The Doll test

So I am kind of sad that we can't share our presentations to the class, so i am going to give you a little taste of it. While looking at advertising that gives different false self images, specifically involving the race portrayed and targeted to I came across a video on YouTube that I thought was fairly shocking. The video shows an experiment done on children called the doll test. The test is done by showing children of different backgrounds three barbies ( they are all dressed the same, the only difference is the color of their skin.) and asked which one is the prettiest, which one is the best, and which one is the baddest. The results of the test are shocking, 50% thought that the white barbie was the prettiest and 50% of the children thought that the back barbie was the baddest. Only one of the children thought that the black barbie was the prettiest.
Wow, This is the result of poor media that provides limited variety of positive images for children. Media is full of successful white people, and this test can prove that. I also found it remarkably sad that even the children of a different race or ethnicity choose the white barbie as the prettiest. So not only do children think that they won't be successful because of the color of their skin, they also don;t believe their skin is beautiful. Because these children don't find their skin to be beautiful it leads to the result that the black barbie doll is labeled bad. So how do we change these views and make children have a more positive perspective on themselves and others of their own race. I would like to be able to think that we could achieve things without the media but we all know that in today's world the media is in the middle of how our lives are run. So first we fix media to display more role models and positive goals for children of all backgrounds as well as trying to fix in what ways children interact with each other. With all of this information by the experiments conducted i would like to say that even though we have a lot we can change and improve We have also come a long way from how our grandparents and parents lived and treated each other.


References:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOHbtM9463c

For this blog post I decided to write about Miranda Lambert and her newest hit "Momma's Broken Heart" Miranda Lambert is totally kicking butt about getting good images for women to look up to in media because she is simply her.

Miranda does not excessively work out or diet, she is not a size zero and she is still really popular. She does not just sit around while her husband goes and hunts, she'll go hunting with him and totally go and kick the guys' butts at hunting and she doesn't care.

In "Momma's Broken Heart" she is talking about how she had a break up and her mom was telling her to be more lady like and be a stereotypical girl and get over it. In the song she goes crazy, but not stereotypical crazy woman she is her own kind of crazy.

I love Miranda Lambert and she is one of my favorite idols to look up to in the media. She is a great person to be in the media because she is not fake at all she is just her. We need more women like Miranda in the media to be real and not give an unrealistic view for women to see that influence us.

http://www.cmt.com/videos/miranda-lambert/885131/mamas-broken-heart.jhtml

Shout out to Amy Poehler

So, with all the discussion about the media and how it really promotes all these ideas of basically every women's issue we have studied this term, I wanted to take a minute to bring up some positive media influences. Feminist media is just a drop in the bucket but it is gaining ground.

Amy Poehler is a really inspiring person. She is a popular actress and comedian- best known for her time on (once male dominated) SNL and on the t.v shoe Parks and Rec. She identifies herself as a feminist and is doing some really cool work when it comes to spreading her views and influencing young girls.

Amy Poehler has a great media campaign called "Smart Girls at the Party".
As describes on the website, it "is a rapidly expanding online network that aims to help the process of cultivating the authentic selves of young women and the young at heart." Basically, it is a series of video on youtube with different themes. She interviews girls, has an "Ask Amy" series, advice series, and other. The point of these videos is to inspire confidence in women and makes a point to discuss how multi-faceted women are- we can't be put in a box. The videos cover issues from body image, negativity, community projects, interviews with girls from different cultures and interviews with women in a variety of professions. The campaign also motivates girls to find something that interests them- no matter what it is- life will be more interesting when they are being themselves. 

The campaign is definitely gaining popularity and I can definitely see why. Amy Poehler is a well know actress/comedian and the youtube series has a great mix of humor and heart. Some of the videos have 300,000+ views! This is also the perfect platform to reach her audience.  One of the best things about it is just to see someone taking this much action to do something they are interested in. It is really inspiring. 

I believe she's doing important work. I hope it inspires other. 

http://www.youtube.com/smartgirls

Steubenville

So. The Steubenville case. There has been a lot in the news about what happened, the perpetrators, the verdict, and the recent Facebook and Twitter threats made to the victim after the trial’s conclusion. Honestly, I was not sure which article to write about—the overly sympathetic coverage of the football players by CNN, the threats or perhaps this new article about the blogger who brought light to the criminalizing tweets and Facebook posts made back in August? I also read in another blogger article linked to me by a friend, which one of the takeaway messages put out by the media is “to watch what one posts on social media websites.”

