Blog 12

I recently finished a lengthy paper for my expository writing class that I chose to write about body image. It was an argumentative paper, so my argument was convincing my readers that celebrities have negative effects on body image. It really seemed to relate to this women's studies course. I found so much valuable information. Doing all of the research really helped me to be more secure in my own skin. I now know everything that goes into making celebrities look the way that they do. I learned all about airbrushing, which I have touched upon before in my previous blogs. I also learned extensive things about celebrities and eating disorders. Advertisements, celebrity endorsements, etc. were all things that I explored as well. I think that my paper turned out to be a very successful one. It was ten pages long and I used around 14 sources to help support my argument. I also addressed cosmetic surgery. For the paper, I was supposed to try and find counter-arguments to my argument. Luckily, I did not find too many people that thought celebrities were having positive effects on body image. I hope that young women will have the chance to learn everything that I did through my research, and that they will not look at a magazine advertisement and think that is how the celebrity really looks all of the time. It can be such a destructive industry and I can only hope that there are more people out there like me who are trying to get an important message across.

Blog 11

This week's political readings led me to take more of an interest in that area. Particularly, the reading about Hillary Clinton led me to do a little more research about her. I just decided to Google her and found HillaryClinton.com. When you go to the website, you are prompted to sign up as a "supporter." I opted to skip the sign up and be directed straight to the website. The one thing I noticed about her campaign website is the overwhelming monetary vibe. I mean, it seems everywhere you look they are wanting you to lend your "support", credit cards gladly accepted. I think it's about so much more than just money, and I wish the website portrayed that more. There is some background given about Hillary titled "Hillary's story." It stated that Hillary was raised in a middle-class family in the middle of America. The piece goes on to say "Hillary went on to become one of America's foremost advocates for children and families; an attorney twice voted one of the most influential in America; a First Lady of Arkansas who helped transform the schools; a bestselling author; a First Lady for America who helped transform that role, becoming a champion for health care and families at home and a champion of women's rights and human rights around the world." It does a great job of stating who she is and what she has done. I'm still on the fence about her ideals and her website, but that sentence really struck a note in me. She's obviously a powerful, accomplished lady who deserves much respect.

Blog 10

This week's class readings about rape really caught my eye. I found the reading the characterized the different categories of rape to be very interesting as well. I was looking at some magazines and came across an article in the September issue of Cosmopolitan. It was titled "His Case vs. Her Case" Court TV anchor Ashleigh Banfiled explained where the law currently stands on rape. She refers to acquaintance rape as "gray rape." She said that most victims of gray rape never report the experience to the police, much less decide to press charges. She also addressed how hard it is even to confront and accurately understand rape, and how hard it is for juries to make judgements about too. The legal system continues to struggle to define exactly where consent ends and rape begins. She went on to give examples of how strong a woman's case (or her assailant's case) might be in several key areas. In the area of consent, consent itself has always been the most basic issue in a rape case. The jury must be convinced that the woman did not give permission, or said and no and meant it, and was clear for the woman to win. On the other hand, the male could win the case by claiming he did not hear the woman say no, or had reason to think she didn't really mean "no." For example, if they were fooling around with rough sex and the male thought "no" was part of the game. When it comes to alcohol, women can win a case if they were too drunk to fully consent. It's illegal to take advantage of someone who is incapactitated. Although, if the woman was wasted, a guy can imply that her story cannot be trusted. But, he can't use being drunk himself as an excuse. The article states many more instances about the deciding factors in rape cases. I highly recommend reading the article to get the full analysis.

Blog 9

In class this week we talked a lot about women's roles. The most interesting thing I found was the article that dealt with maids. No doubt, most of us fail to recognize women's actual roles in the home. They really are "maids" no matter how you look at it. It was interesting to read a story from a personal point of view about how it is to be a maid, what's degrading, etc. My workplace is currently looking for a cleaning service for our new construction. While I was searching for estimates, I decided to do a little bit of investigative research of my own. Some things that came to mind were; How are the cleaning people portrayed on different websites? How are they described? What types of words/language are used? I decided to visit the site of the well known "Merry Maids." What I found was a very generic site. They use a "team" system for their cleaning. There would be anywhere from 1-3 people in a home at one time. They pride themselves on being a very universal cleaning service with operations in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. They continually remind you that they are an established business and strive to fill website visitors with a sense of "comfort." (They speak a lot of being able to trust the maids and not having to worry about theft.) It seems like an okay service, but not very personal. They are aimed at impressing customers with how many homes they clean rather than the quality of the cleaning, or the caliber of the employees. I think the employees definitely deserve more recognition. I also visited the "Molly Maid" website. It seemed eerily similar to the Merry Maids site. Although, it didn't seem to have a very customer focused vibe. They make sure to tell you the Maids workday is from 8-5 and they cannot guarantee an exact time of arrival. They seem to care about their maid's personal time as well as the customers.

