Booberexia?

Ok I know that lots of people commented on this but Im a little disturbed by how prevalent this is in our society. Since last week I have really realized how much boobs have become a part of our daily lives. I was on Postsecret this week and found this:

And right below it was this one:

 I can relate to both of these, and im not suprised that they were sent in.

For those of you who are not aware of what postsecret is, its ust a website that allows people to say the things that they would never tell anyone, in the form of a post card. Its really great, I learn a lot about people just by reading it every week. The fact that there were two “secrets” this week that had to do with Boobs really disturbs me. I really agree that we are obsessed.  I had a friend in Highschool that had massive boobs and had to have a reduction at 16. i remember being about 18 at the time and being so jealous of her incredible boobs. I remember what it was like being a teenager and being really insecure, and constantly comparing myself to everyone else ( by that I mean the models on TV, and the pornstar looking women on the cover of  Fittness magazines.) I hate that my chlidren are going to be growing up in this crap.

I also think that this is what makes women so catty towards eachother.  There is this huge issue of jealousy if another woman its even a fraction closer to the idea of what perfection looks like than we are. Ill admit it, I check out girls just as much as guys do, but its in a different way. More like scoping out the competition, if you will. I work at a restraunt and its so  interesting to see the people that they hire, and how they get treated once they do start working there. The tiny girls with big boobs make really good money and wind up staying for a while. The ordinary girls with ordinary or average build, make alright money and wind up getting fired or quit. Its really interesting.

what is the freakin fascination?? I would like to blame porn for this. As mentioned in class, most women who go in for implants bring pictures of porn stars as a guide for the surgeon. This fact really kind of makes me sick a little. Mostly because of the way that women are portreyed in porn. Ill admit that my viewing of porn is not extnesive, but what I have seen really grossed me out. I think that porn completley ruins men, and even women for what sex is supposed to be like.  Some men spend hours a week looking at porn, and imagining themselves having sex with countless women, after a while it becomes like nothing. It hardens the heart like nothing else, and makes me more angy than I could ever express to you. As a woman, i find it so frustrating what porn has done to men.

Advertising

SO im extremely sick today, and I would like to apologize if this post makes little sense… I blame it entirely on being jacked up on Tylenol with Codine for the past two days… here we go:

I have this love hate relationship with advertising as many people do I think. Sometimes I hate it, like when commercials are so stupid thatyou feel dumber for having watched them, or when at the end of the commercial you have no idea what they were selling. SOme of the examples in class last week were like that, and I find it really frustrating. In my first year of college we looked at probably fifty alcohol and ciggarette ads, and all of them were appauling if you really looked at them. Clever… yet appauling.

At the same time, I have to admit that there have been some commercials that I have loved more than life itself. Generally my love comes from one character. It will be either the look on their face when something happens, or just one funny, awkward line, is pretty much enough to have me rolling on the floor laughing. I tried to find it on Utube but, there is this one preview for some cartoon movie comming out soon, but it has a TRex roaring at some people, trying to be all scary and then the Closed Captioning underneath it said ” I have a big head and tiny arms”… Pretty much the funniest thing Ive ever seen. I dont even know what the movie is called or what the context of the quote is, reguardless, its halarious to me.

So how can we take one side or the other on this kind of thing? Last week  one of the other classmates wrote about all of the horrible commercials that are out right now, one of them being the ortho tricyclean commercials that promote sexual activity among the 15 year old girl population. I was watching MTV last night and the same company was sponsoring a huge MTV event, and their slogans were everywhere. I think its one thing to have the odd commercial, but I also think that it is something entirely different to be pushing underage women ino doing something that they are not ready for. I wish that there were some kind of stronger laws sorrounding how companies are able to advertise their product.  I know that years ago, they would never allow a birthcontrol company to sponsor a teenage event.

Silence is loud!!!!!!!!!!