WHAT. THE. HELL. Seriously, what has happened in our society that two boys with reputably “promising futures” have NO IDEA, NO CONCEPT, NO INKLING that what they were doing was wrong? What has happened to our world in which suddenly KIDS, no, not young adults, KIDS are the ones running the show and not the adults? On the CNN coverage, I would like to agree on one concept: that yes, it is an absolute shame that two KIDS are going to pay the rest of their lives for a message that our society and social media puts out every hour on the hour. It is a crying shame that these two kids were not given the right parenting and educational instruction to let them know that this kind of behavior IS NOT OKAY. It is a shame that the adult figures in this so-called community were not mature enough, not intelligent enough, not ADULT ENOUGH to rein in these KIDS and what they were doing. IT IS A SHAME THAT EVERYONE IN THIS WHOLE SITUATION DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH RESPECT FOR HUMAN BEINGS AND LACKED THE ABILITY TO TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG.

Honestly, I think that is what scares me the most about this case. It takes the monsters out from under our beds, out of the dark alleys and from behind the bushes and puts all around us. And then, the knowledge that they have surrounded us for a long time and we never even thought to look away from our brightly lit computer screens giving us repetitive images and messages which tell us that women are not really people and the ones that try to say they are need to be shut up. The most recent article I read about this case has been on the blogger who took screen shots of what the football players posted on social media sites. Instead of receiving honors and respect for catching criminals and helping a survivor of rape; her town has sued her, harassed her and her family, insulted her and turned her into a pariah. Because how DARE she show the dirty secrets behind the Big Red football team. How DARE she challenge the societal structure of Steubenville and do the right thing in the face of a community whose last tooth in the mouth was their precious football team. I cannot help but wonder if some of the members of Steubenville who have verbally abused Alexandria Goddard, the blogger and Jane Doe, have ever complained about corrupt politicians more invested in what is good for Congress as opposed to the country.

This kind of thinking, this message that women are just ‘objects of desire’ and especially the concept that those out there who are trying to break those norms are ‘crazy’ or ‘fanatical’, this needs to stop. Go out there and talk to people about this and start a ripple effect. Change the norm. Change the world.

Because people are individuals and individuals have minds. And if enough individuals decide that they don’t like something, they will use their minds, unite and change things.  

Source: http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/blogger-who-first-exposed-steubenville-rape-tweets-speaks-out-182936719.html

Rape Culture and Recent Media Coverage

If you pay attention to the society we live in survivor blaming would come as no shock. All too often we hear cases of sexual-assault and the survivor of the crime is accused of being one thing or another. Had she just not been wearing that short skirt that man would have been able to keep himself under control. Had she not drank so much she would have known to not get herself in that situation. Frankly I think it’s unacceptable. Blaming the survivor of any crime, especially a sexually related one is absurd. Just because I leave my car unlocked, does that make it any more reasonable for someone to break into it? No, and it sounds ridiculous to even suggest it! This is more than applicable to sexual-assault cases.

But it almost seems inevitable in the world we live in. When men and boys are taught they always need to be in control, that anything less means they’re not a “real” man, we are left with misguided men who think they don’t have to accept responsibility for their actions. Please note that I’m very aware that not all men perform acts of sexual-assault, that not all perpetrators are men, and that females are not the only individuals who are survivors of these crimes. However, in this hyper-masculine society we live in, men are targeted as the ones who need to be in control and have power.

Blaming a survivor is bad enough on its own but this also deters other survivors from reporting their crimes. Incidents are terribly under-reported as it is and this could be considered one of the bigger reasons why. No one likes to be told they’re lying when they know that they are only telling the truth. It’s discouraging, it’s unfair, and it’s infuriating.

Fortunately there has been a survivor that has had the courage to speak out against her perpetrators. Recent national news coverage has been talking about the case of a 16-year-old Ohio girl. She was sexually-assaulted at a party last August and the courts are finally making their verdicts. While I am so glad she has spoken out against this event, I am disgusted by the defense. They have tried to attack her character and reduce her to a substance abusing liar.

To read more about the case you can do a Google search of the town in Ohio, Steubenville, but the article I read can be found here.

The State of Women's Rights in the World

http://rt.com/news/muslim-brotherhood-rejects-women-rights-290/ Women's Rights has been an important issue throughout our class, and the world in general. For a long time people have been fighting for or against women's rights at various levels and we are currently in a place where everyone is trying to negotiate women's rights on different levels. Recently the UN put forth a draft on the Declaration of Women's Rights which would enable women to choose the gender of their partner, gives equal rights to homosexuals, protects sex workers, and supports the use of contraception for teenagers. By my standards and the standards of many, this is a huge improvement and a big step forward, but for some this is stretching it too far. Some countries are fighting against this saying it goes against their values. This shows a very important dynamic in the world today. We are in a place where international legislation about Women's Rights is a viable option and a possibility, but some countries aren't in support of that. They say that it should be the individual nation's decision in regards to things like women's rights because some of the aspects of the proposed Declaration go against the societies beliefs, religions, or institutions. In order to get this issue resolved, we need to figure this issue out globally. I would urge other countries and cultures to reach a compromise, but I fear inequality for women will remain in the state it is now if international laws aren't set forth.

