Heres a video on Unwanted Sexual Attention, which is what happened to Isabel. This video is from the 80's teaching about sexual harassment and unwanted attention.

Object Lessons: Romance, Violation, and Female Adolescent Desire By Beborah L. Tolman

I think what Deborah Tolman was trying to say in this article is how young girls are afraid to talk about their sexuality.It is a difficult subject to discuss. The girl Isabel that she interviewed, who is 16, has experienced a lot at her age, and is afraid to think about her sexuality sometimes, because she doesn't know what to think about love and sex, but she knows that she is just trying to figure things out about herself. 

Isabel told Deborah many stories about what has happened to her over the years. These stories were hard to Isabel to talk about, but it made her think more about things, and why she is so afraid to discuss why she hasn't been in a relationship, and is afraid to talk about sex. Also, how Isabel thinks, and views herself as sexy. Isabel said," Oh, it's so wonderful. And sometimes, like once in awhile, on a really good day, when I'm in a very good mood, it happens in real life, where I just feel sexy, and I know everybody must be just looking at me like, 'Oh wow, she's so beautiful.' Or like 'Oh my gosh, she must have 30 boyfriends outside of school'(...)." Isabel gets confident sometimes about herself, but that can be tough for her most times.

I found this text to be very interesting. Hearing what Isabel went through, and how she is trying to be confident with herself,after the unwanted attention must have been tough for her. She is trying really hard to make her self feel confident, and not be afraid of herself wanting to express her sexuality.

New Media, Networking and Phatic Culture by Vincent Miller

The things that I understand in this article is that the internet affects us more than we think it does. It is world wide, and we can express ourselves in many ways with it. There is writing blogs,  and using Facebook, Myspace, DevianArt. There is just so many different things. I agree, that these networks do change the way that we all communicate, but they also allow us to express ourselves in a way too. Vincent Miller says,"One aspect which is particularly important here is the assertion that self-disclosure  becomes increasingly important as a means to gain trust and achieve authentic but ( contingent) relationships with others. Giddens argues that late modern subjects gravitate towards relationships which engender trust through constant communication and reflex- ive practice. In other words, we crave relationships that allow us to open up to others, and not just in the romantic sense, because in late modernity, the demand for intimacy becomes ‘virtually compulsive’. " I think what he means when he says this is that we like to constantly communicate with people. With the internet now days, communicating is so much easier than it ever was before.

Heres this really funny video about Facebook.

This article relates back to the McMillian and Morrison article, about the use of internet, and how much it affects us.

Fast Forward by Lauren Greenfield

Fast Forward is about the Photographs that Lauren Greenfield took of L.A kids. She wanted to know these kid’s stories and what was going on in their life. She wanted to know their goals and dreams, and how where they are living influences them.

 

            In Los Angeles, media is a huge impact on most teenagers and kids. The whole ideal of living in Hollywood and making it big is was might kids/teens wish for.  In L.A, kids/teens want to show off how much money they have. They want to have a lot of materialistic things. L.A. is very diverse city, and many of the kids and teens want to make it big, and be well known in different ways. Some of the ways they want to become famous is kind of disturbing too. 

In Lauren Greenfield’s article she said,” a striking commonality throughout was the importance of image and celebrity. As innocuously as throwing the most extravagant party or creating an individual style, as gravely as killing a member of another gang, L.A.'s kids are engaged in the age-old Hollywood pursuit of making a name for themselves. The quest for notoriety has become a rite of passage. At a time of life when young people struggle to form their identities, that struggle is raised to new heights in the context of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Whether it is the desire to be an adult when one is a child, to be a gangster when one is privileged, to be famous when one is unknown, or to look like a model when one does not, young people are preoccupied with becoming other than they are. Los Angeles, in her traditional role as the city of dreams has bequeathed the quest for the dream to her children. The self-consciousness that underlies their aspirations inevitably costs them their innocence.”

What she is saying in this quote is that kids/teens are trying to grow up too fast.

 

            I think Greenfield would agree with Raby’s five discourses. They both discuss how the media influences kids/teens and how it’s making them grow up too fast, and not enjoy being a kid.

            I think McMillian and Morrison would respond to Lauren Greenfields book in a positive way. Greenfield is seeing the real teens, and they are letting her know how the media influences them.