 

I think that our generation has a problem. Myself included. I don’t think that I could go one day without music. I think that I have either my Ipod on, or much music, or my car stereo on, or even at work we have satellite radio. Now that I think of it, I don’t think that there is any part of my day that I am not listening to music. I’m not a huge music junkieeither, I am just surrounded by it.  I  actually get really nervous when it is silent. Silence is louder than most people think, and I don’t think I’m alone here. In-fact I think that millions of people are making a lot of money off of people like me, that cant stand to be in a quiet room. I find it interesting how they have come up with better, more expensive ways to make money off of people. For example, people began using the Internet to avoid having to buy music, and then they created the I, and charged loads of money for it. To be honest I know that a lot of people feel bad for downloading music illegally, but I really dont. There are enough people that still buy CDS or that pay to download music, and lets face it the artists are not starving!!

 

My job is extremely emotional, and I love finding music that I can use with my clients to help them feel as though they are not alone. I actually studied Music Therapy in College, and I find it so amazing. Its weird how just being able to listen to someone express their emotions can be so theraputic, for everyone. I for one tend to appriciate more of the acoustic music scene. Artists like Dallas Green, Saosin(acoustic stuff obvously), and The Sceene Aesthetic(also  the acoustic stuff).  they tend to be more mellow and emotionally charged lyrics which I love.  I read an article on the power of poetry the other day, which also includes song lyrics. The writer was saying how poetry is in many ways just an autobiography. Ill quote it here for you because her words were amazing:

“Everything I have ever written is fundamentally autobiographical, no matter what the topic or style; to state my life now in an orderly way with clear language is actually to restate, simplified what has already been said. If I could just come right out and state it like that, as a matter of fact, I would not have needed poetry. If I could look my childhood in the eye and describe it, I would not have had to veil those memories in a metaphor. If I had grown up with a comfortable identity I would need to explain myself from one or another persona.”- Rita Joe 

I loved this quote, I think that she is absolutely right. Music is a release for so many people, and its so different for everyone. The more I thought about this the began to realize that its not just those that make music or write poetry that contain this autobiographical information, but even if you just flip through someones Ipod, you can tell so much about who they are by the lyrics of the songs and the tempo of the music that they listen to. Sorry to ramble on but this stuff is fascinating to me.

So here is a song that I love, you can just feel the emotion in this one guys!!

Generation gap? I think so…

 

Id just like to say how bad I feel for people who have not kept up with technology and are now paying the price for it. I was recently home hanging out with my parents and was made painfully aware of how difficult it is for older people to understand technology if they have not kept up with it. My dad for example, doesnt even know how to turn on a computer, and gets really frustrated when he has to write a letter or a resume or something that must be professional. I dont really understand how people can get away with not having even basic computer skills in this day and age. I am blown away at the extent that he has gone through to avoid technology  completely in his professional carreer. Granted my dad is a site superintendant, and has worked in trades for years, but still to have never had to learn how to even type just baffeles me.  Hes had secretaries, or assistants that have always taken care of the administrative end of his job and has in turn, never had to learn how to manage  and office. He made a comment about how frustrating it is for him now to find files because it is all done electronically, and if  his partner is out of the office then he has to wait because he has no idea how to access them.  I got thinking about it and it’s not just computers that he has a hard time with, I mean he only knows how to dial out of and recieve calls on his  company cellphone. He has no numbers stored in it, but carries a pocket address and phone number book. I have so many questions about this. How can people still be so Old School?? Do they not know that these things make their lives so much easier? How do you train someone that has missed so much, how to live with the technology of today? I think about how far we have come even in my lifetime and sometimes it scares me. Rolled film to digital cameras, tapes to ipods, landline telephones to cellphones, snail mail to email and probably the most important of all the creation of the internet. I myself could not live without it, but I can see how all of these things would be intimidating to someone that has no idea how amazing they really are.

