Blog Blobs
The issue of actors and actresses on television being too skinny is barely a new issue. However, you would think that producers would start to change things after seeing the effect it has on its audience, but this is not the case at all. Being thin is extremely overblown out of proportion. A few days ago, I was in Hill Top browsing through magazines to avoid studying, and I came across a spread showing celebrities and how much better they look now that they’ve lost weight. One particular caption that caught my eye was about Eva Longoria. It said how much better she looks now that she weighs 110 pounds instead of the 120 that she weighed a month ago or something like that. In addition, the popular show 90210 has all of its actresses weighing no more than 110 pounds, says a report mentioned in the article. This show is aimed at very young audiences. Presenting the idea of the necessity to be thin to young audiences is brainwashing girls at a very young age. The article mentions that young girls in grades 1-3 want to be thinner. I have two takes on this problem. I think that many young children boys AND girls should be thinner. The reason for this is because more and more Americans are becoming obese at a young age. They develop unhealthy eating and living habits and continue to live unhealthily throughout their lives. However, even though I think they should be thinner, I do not think that they should feel they need to be thinner. Life as a kid should be about mud pies, playing tag, and making sure to steer clear of cooties. Kids are starting to be infected with a horrible disease that they used to be immune to years ago. This disease makes them adjust what they think is acceptable to what society views as acceptable. Because of this, modern children’s minds are rotting away as they become more self conscious at a younger age.
Remember when it was all about Myspace? Everyone knows at least one person who had ten bajillion friends, none of whom they actually knew of course. Then, a few years later, the Facebook craze took over. Facebook was better than Myspace because of course because it was for more “mature” users, such as college students. Facebook has now dominated Myspace (…sorry Tom) and has left it trailing behind.
Well according to an article from TIME, Facebook is more useful for our parents than for ourselves. The article has ten reasons why Facebook is for the middle-aged. When I first read the title of the article, I thought it would be interesting to see what TIME came up with. To my surprise, the top ten reasons are pretty legit and are as follows:
1) Facebook is about finding people you’ve lost track of
2) They are no longer bitter about high school
3) They never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions
4) Facebook isn’t just a social network; it’s a business network
5) They’re lazy
6) They’re old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like them
7) They have children
8) They’re too old to remember e-mail addresses
9) They don’t understand twitter
10) They’re not cool and they don’t care
From this compilation of reasons, I must say that I agree that Facebook is more for the older population than the young. You’ve got to admit that most of the time spent on Facebook should be time spent on something else, like studying for that final coming up… just a thought. :]
I also really like the reason about getting photographed drunk at parties and about Facebook being a business network. College students party; not all of us, but it’s a known fact that we do. Having such inappropriate pictures up on Facebook is really risky if you’re looking for a job. Even being tagged in a picture is risky. Such behavior is unprofessional and your employer will be more than happy to look elsewhere for someone to hire.
Also, I really like the tenth reason. At the college age, we shouldn’t care about being “cool,” but that immature part of us still runs through our system, unfortunately. After thinking about the reasons presented in this article, deleting my Facebook account sounds like a good idea. I probably won’t do it, but I have more reasons to delete it than to keep it.
During this past week, I’ve been following the story of a thirteen-year-old boy named Alfie Patton who has supposedly fathered his fifteen-year-old girlfriend Chantelle Steadman’s baby named Maisie Roxanne. Just the headline alone makes you wonder, “How in the world did these kids get themselves in such a situation? In America, we like to keep an eye on our teen pregnancy rate and make sure it stays low. If this kind of event persists in the United Kingdom, I would say that they should keep an eye on their tween pregnancy rate as well. I mean, just looking at the face of the father puts you in a shocked state. How can he father a child when he is a child himself? The boy looks like he’s still eight years old with his baby face! Also, in a video of father Alfie holding Maisie, an interviewer asks the new parents a few questions. Surprisingly, the young couple didn’t seem scared at all, but this is probably because they don’t realize how big of a pickle they got themselves in. During the interview, Alfie is asked what he will do financially about the situation since his income was probably limited to his allowance. “What’s ‘financially?’” was his response. After rewording the question, Alfie tells the camera that sometimes he gets pocket money as allowance but most of the money will probably come from his parents. When most people decide to have a baby, whether conception was planned or not, they think about what the future of the baby would be, how happy the baby would be, and how the baby would impact their lives. But I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much out of this couple and the fact that they’re still children themselves. This makes me think, where are the parents of these children?
