Knowledge is depressing power?

This is going to be my last blog since this class (Gender and Pop Culture) will be over next week. I would like to reflect on the knowledge that I have gained. The media is being controlled by a small group of white men which explains the miss representation and under representation of all other people.
I have learned that regardless what show or book or magazine one sees and looks at one will always find some inequality. I have wondered "is the world really this bad?" and realized it kind is. This is some depressing knowledge. However, should this stop someone from enjoying life and TV and magazines? Should I stop watching action movies because women are always the damsels in distress and violence is promoted? Should I not read Cosmopolitan anymore because it is sexist? No we should not. We should keep doing these things and learn from them. We should learn and teach the next generation why these things are not ideal. People who are bothered by this should come up with ways to change it.
Because the ones at power now have no reason to change it. They are in power making money. The audience does not seem to mind either since we keep watching and reading.
So do not be discouraged or depressed about the fact that you are not able to blissfully watch sexist TV without realizing that it is sexist anymore. Simply realize it, share the thought and knowledge and do your part to change it.

Don't ask Don't tell.......

Are we as Americans ready to have an openly gay military? Possibly, however are our soldiers ready for openly gay military members? One would hope so, but reality looks different. As for some history on what exactly the "don't ask don't tell" policy is "1993 was not a good year for LGBT equality. President Clinton signed into law a policy that effectively bans gay, lesbian, and bisexual service in the military. Clinton approved Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) which purported to be the compromise that promised two things while appeasing the conservative opposition to openly gay service: first, that the safety of gay servicemembers would be better protected and, second, the law gave gays a means to dodging the traditional discrimination in order to enlist.
It is a bad compromise because the message is clear: you can be gay in the military...only until someone finds out that you are gay in the military. DADT lacks intellectual integrity. The architect of the policy, Professor Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, still stands behind this law that claims that being gay is not a bar to service, only grounds for dismissal.
Discrimination and oppression are inherent to DADT. A gay soldier must lie and hide his or her true identity on a daily basis. Gay servicemembers who live openly and share information about their spouses, significant others, or dating life risk investigation and involuntary expulsion. Under DADT, any statement that one is gay -- to anyone, at any time, before or after enlistment -- can be reason for investigation and discharge. Your life is a constant liability to your career when you are gay in the military." (http://www.soulforce.org/article/808)
The problem is technically most Americans support gay people in their rights to equality as long as it is not in their own personal space. However, what i find funny is that having a gay bunk mate would lead to lower moral and discomfort. If one thinks about that response one must wonder, why do people feel that would happen. The reason I believe is because people have this misconception that gay men will "make straight men gay" or "come on to them" or that gay man are not as "trust worthy" as straight men. What this tells me is that we must work harder in educating our service members and let them know that gay men and women are just as able as straight men and women in serving in the military. One might even argue that they are more capable because they had to deal with the stress of realizing that their sexual partner is not the norm that society expects. Which means that they would be potentially better at handling stress situations.
Unfortunately, because of the bad economy the topic don't ask don't tell was put on the back burner of President Obama. A spokesperson of the obama administration had the following to say "There are many challenges facing our nation now and the president-elect is focused first and foremost on jump-starting this economy." (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/14/obama.gays.military/)I guess the equality of people is less concerning than the money of people.

Toddlrs and Tiaras???

What on earth was the American TV industry thinking when they decided to show Toddlers and Tiaras? This show is wrong in every way possible. Little children selling sex? What the hell? This show angers me in so many ways as a woman, as a future psychologist, as a potential mother. As a woman it angers me to see people judging 0-2 year old's on their looks. One girl competed in the 10-12 year old's and was told that next age group she has to lose weight.
As a psychology major, it is upsetting because most of these children are being forced to do this by their mothers. Many of the children do not even realize it, not even the mothers realize it most of the time. They have lost their "beauty" at least according to the media. Now the mothers feel like they have to make sure that their daughters do not have to "suffer" the same fate.
As a potential mother it is upsetting because, I might have a daughter and she will feel like she has to compete with girls that are pushed by their mothers to look like that.
The entire show is simply messed up, and again the only ones to benefit are men. The earlier women start primping, the less time they spend on school, the less time they spend in school, the less time they will have to acquire book smart. Everybody knows that knowledge is power.

women in video games!

For the last view days friends of mine and me have been playing way to many video games. One of them being Soul Calibur 4. The premise of this game is to fight against each other with characters the game supplies or characters you make yourself.
Many people already have a problem with this since it portraits violence, however, I have no problem with the violence. My problem resides with the clothing that the women in this game are allowed to wear. For example the most popular character is Ivy. She is wearing basically nothing at all. Again just like in my blog about the super heroes, women are not allowed to wear heavy armor. The one character that does wear heavy armor in this game is Hildegard. She is a well protected and clothed character and somehow nobody has the desire to play as her, because she looks "boring".
I am not writing this blog to complain about the game makers I am writing this to complain about the players (including myself). The industry only produces what is sellable, only what is sellable is being bought which means that the buyers (us) have the power to change the sexist world of video games, if we where to chose so.
Unfortunately just like everywhere else, sex sells! It sells in the video game industry just as much as it does anywhere else. So what could we change about this? We could stop buying games with half naked women. We could protest game makers and buy none of their products.
The problem with the above stated ideas is that nobody could motivate a 16-25 year old male to protest nudity in video games. Why should they? This country is so prude and sex education is such a taboo topic for many parents and schools, therefore video games are they only source a lot of these kids have to learn about the opposite sex. Maybe if we talked to our children more then the nudity would go away over time by it self. Or at least it would be more respectful.