Sometimes I worry about when I am old and have no idea what the hell is going on around me because I have not bothered to keep up with the latest things. I worry about how disconnected from the world I will feel. Does this happen to everyone? At what point are our lives easy enough, and we stop looking for ways to make them easier? I know that my kids will never stop looking, at least in my lifetime, but is there a point where as an elderly person you just dont care anymore, and you give up?  Its kind of a weird thing to think about.

 

Chomsky Video

 

Yeah this shirt says “Chomsky’s Dope”

 

Overall I thought this video was super boaring. He had tons of really great ideas, and the guy is a genious for sure, but some of what he is saying was way over my head. I found that it was a lot of information in a really short amount of time. I thought that he talked so quickly and that he was so articulate that I had a hard time keeping up. I mean, I am in my fourth year of University, and I consider myself to be relatively well educated, but the clips were too much too fast. I loved his idea that the media is just a way of keeping everybodys noses out of the wars and the government affairs though. I think that he is 100% right on that. Just today I was watching Oprah and she had Chris Rock on and he was talking about the same thing. How people are far more interested in celebrity news than they are in the real news like how many people died in Iraq today. Overall I thought it was a good movie, but kinda tedous and boaring. Maybe my generation just needs flashing lights and bevis and butthead type characters to understand things. Just Jokes. Id like to think that we are more intersting than that.

Movie assignment

Over the Christmas break I had the opportunity to hang out with an old friend. We wound up at the theater, after a long dinner and some catching up. I figured that this would be a great opportunity to observe people, and do this assignment (apparently I don’t get out much, being that this was the last movie that I saw). If there is one thing I love, it is going to the movies with friends.  I love the smell of the popcorn, the excitement of the loud movie, and just being out with people that I like to hang out with. The first thing that I noticed was how much bigger the theaters are there than they are here in
Lethbridge. It had been a while since I had been home but I had forgot how much better things are in the city.

Now I was back home in Calgary, and one of the things that I noticed, was how much more primped people get, just to go to the movies. Granted, many of the people that I saw were on dates, and probably dressed up to impress each other, but even the twelve year olds had makeup on, and were carrying their Louis Vaton bags, spending their parents money, and racking up credit cards that they don’t pay for. Another thing I noticed, and I used to do this too but never this bad, was that none of the twelve year olds were wearing jackets… even though it was -30. I have a hard time with that. I can’t believe that parents let their children out of the house wearing what they do, it makes me scared for the future.  When I was twelve, we opted out of wearing jackets too, just to be cool. We did not however do it when it was that cold, and we didn’t run around in only a tube top that were too small for us when we did it. -30 is cold people!!!!

Once we got into the theater the next thing that I noticed was how important seating is to people. Most people have a specific seat that they like to sit in, or a specific view that they prefer to watch the movie from. I don’t know if this has to do with the fact that they don’t want to strain their necks looking across the screen, or if the sound waves hit their eardrums at different angles, and possibly sound better, but they are very careful about where they choose to sit. I saw one couple move three times. The first time, the woman came in and sat down while her boyfriend was getting popcorn, and as soon as he came in and found her he suggested that they move. So they did. As soon as they sat down, they began to look for somewhere else to sit.  It was kind of funny because by the third time they looked very content with themselves for having made the switch.

 

Another thing that I noticed was how excited people get when they get away with something, or how sneaky they think that they are being. These two boys were too young to be seeing the movie that they wanted to so they bought a ticket for some G rated show and as soon as they got past the ticket guy they ran into the movie that they were not supposed to be seeing. It was quite the operation, and it was so entertaining to watch.  It was not only the young boys who were thrilled with themselves for beating the system, but another couple just in front of me were trying to put their feet up on the seat, as many do in a theater. Just as the theater worker came in to walk the isles the couple put their feet down and commented to each other like this was a stupid rule, and as soon as they left, the couple returned their feet to the back of the seat in front of them. Once again they commented to each other, probably about how amazing they are getting around the rules, or how stealthily they had escaped being yelled at, even though it is the oldest movie trick in the book.