Myth of Mulan
As most people know, Disney’s Mulan is a story about a daughter who pretends to be a boy so that she can join the army in her feeble father’s place. Mulan starts out as the weakest warrior in the training camp but soon becomes the strongest and the favorite of the general’s son Shang. During battle, Mulan is wounded revealing her identity as a woman when she receives medical help. She is supposed to be killed, but her life is spared by lover boy Shang for saving his life. Instead, she gets sent home in shame. However, in the end of the movie Mulan saves the emperor from the evil Shan-Yu and becomes a hero of China.
In reality, Mulan would have been killed the instant anyone found out her real identity. The true story of Mulan actually tells of her dying in battle, but Disney works its myth magic and turns the tale into the American myth that one can accomplish anything. This gives the idea that it’s possible and perfectly okay for one to follow a goal similar to Mulan’s even if one’s life is at risk like in Mulan’s case.
In the positive light, this movie tells little girls that they can grow up to be anything they want to be and that them being a girl doesn’t have any restrictions. In today’s male-dominant world I would say that it is a good idea to instill in girls’ minds that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be. Especially with Hilary Clinton being so close to becoming president of the United States, more girls will strive to achieve as high as or higher than the boys in their competition. In the end, the myth of Mulan is actually a good thing, empowering young girls everywhere.
I recently saw He’s Just Not That Into You starring countless movie stars which is a definite must-see for guys and girls. It’s NOT just a chick flick. Anyway, there is a clip in the movie which is at the end of the trailer with Drew Barrymore’s character to Scarlett Johansson’s character her relationship situation or lack of one due to exhaustion from being rejected through countless forms of technologies. I find this quite ironic how the advancement of technology is supposed to make our lives easier, which it does in many ways, don’t get me wrong, but it also has its drawbacks as shown in the clip. Technology is meant to make networking and keeping in touch with friends and family easier, when in actuality, it just makes people more distant.
I know everyone loves getting handwritten letters and other fun stuff, but nowadays, everyone says hi through an email or a Myspace message or a superpoke on Facebook. Sure things are easier this way, you can forward an email to everyone in your address book all at once and save a lot of time, but there’s something special about personal letters that just can’t be replaced. In Drew Barrymore’s situation, if the guy really didn’t want to go out with her, he could’ve just told her or called her, that way it would have been straight forward with no mixed messages. Sure that may be a little harsh being so blunt, but at least the poor girl won’t be left wondering where they stand.
So this Christmas or Thanksgiving, or both holidays, instead of forwarding a mass text message saying “Happy Holidays Everyone!” why don’t you make at least a few personal phone calls at least to close family and give them a personal “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Thanksgiving” and let them know that they’re not just another person in your contacts list.
Platforms of Paris
It seems like everyone who is famous wants to do anything and everything in the entertainment industry. Actors want to sing, singers want to act, athletes want to rap, etc. The Disney Channel produces many of these little celebrity multi-taskers, the company just keeps pumping them out like a factory. From Miley Cyrus also known as Hannah Montana, to Raven Simone, to the Jonas Brothers and so on, practically all of the young actors happen to also sing!
Although Paris Hilton did not get her start on the Disney channel, she is very much a part of this mutli-tasking celebrity trend. All at once, Paris juggles modeling, acting, singing, not to mention her clothing line and her fragrance line. If she keeps at it, she might just run out of things to do…
I guess I can understand why she would want to take on so many different mediums to get her name out there, but what bothers me the most is that I don’t find her talented in any of the things she does… at all. She’s a pretty face to put on the cover of a magazine, but her acting skills as presented in the 2005 House of Wax was anything but impressive. Her role basically consisted of running around screaming until her death near the end of the movie. Paris’s clothing line is nothing out of the ordinary, not to mention that every other celebrity out there either has their own clothing line or it’s in the works. The same concept goes for her fragrance, which is very creatively named “Heiress.” When there was talk about Paris Hilton starting up a singing career, I honestly thought it was a horrible rumor, but I was proven wrong. Paris’s single “Stars are Blind” even made its way onto the top ten in 2006 somehow. I can understand celebrities having more than one passion, but Paris just takes it overboard.