STEM for women through CBS

I’m a big fan of the show The Big Bang Theory. Last week’s episode was about encouraging women and girls to go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. I think it was great for the CBS to do an episode on STEM education because there are way too few women in these fields. Women have just as much right to be in STEM fields. For some reason, there are people out there who think men are for some reason better than women.

            In the beginning of the episode, one of the main characters, Leonard, is concerned about the lack of female voices in his field. In the episode, Leonard, his colleague and roommate, Sheldon, and their other friend, Howard, go to a middle school and talk to the female students about considering careers in STEM. The girls show no interest in what the scientists have to say. Leonard tries to tell the girls that science is fun and can be an enjoyment for everyone. Sheldon then steps in to help. He goes on to explain that science is basically very hard work and takes patience and time to grow a knack for. Leonard then asks Howard to step forward and help out. Howard just came back from outer space and tries to show the girls that they can also by astronauts if they wanted to be. Leonard finishes off their presentation by saying a science pun, and a student raised her hand to ask a question. Leonard felt so accomplished when this student wanted to know a little more about what the scientists do for a living.

            Honestly, it was a very good episode. Each episode tries to end on a message so that the viewers can take away after watching the episodes. So I hope that female viewers will consider a career in STEM after watching this episode. CBS wasn’t trying to push STEM careers upon females, but to encourage them if they want to go in STEM careers, they can. Basically, CBS wanted to encourage women to follow their dreams. And if that is in STEM, then go for it! There are even websites out there that are encouraging women and girls in STEM education. There is this website called STEM Education Coalition and their mission is to “encourage and inspire more of our best and brightest students, especially those from underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, to study in STEM fields.” For me, I was never a big fan or science or technology, but that shouldn’t stop any other women from pursuing a career in STEM.

 

http://www.stemedcoalition.org/about-us/objectives/

 

http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/video/26FE1DB7-B033-CEEE-3C52-420C16019E35/the-big-bang-theory-the-contractual-obligation-implementation/

Divorce Laws In Oregon

In the state of Oregon, according to Divorce Source, property is divided in an equitable fashion. This means it is divided by what is fair, Oregon encourages people to come to their own decision on how things will be split before taking it into the hands of the courts. The property divided includes real and/or personal property, this includes debts, pensions, houses, real estate, and anything else acquired. It is important to note that Oregon courts also include the homemaker contribution when splitting up assets, it is assumed that both parties in the marriage were equal partners. By including the reproductive labor Oregon is working against the idea of economic globalization, which is the process that integrate economics toward a global market place through growth of corporations and networks of production and consumers. (391)

When it comes to custody Oregon courts decide based on the general welfare of the child, they look into the emotional ties, the attitude towards the child from each parent, the desire of a continued relationship, if a parent was abusive, preference, and the willingness and ability of each parent. This maybe reconsidered if either parent was abusive in anyway, or if the general health of the child would be in danger. Another aspect of divorce is the idea of child support, how it’s divided and decided varies in every state. Oregon has child support which is based on the Income Shares Model, this means that the support is divided by which each parent earns. Some variables taken into account include earning capacity, if the parent can borrow money, how much each person has made in the past and the overall needs of the child. This is used to decided which parent pays child support. This money is to be used to benefit the child, in addition the paying parent may have to have a life insurance plan with the child as a beneficiary so that in case of anything the child is still taken care of.

Although divorce affect everyone, women and children can at times get the grunt of the burden. The main way is financially, after divorce most women have to take on second jobs to be able to cover the extra expenses. This in turn affects the children because they have less parental control, and spend less time with their parents. It is much harder for a women to return to the type of life she had become accustomed to because of the stress of childcare, less money, and more responsibilities. Children of divorce often have more anxieties and fear of love, commitments, or abandonment. The loss of an addition paycheck and money can lead to higher poverty rates for women and children. You can see this by looking at the poverty rates for divorced women and their children in Oregon. From the article entitled Marriage and Poverty I found that mothers were much more likely to fall to poverty after divorce than fathers. It was found in article The Gender Gap in the Economic Well-Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers that “19 percent of mothers became impoverished, only 3 percent of the husbands became poor after separating”. In addition to this mothers are less likely to rise out of poverty as well. Children often times suffer financially after their parents divorce, it was found that children in non-intact households were more likely to experience poverty, by the age of 17 about 81 percent had lived at least one year in poverty. After the divorce as stated earlier child support is decided. In Oregon their are laws that ensure this is paid, for those parents that don’t pay there are consequences that are at times fairly severe. These include, liens on property or assets, state and federal tax refunds intercepted, money deducted from pay check or even a jail sentence. There is also a nine percent interest on all missed child support payments.