 

The last thing that I noticed was the people in our row. They were really the only ones that I could see from where I was sitting. The things that people do, and the expressions on people’s faces are hilarious when they don’t think that anyone is watching. Many of them had the blank stare look, or the open mouth look, and I even caught one girl picking her nose for like an hour. What could possibly be in there for an hour???

 

The movie that I saw was “the Pursuit of Happiness” with Will Smith. I have to say that I was really not a Will Smith fan before, but that he was really good in this movie. His son was also very good, for a 6 year old. The final thing that I experienced with this movie was that the friend that I was with cried at the end ( it is an emotional ending), and I didn’t. My initial reaction was awkwardness, because I wasn’t crying, which quickly lead to me making a comment about how unmanly crying in a movie theater was. After he explained the reason that he was crying to me, I felt like such a jerk, and It lead to thinking about why it is so awkward when guys cry. Even as a counselor, I find it SO uncomfortable when older men begin to get emotional about deeply rooted issues. I hate that our society has defined the male gender this way. I don’t understand why men have to be tough all the time, but I was able to get through it without feeling like too guilty for making my comment once we had talked about it, but its true… very few men will cry in public, or allow themselves to be emotionally jerked around by something like a movie or art, or music.  Why is it that we put men, and even women sometimes in these boxes and place gender roles on them. In this movie Will Smith struggles to be the man in his family and to be the backbone of financial security for himself and his son, while his wife just takes off, leaving him to take care of their son on his own. This movie is based on his ability to provide, and be a man. I just think that it is so funny that we expect so much of one person, when it is humanly impossible to always be the strong one. Every movie that I have ever seen in a theater has been an experience. There are always three or four things that I find funny about people when I go to see a movie. Sometimes it is their mannerisms or their lack of respect for others, or even their complete disregard for those around them because they are so enthralled in the movie. It is a new experience every time.

I have one thing to say

I would really like to just say how much I love RuPaul. I have been holding back my eagerness on this topic, but being that for the past two weeks I have done posts on image in the media, I thought this would be a nice follow up/ culture lesson for all of you who are not very savvy on the world of drag.

 

This is an entertainment field that not many people know much about, but it is absolutely fascinating if you do your homewok on it. RuPaul, for those who do not know, is a very famous drag performer/singer/supermodel/songwriter. They actually used one of her songs on the 2005 season of "The biggest Loser".

 

My intrest in her began when I saw a supermodel documentary on her in my first year of college. One of the biggest things that I found interesting was her disintrest in how people refered to her. She does not have a specific identity in terms of gender and has deemed both He and She as acceptable forms of reference. I have never heard of anyone, even transsexuals accepting both forms of reference, they usually prefer one or the other. The other thing that really baffles me is how beautiful of a woman she is, AND how stunning of a man she is, depending on her dress. I don't even know the word for "both" because she is, in so many ways both. She is not afraid to be photographed either way, there are many pictures of her with other celebrities both as a man and as a woman. One of my favorite quotes from her is, "we all came into this world naked, and the rest of it is all drag". The reason that I find this whole thing so interesting is because of the reason that she does drag. in the documentary that I saw with her, she mentioned that the whole thing was simply making fun of the way that the media portrays women. If you think about it, she was way ahead of her time when she began all of this back in the early eighties, but she was a huge success, because... well look at her. And she is a guy!!! Most women would die to have even one of these pictures taken of them to show to all of their friends, because he makes a gorgous woman, and takes beautiful pictures. This concept of making fun of the way that the media portrays women is really intriguing because if you look at all of the pictures that she takes or all of the photo shoots that she has done they are all excessive, as if she is laughing at the world for being so stupid, and they ate it up! She was on the cover of every major fashion magazine in the world, and made shitloads of money doing this. I know that this is not considered "superior" entertainment in the eyes of sociologists, however I find it so interesting. Here you have this man that has transformed himself into a woman, yet identifies with neither. She also makes a living by making fun of our society and creating performances and music out of it.Its mind boggling!!! This is one of her videos for those of you who have not seen it.