-I couldn’t find the official music video for her song, but the song is horrible enough, enjoy :]
Bride Wars
Most girls consider their wedding day the most important day of their lives. I have even thought about it a few times over the course of my life. In Bride Wars, two best friends played by Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway envision their dream weddings since the first wedding they experienced together. Since that day, they both hoped for June weddings at The Plaza. When the time came for their very own weddings, a small mistake made by the wedding planner’s assistant led to the dilemma of both weddings scheduled on the same day at The Plaza. Throughout the movie, each bride goes to desperate lengths to get the other to change the date. This conflict then leads to each bride competing for the “better” dream wedding since neither give in to change the date.
Even though this movie seems like an exaggeration at times, it sheds light on how important weddings are to American culture. In the movie, the impression is given that the groom sometimes has no say in the wedding decisions. This popular idea is false because although it may seem like the bride controls everything, all decisions are made mutually and takes effort from both the bride and the groom as does the relationship itself.
Even though this movie seems like an exaggeration at times, it sheds light on how important weddings are to American culture. The characters in the film bend over backwards to make their dream weddings come true, or at least get as close as they can to it. This is true for people in real life as well. Weddings take months to plan with lots of attention to detail, not to mention, lots of money. With all the pressure from the media (commercials, magazines, movies, etc.) to look and feel your best on a daily basis, your wedding day should be no different. If anything, you are to look and feel better than your best on your wedding day.
Most television shows and movies in today’s media shows America’s youth indulging in sex freely and carelessly. However this scene (starting at 27:10) from a recent episode titled “Love Me or Leave Me” of a popular television show 90210, shows an alternative view of teenagers today; one that does not suggest we are all horny sex driven people who cannot control their hormones. Both characters Annie and Ethan are clearly in love and ready to take the next step, but when Annie expresses to Ethan how she has been waiting for this moment with the perfect guy, etc., Ethan has second thoughts on account of not being able to bear hurting her in case their relationship does not exactly work out as a happily ever after. This shows the counterpart of what seems to always be portrayed as the ideal male. This scene shows people that sex ISN’T everything, and that it is OKAY to wait. It also shows parents that the youth do not have sex just to do it, rather, it shows the fact that we actually link our values and morals to such an idea. In addition, it helps give the “nice guys” or the “women’s men” out there a voice by showing a main character who actually cares for his girlfriend’s values and doesn’t just want to get into her pants. Many parents do not believe that we, America’s youth, think about the actions that we take; this is true especially of over-protective and over-worried parents. I just find it as a great relief that not everyone on television is pregnant or having sex with everyone all the time as shown in other characters in 90210, other television shows such as ABC’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and in real people in the media such as Jamie Lynn Spears.
I was looking for a slideshow of Abercrombie and Fitch pictures and ads but instead came across this commercial, which I wasn’t even aware that they had commercials. Anyway, the men and women featured in this commercial strongly state their ideal men and women and show how they think men and women should look. One’s clothes project one’s image. A&F being a clothing line is apparently projecting the idea that women should be thin, tall, light skinned, silky hair, and a perfectly toned body with a busty chest. Similarly, men are also to be tall, light skinned, perfectly toned, muscular, have thick heads of hair, strong jaws, and sharp facial features among other things. Unless we all airbrush makeup on our bodies everyday, no one is able to come close to the images projected by the clothing line. In addition, there were a couple scenes from the commercial that is directed more towards men. The shots with the couples were practically saying, “Buy these clothes, and you’ll be like me and have beautiful women all over you.” From the commercial, you can tell the target age is in the range of eighteen to twenty-five. However, knowing that there is an Abercrombie Kids line also is a tad frightening because the styles of clothing and the pictures plastered on the walls and turned into shopping bags incorporate the same style of a flawless image for boys and girls, knocking down their self esteem at a very young age. The pictures of shirtless boys, not men, boys, and the short skirts on sale for girls is giving the idea that boys and girl need to be “sexy” in order to be normal and accepted. At least, that is what the ads and what they call “décor” in the stores are saying to today’s children. The idea that one needs to be sexy and flawless to be appealing and normal is being aimed at younger and younger audiences. This is definitely anything but good.