After studying the divorce laws in Oregon I see clearly how it connects to what we have been talking about in class, I found that most of the laws set up generally assume that the children will stay with the mother post-divorce. From my research I found that women are more likely to suffer after a divorce whereas men bounce back quicker and after a year are usually living at the same standard as they did before the divorce. Women now have less money and more work which leads to more stress and eventual health problems. I found on the US Census that before divorce about 23 percent of women were not in the labor force whereas after divorce this number drops to 19 percent. This means that more women have to go and get jobs to support their families and in turn spend less time caring for children. While researching I thought back to the reading “The Gender Wage Gap By Occupation”. It seems to me that if we got rid of the gender wage gap, which is the difference in what men and women typically earn, then women would be just as likely to recover after a divorce as their male counterpart. In the book there is a chapter entitled Family Systems, Family Lives, I looked into some of the readings and found that more mothers with children under the age of three in developed countries are now working. This may be due in part to high divorce rates and a need for an additional income. This chapter also has a table on Families and Poverty, I found that according to this a 4.9 of all married couple are below the poverty line, it then jumped to 11.6 when it was a female householder with no male present.  

Overall, it seems that women and child often suffer the most when it comes to divorce and rebounding back to their normal life afterwards. Women have to work more hours and still come home for their “second-shift” taking care of the house and cooking. Since women get paid less for the work they do compared to a man they have a harder time making ends meet when forced to be in a single household.

Work Cited:

Shaw, Susan. Women's Voices Feminist Visions. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. 354-362, 391. Print.

Hegewisch, Ariane. "The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation." Institute For Women's Policy Research. (2012): 2-6. Print.

Iran Bans Women from Some College Courses

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2012/08/21/idesk-intv-abdo-on-iranian-women-barred-from-classes.cnn

Iran bans women from some college courses

 

CNN reported that Iran limited some college courses to men last year. This news had a noticeable impact throughout the world in that it went against the trend of women’s empowerment and increasing participation in higher education. The courses restricted to women include accounting, chemistry, and engineering all of those are appreciated as higher- status in the society. Geneive Abdo, Dir. Iran Program Middle East Institute, analyzes that elimination of women in college courses derives from a regime in which men worry about women who have gained power particularly in last few years. Women’s power has become not only socially but also politically significant in Iranian society and, unfortunately, it led to the discriminatory regime to take the women’s power away.

At present, there are few options for women against this policy without leaving a country. And as Abdo mentions, it will lead to so-called brain drain which are caused by the outflow of competent human capitals to outside countries. This reminds me Condoleezza Rice saying it is waste to discriminate women from political positions on “Miss Representation.” Women have been suffering from alienation in many opportunities but women must have hidden potential that has not been uncovered and that even women themselves have not realized yet. Our future depends on how many we can bring out these women’s potentials and utilized them in our society.

However, I learned that even if a dramatic revolution allowed a lot of women to get involved in socially and politically important position at once, the underlying idea of dominating men and subordinate women are not necessarily disappear only by institutional reform. Institutional reform itself does not necessarily resolve the system of inequality but deep-rooted prejudice against women still exist. I think this is not only the matter for Iran but also many other countries especially developed countries which set the equal rights for men and women in society. It will be not until people resolve the issue of who is in power in Iran that women achieve the real equality and opportunity in society including the right to receive higher education in high-status disciplines.

New Model for Sweden

      I recently came across an article which was praising Sweden for using mannequins which more accurately depict a woman's body. It was refreshing to finally see some change and companies becoming more realistic with their models. Having these positive images of a woman's figure is imperative for girls to grow up with a more positive image of themselves. If when a girl or woman walks into a store she sees the clothes she wants being shown on someone who is comparative to her size she will be more confident.

      We talked in class about the ways in which the media changes the way that we view ourselves. As is mentioned in the article Objectification Theory and Psychology of Women “self-objectification was uniquely linked with body shame, eating disorder symptoms, depression symptoms, and low self-esteem” (382). The reason that so many young girls have this shame about their bodies is because of all of the ads in our day to day life that objectify and sexualize women. I think it would be interesting to see if this particular store actually sells more clothing from using these mannequins, or if the people shopping there leave with a more positive body image.
   
     One part of this article I found interesting was the history of when we started using mannequins, according to them " Throughout WW1 and the Depression, mannequins changed their outfits and body proportions to reflect society at that time." So when they first came about they weren't a size 4-6 when the average American is a size 14, they instead would change and show a reality. Once again the according to the article this changed in the 1960's "when British mannequin firm Rootstein began modeling their dolls after pop culture and fashion icons to reflect runway trends at the time."

    I find it encouraging that there is some positive articles out there about women and their body, we shouldn't all have to fit into this crazy idea of the perfect body that the media is putting out there. If you're interested in reading the article and seeing the mannequins I have posted the link below!

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/swedish-mannequins-cause-a-controversy--192108535.html