 

 

 

Oh RuPaul, your so sneaky!!!

Are you serious??? This is not hot!!!

So the other night I was procrastinating doing my homework, and I turned on the tv, which is rare… but I came across a show called ” The Man Whose Arms Exploded” I know that this show has been on before, but I have never actually been able to watch it. It was the most disgusting display of drug use that Ive seen in a really long time… and Im an addiction counsellor. Seriously.  I have a really hard time with the media and the way that they portray both men and women, but this really made me mad. Last week I posted a blog about the female image that the media pushes,  and this week I thought that it would be fair to explore the male image as well.

My best friend from highschool started taking steroids when he was in his first year of University, for hockey… they were given to him from his coach. He then went on to work for a gym as a personal trainer, and he did some competitions and won. Just like runway models, this is not the healthy image that they showing us. These are unattainable images that require a dangerous conditions.

The entire show, this guy was just talking about how bad steroids are for you, and his message was fine but the fact that Im fairly confident that he is still using, was somewhat bothersome. Is this really what we find attractive? Because as a female, this man would crush me in one hand, and the amount of shit involved in looking like this would be absolutely unacceptable as a partner. The drug activity (both buying and selling), the amount of time that he spent at the gym, the constant vanity, would all become very old after a while. I know that many men feel the same with women who are overly concerned about their weight, and I can empathise.  I can not think of one woman that would expect their husband to be perfectly chizzled and flawless, women are GENERALLY not that shallow.I wish that the media portreyed more of the truth about what women really want in a guy. Sure, everyone has that one guy that they slept with in University, that was really hot, and sexy… whatever, these are not the guys that you take home to your parents. These are the guys you get with untill you find a real man. The real men are ones that can have a girl laughing her ass off all night, ones that arent afraid to make a fool out of themselves just to get a smile out of a girl that they care about. A real man knows how to treat a girl, and how to make her feel that she is the most beautiful, intelligent, most feminine woman that he has ever seen… where is all of this in the media? Id like to know why we are not showing our kids that this is what a true, healthy relationship looks like. Not the picturesque barbie doll wife, and her beefy husband. Im sorry Im all riled up about this, Ill stop ranting… watch the clip and tell me that you dont agree with me:

So to all of you guys out there, that feel the need to compare yourself to men in magazines, dont. Take care of yourself, get a haircut, eat properly, learn how to make a girl laugh, be romantic, thoughtful, and smart. Thats it, thats all we ask.

Phat

I have a really big problem with the media today for this reason. I got online today and saw this ad:

It kind of made me sick a little. These were  the models that mercedes benz used for their fashion show this week. First of all, why is mercedes benz making clothes, and second of all  I have such a hard time with the media and the way that they portrey the female image right now. With all we know about women and the way that they function, and how distructive the media influence can be, Im shocked that this crap is still happening. Although there are some people, and some companies that are working against this image it is still very strong. I do a lot of work with teenagers, in the schools and I used to work out at  summercamps, and every year I see the same thing. You always wind up with a group of girls that stand around and complement eachother, and at the same time they are putting themselves down because they are not the ideal shape, or they are not pretty enough. I was looking around thismorning and I found this clip of the Tyra show that I really liked Ill leave it for those of you who want to check it out:

 

I would also like to commend companies such as Baby Phat and Dove for campaining for real women. Baby Phat just launched a “plus size” line for women who dont fit into the 1,3,5,7 mold.

 I hate to be such a media downer, but this kind of crap is what makes our world so much harder to live and be happy in. As far as I am concerned, life is far to short to be unhappy, and most people who are unhappy are that way because they have internalized all fo this shit, and cant be content with the way that they are.  As a future counsellor I find it intimidating when I think of the fact that I will be up against these images when promoting healthy families and healthy lifestyles. Im sorry Im just so fed up with it today, and I wanted to rant about it.