 

            In Greenfield’s book, it’s a lot of young people. The oldest in the book is 20 years old, and the youngest is 3 years old. The people that are absent in her book are 21 and over. I think the reason for that is so she can see how young we are influenced by our media, and how it truly effects us.

           

          

Glee

This is one of my favorite t.v. shows, and when I watched the pilot episode again, I really tried to see what was the message in this show. When I was watching Glee, it's about a group of kids, who aren't very popular, and they are all different. The kids are always the odd kids out in school, and they want to make a change for themselves. When they see the signup sheet for Glee Club, it gives them hope. The teacher who runs the Glee Club, Mr. Schuester, fights to allow the Glee Club, because the kids feel invisible around the popular people, and just in the whole school, even to some of the teachers. There was nothing that I didn't understand.

Some of the kids didn't even want to do Glee Club, because they thought that they were going to get made fun of. These are the kids who already feel out of place in their own school, and because of what everyone thinks, they are afraid to do something that they love. The character Rachel has always been picked on. She would always put videos of herself on her myspace singing, and people would make fun of her. When she went to sign up for Glee Club, she always put a gold star sticker next to her name, because she knows that she's going to make it big someday.

The character Finn, is a jock, but when Mr. Schuester hears Finn singing in the boys locker room, it gives him hope that there's more like him that have talent, and are afraid to show it. Finn is pressured by his football team to not do Glee Club. They said to him that it's either Glee Club or the team. Finn does both, because he wants to do both, and he doesn't see the problem.

When you first watch this episode, you realize how unsupportive Mr. Schuester's wife is about Glee Club, right when he brings it up to her. His wife even thinks don't bother with the kids. She is also "pregnant" and she wants him to get a better job. Mr. Schuester decides to quit teaching and doing Glee Club, when he all of a sudden hears the kids singing " Don't Stop Believing". I think this song has a huge influence with this episode, because its a message for the kids singing it to not give up, and also to Mr. Schuester to not give up on something that they all love and have a huge passion for.

I found this interesting video. It has a good message, and it relates to this show really well.

I think this show represents teenagers in many different ways, because all of the teenagers in this show are all different. They are all hiding something. They are all afraid to show who they truly are, because of what their peers might think, and also their teachers. I think the main message in this show is showing that you shouldn't be afraid to show who you are and not care what others think. Even though it's hard for these kids to not care what their peers think, they become stronger doing something that's different instead of trying to follow the crowd.

Hip-Hop in Media by Jared A. Ball Ph.D.

I understood what Jared A. Ball was discussing in his two articles about Hip-Hop in media. In the first article, it was saying how it can be good, but sometimes bad. Africa Americans created Hip-Hop, and it's been popular now for over thirty years. I found this quote in Jared's first article"Hip-hop’s popularity has done nothing to improve Black America’s overall wealth, education, health-care, or certainly rates of imprisonment. In fact, the popularity of hip-hop is used to deny these conditions or explain them as natural to the conditions of African America. It is not to the people that these conditions are natural but, instead, to the condition of being colonized. Popular media and, therefore, hip-hop cannot be changed prior to a societal shift (revolution) in who holds power and how that power is to be wielded." I think what he is saying here, that it's the condition, that we live in, and what the media is trying to tell us. It's not the peoples fault.

In the second article, Jared talks about censorship in Hip-Hop music. He discussed how some songs  that have the wrong messages, like "Fuck the police" should be censored. How in even some music videos it is censored. But it's not just Hip-Hop music, its all kinds of music. Jared said,"Corporate lockdown of popular media is a political necessity and scientific inevitability requiring further description of this process, along with suggested avenues of resistance, which will be the focus of subsequent columns. Our approach to the study of and response to media must be akin to that of Huey P. Newton who said he “studied law to become a better burglar.”

Hip-Hop music can have some bad messages in them. But it might also have some good messages too.I feel that any type of music can have a positive or negative affect on our society.

This is a Hip-Hop dance from the TV show from "So You think you can Dance?"

Hip-Hop is huge in dance, and there is a lot of different kinds of Hip-Hop around.

Heres a video about Hip-Hop Music:

This video explains a lot about Hip-Hop from the past to Hip-Hop now.