Blog 8

In the class readings from last week, I was really interested in one in particular. It focused on the Wal-mart company and the class action suit that they face. It is because of sex discrimination and I thought the article did a great job of explaining and giving examples of things that had been going on to women in the workplace. It is unfair for women to be treated the way they were being done so by the Wal-mart corporation, so I took my research to Google to find out a little bit more about it. I came across the Wal-mart class action website, (http://www.walmartclass.com/public_home.html) and splashed across the homepage are things like "Have you been denied career opportunities in management? Have you been denied equal pay for equal work? Have you been getting the run-around about promotions or raises?
Have you hit the glass ceiling?" It's basically a site that allows women who feel that they have been discriminated against to sign up on the site, or call a toll free number. Or, if anyone has any additional information that may help the investigation, they are encouraged to come forth as well. I read all of the FAQs that could be accessed. There is a lot of valuable information on the page for the discrimination victims. It's also a good place for the general public to go that will help them in understanding the case more thoroughly. The article from class piqued my interests, and I just decided to do some additional research on the subject.

Blog 7

Last week's in-class readings centered around family. Dynamics of not only heterosexual families, but homosexual families were both discussed. I had never really thought about what it would be like to have gay or lesbian parents. I have lived my life being the daughter of a heterosexual couple, and that's all I really know. That's what I would deem "normal." I am interested to learn more about homosexual parenting, seeing as though that type of situation is being more and more prominent in society. I decided to go online and do some researching on the topic. I came across a pretty informational website. It addressed the false notion that heterosexual couples make better parents than gays or lesbians. That claim rests on absolutely no empirical foundation. Overall mental health of parents, and their approaches to child rearing have proven not to be less than that of heterosexual couples. I even found some major supportive evidence to back homosexual child rearing. The website said that the results of some studies suggest that lesbian mothers' and gay fathers' parenting skills may be superior to those of matched heterosexual couples. Reports of lesbian parent's awareness skills as being stronger than that of hetereosexual parents have surfaced as well. I found all of this information very interesting, and I also saw it as a step in the right direction for the gay community. They deserve to gain positive feedback for the positive things that they accomplish. If you would like to review the website, please visit http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/lgplgparents.html

Blog 6

This week, I learned that my cousin decided to being Cosmetology school. I decided to help her do some research on the subject. I enjoy doing make-up and hair, so I thought that it would be interesting to do a little hunting around with her. We used Google at first and just started clicking on random sites. One for the Yossi Bitton Make-up school. Now, she's probably going to be staying in the area to attend school, but we were just searching kind of for the fun of it. On the Yossi Bitton website, there is a before and after gallery devoted to basically how make-up application can dramatically change someone's look. Well, I am convinced that more that just make-up has been added to these photos. If you've seen the Dove commerical thing on YouTube which shows the transformation of the model, it's easier to understand. Elongating the neck, bringing the eyes close together or further apart as needed, etc. are all things I think are noticeable in the pictures. Take a look at the before and after picture. I am not convinced that the only thing that has been done to this picture is added make-up. Make-up cannot make a huge blemish look invisible, no matter how hard you try. Make-up is a minimizer tool designed to detract your notice away from imperfections, but if does not erase them. I think that this is bad advertising for the school. It is unrealistic and I think could lead to disappointment for a lot of hopefuls wanting to attend the school for make-up application. They cannot be shown these pictures and expect to have the results of an Extreme Makeover solely by the use of make up alone. I think that this type of advertising is detrimental. It reminded me of the Dove commerical and I'm sure that others will share the same viewpoints as myself on the subject.