Disney Bad or Good?

During spring break I was playing with my niece and she was getting very frustrated because she was not able to make Daisy stand up because this plastic figure was wearing high heels that are really hard to stand on a flat surface.
What followed was my niece trying to walk in my sisters high heels that were laying around in the living room and naturally she fell.
Most people believe that Disney is a safe way to entertain their children. What most people do not think about is the way it influences our young. Daisy and Mini both wear makeup, high heels and short dresses.So naturally little children want to do the same.
Then they get a little older and become interested in the Disney princesses. All of these ladies are damsels in distress. Cinderella needs to be saved by not only a man no, she is so incompetent that she needs the help of mice and birds and magic. She is considered not worthy of the love from Prince Charming in her normal clothes, she needs new clothes to impress a superficial man.
Mary Poppins is another Disney character that shows little girls that they always must look proper (even in the chimney scene, her clothes are not out of place she looks like a perfect doll covered in soot) to be and ideal woman. She is portrayed as this perfect little lady similar to Kelly Ripa and her Electolux commercial. Ripa portrays this wonder woman that can do all things faster and then spend more time doing even more "womanly" things.
What this does to our society is create women that believe the way to be a good woman is to be a typical 50's house wife.
I do understand that Disney has tried to make more modern movies such as Finding Nemo where they portray a single dad trying to make it in the world with his son. However, in this case their is no female role model. It seems that Disney simply does not know how how to create a good female role model.

Super Heros?

I am recently reading the Watchmen graphic Novel and realized something, all super women are dressed for sex while most men are dressed for coolness or practicality (except superman he just looks like a pansy).
As a child growing up I watched Batmanand I thought he was so cool. Now that I am older I realize the only females in batman are Poison Ivy who is evil and Cat Women who I still can't figure out if she is good or evil however both women are dressed super sexy and super unpractical. Batman's costume has awesome gadgets and his armor protects him from all kind of bad stuff. Poison Ivy's costume is tight and sexy and has no other benefit, same with Cat Women.
Another show I watched was He-man Masters of the Universe. He-man did not have a cool costume; however, he did have a cool sword that he could fight with and a tiger that listened to his every command. His female counter part She-Ra has also a a sword, however, her sword is called the sword of protection which means she did not "kick ass" she played a motherly role of protection.
Later on in life I started watching the power puff girls. Now this was a show that I thought at first was awesome. There are no super men in it only girls. Here however is where the problem starts they are girls not women. They are cute and cuddly. We are telling our children that boys are allowed to grow up and be strong and protect the world, however, our girls need to stay cute and pretty and sexy and then they can HELP protect the world. This means that from early childhood girls are shown where their role in life is. They are to be a side kicks, or it takes three of them to do the job that one man can do.

Velma!!!

Even though I said I would write about video games in my next blog, however, I am sitting here watching Scooby-doo wondering, who did I like as a kid, and who I could not care less for. As a kid I really could not have cared less for Velma's existence. Now that I watch this again as an adult with some knowledge in media reading, I have come to the conclusion, that Velma is always dressed like a dork. In this particular episode she was all bundled up and looked like a great pumpkin while Fred and Daphene had on cute little snow suits that made them look like little models of what society thinks we should look like.
There I sat wondering where did this notion come from that smart girls have to be striped from all attractiveness to be seen as smart? In Scooby-doo it came from the 50's since this is when the show was made. Fred describes your typical jock and Daphene is a typical rich cheerleader type, so they stand as a couple. Scooby and Shaggy are portrayed as stoners, which makes them a couple in a sense.
This means that Velma is the odd one out; the one that no kid wants to be like. Who wants to be a single ugly little smart girl? Even pot-heads are placed above girls with brains and that is sad. Even in cartoons that are supposedly harmless, our children are being shown what is good and what is not. Even though Velma always solves the case we remember the Scooby snakes and the red hair of Daphene and the jockness of Fred and of Velma if we remember her name we remember she is wearing big glasses and that she was smart.
Since the 50's young girls have been told that either they are smart or pretty but never both. If they choose smart then they will vanish in the background, and no little kid wants that so they aspire to be pretty.
The ones who benefit are the white male world. How you must wonder? If we (women) spend our time getting pretty then we have less time to get smart. Everybody knows that knowledge is power so the less time we have for knowledge the more power the white male can keep.
The moral of the story is that even Scooby-doo is bad for equality. What does that say about our world?