Coming of Age with the Internet by McMillian and Morrison

When I was reading this article, I understood how much we all depend on the internet, and how much we need it, and at some points don't need it in our lives.  The internet helps us discover all kinds of things. We learn something new whenever we are on the internet. Could be a news story, going on the website Stumble Upon,  and finding some interesting facts about all kinds of things. One of the people that McMillian and Morrison said this about the internet. "The internet has changed my life. I now almost exclusively buy organic foods. I no longer eat red meat because of information I retrieved off of the American Medical Association's Website and from sites authored by various environmental organizations. The web introduced me to my favorite intellectual, Noam Chomsky, who forever altered my perception of the world.(Brian)." What McMillian and Morrison are saying in this article, is that even the internet can change your way of life, because you learn new things. Also with the internet, you have to be very careful too, and know who you are talking to. There have been many predators online, so you have to be very careful on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. Here's a good website on internet safety. Here is also the website Stumble Upon, so many people use this website, and you can find out a lot of interesting information on all kinds of things.

A Tangle of Discourses by Rebecca C. Raby

When I was reading the article A Tangle of Discourses by Rebecca C. Raby, the point of her article was the difference between generations among different women when they are teenagers, and while some are currently teenagers. She interviewed grandmothers and granddaughters and  asked them their opinions of teenagers. If teenagers are good or bad? Raby discusses how adolescents  go through many different changes, which effects how their behavior is towards their parents and others. That is the main point in her article. When Raby was interviewing the teenage girls, she would ask them all kinds of questions about the pressures that they go through, also through their own changes.

I found this song Teenagers by My Chemical Romance. This song explains how some older people may feel about teenagers, just like the grandmothers that Raby interviewed.

I guess our elders can be annoyed with teenagers sometimes, because a lot of the advertisements and media are towards teenagers. That's not necessarily a good thing either. 

I found this great article on teenagers, and how we learn a lot from our teenage years. When Raby was interviewing the grandmothers in her article, one of the grandmothers said that her and the teenagers around now, are from different generations, so teenagers do things differently.

This article also refers back to when we were looking up things for Media Literacy, and how teenagers are influenced by media.

I hope all of our elders don't think that badly of teenagers. We are just from completely generations.

Media Literacy Part 2

Another thing I would like to say about Media Literacy is that in all of the commercials,  they are always advertising make up, and things to make you look thinner. They are never sending any positive messages. When young girls see this, they question whether  they are thin enough, or pretty enough. When I was looking at makeup commercials, I found this commercial with Drew Barrymore, and they things that she is saying isn't good. " Department Store look" what the heck is that? She is also saying you'll look beautiful with the makeup on. Take beautiful back with tons of makeup, thats an awful message.

Heres another commercial for clothing, and its Miley Cyrus new clothing line being sold at Walmart.

There's going to be so many young girls who will want to buy Miley's clothes, because she is such a huge media influence. They want to dress like her. 

Most of the commercials that are on TV have celebrities  on them. They help sell the product, which makes the company get the big bucks. The celebrities are what influence the media. They can either send good messages, or bad, and right now the media is sending a lot of bad messages.

Media Literacy

Here's a website where I found a lot of good information on Media Literacy.

Here's this really good Dove commercial  that I found, and it shows how media affects us.

Heres the music video that Kayla was talking about in class. Stupid Girls by Pink. The song is about how the media is showing bad messages towards young women.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR4yQFZK9YM

Unpacking the Myths that Bind Us by Linda Christensen

When I was reading this article, the authors main idea was how child cartoons affect us. She was bringing up Disney movies, Popeye cartoon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all of these things that we grew up watching, and then finding out the meaning behind these cartoons. A lot of these cartoons don't have the best message for children and give them the wrong ideas. Linda Christensen said:

Children's cartoons, movies, and literature are perhaps the most in-flu

 

entail genre "read." Young people, unprotected by any intellectual armor,

 

hear or watch these stories again and again. Often from the warmth of their

 

mother's or father's lap. The messages. or "secret education," linked with

 

the security of their homes, underscore the power these texts deliver. As

 

Tatum's research suggests, the stereotypes and world view embedded in the

 

stories become accepted knowledge.

 

When I was 13...

I was very awkward,I didn't have much fashion sense,and I had braces and glasses. I was the average middle schooler. I was in 7th grade.  Middle school is always a weird time, because you are trying to figure things out. You are getting older and changing. Your friends also change too. There was always the popular group, the "not so" cool kids, the jocks, and the average kids. I was just average.

I don't really know what else I should say. Now I feel awkward, haha :)