editorial control unlike jerk the Leonard Lauder, president of Este Lauder make-up at that time, who dismissed the idea that women who wear make-up ( like his successful Mother) are also the women who care about important political, economical, and social issues of the time.
Although I find this subtopic quite fascinating and would delight in discussing it for hours and hours at a time, I must, because of time constraints, move on to discuss the aspect of Minority women in the media. The reason being that it relates more to my topic and question for the IRP assignment where I will focus more on the Immigration reform movements of the 1980s in the Cold war and post cold war.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Shaky Ground

As i continue to read this book, my interest in the feminist movement increases. I find it quite inter sting that there are so many types of feminist since I didn't realize before how many classifications they could fall into.
As of right now I haven't exactly specified what classification I would fall into, but I do now that I disagree with the was cultural feminist think of "male and female sexuality as polar opposites" ( 119 Echols), because I believe that sexuality in both males and females is actually very similar. I think that it is mainly society;s standards that have come to make this strict distinction resulting in less freedom of expression as far as sexuality for women and perhaps too much freedom for the men. Sexuality varies from person to person and not from gender to gender or by sex since I don't think biology truly defines how women and men express their sexuality because other physiological, personal, and societal aspects have much influence as well. One of the best examples I can think of that shapes this sexuality for both men and women is sexual abuse.
I'd like to end with an announcement that Take Back the Night will be held on May 2 so mark your calendars!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Echols and The Feminist Movement

I am only submitting a quick blog today because the essay is taking up so much more time. I just wanted to Say that I started on the Echol's Shaky Ground boob and I would like to comment that it is thus far the best of all of the books. I'm a die-hard feminist so reading about the movements, especially the first movement on page 75 is really empowering. I especially have enjoyed reading about the beauty politics in Chapter four and I look forward to incorporating the novel as a source into my projects.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Other America

The book so far is about the homeless of America and how they are invisible to the government. The poor numbering 50,000,000 have no voice and have no face. Since the poor are not seen and are considered invisible they do not see as well. There view is narrower because of this having less and less hope as time goes on. One other reason why the poor stay poor is because just like everyone else they become sick just like everyone else but because of poor medical care they are sick longer. So they lose wages and job opportunities.