Second Random Blog!

I was at Target the other day, and I saw this! I was super excited about how Merida is now sold with her bow and arrows! I look at this as progress because girls can now play with the bow and arrows that Merida did. They get to play with the weapon that are only acceptable for boys. 

The rest of the Merida dolls looked like this. She's in her pretty dress, and with her brothers. 

I also work at the Wrentham Outlets and a few months ago a Disney Store opened up there. I was finally able to go this past Monday. They have a whole Brave section! You can actually by a hammer like thing for boys, and they had more items with Merida and her bow. Sadly the only costume you can buy is the nice princess like one, not her other dress. 

Teens Talk Back

When looking online one of the first things that pops up when you Google "Teens talk back" are videos of teens talking about things like meeting offline, consequences of things you put online, and more. The responses of most of the teens where that they are careful of what they do online, and that they a cautious about what they do. This was both surprising and not, because when adults or society talks about teens they say that they're impulsive and don't think about what they do before they do it. But many responses (not all of them) showed that they do take the time to think about who will see what they put online and what will happen if they do. In the video that talks about offline consequences, one teen said that depending what you put online could be the factor of what allows you to be hired for a job or not. This is smart.

The rest of the Google search about "Teens talk back" is how to deal with a teen who talks back.

Mainly what I found while searching were video of teens talking about issues. One was a news segment about pornography other segments about puberty. In the videos the teens talk about how it can be hard to talk about these things with their parents, and more difficult to talk about it with the parent of the opposite sex. Also there are a lot of videos of teens talking about social media when you look at things on youtube.

Comments/Questions:
It was harder to find things about what teens have to say, than I thought it would be. It was surprising that there were so many parenting websites that talk to parents about who to deal with the teenagers who talk back to them. I'm curious to see what other people in class found.  

Glee Post!

Extended Comments

So I've never watched Glee before and it was interesting. I'm not sure if I liked it or not, but I am curious about it because watching just three episodes leave a lot of holes in the plot of the whole story. How are all the popular kids now in Glee Club, when Coach Sue said that glee was the lowest of the low place to be in high school? But I'm going talk more about what Celine wrote in her blog.

While watching the "Pilot" I saw right away the typical separated cliques that people say teens create. Finn in the typical jock who dates the head cheerleader and blah blah. But also right away you see how Kurt is treated. As Celine said it's almost as he was trash, because they threw him into the dumpster. Is this really the message you want to send teens today? It made me think of Christensen because we learn (secretly or obviously) from what we watch on TV. Why was that something that the producers or writers needed to show? And I don't think it's an acceptable message to be shown to kids and teens today.
I also found, like Celine, that the first episode had a lots of connections to Hine's article. When he talks about how teenagers don't really have a place and that the environment that they have is high school and this is where the social class comes from. They're just trying to find there place in the world. I even think Rachel mentions this when she is talking about Glee club in this episode.

In "Never Been Kissed" I completely agree with Celine when it comes to the bullying of gay students. It was shocking when the cheerleader that was in New Directions made the comment of all the gay jokes that popped into her head. Why would you say this when you know Kurt is bullied and so on for being gay, why are you adding to the bullying? I think that it was crazy for a school not to have a zero tolerance rule, but unlike Celine, I don't remember having a rule like that in my high school. Kurt is pretty defense less in this episode and you can see how it effects him. The bullying in this and the next episode really made me think of the Kimmel article about masculinity and how boys need to show masculinity in order to prove themselves to their peers.

In the last episode "Furt," I felt like it moved so fast. The parents were married in the blink of an eye. But there were some major issues in this episode as well. Like Celine, it drove me crazy that Finn wouldn't stand up for his soon to be step brother, just because he didn't want to ruin the chances that the football team had of winning. It seems like Kurt wasn't the only person afraid of Krofsky. It was great when the other guys on the football team defended Kurt, and even better when Kurt's called Finn out on not helping. But my biggest issue with this episode was how even though Krofsky was expelled for threatening Kurt's life, the school board allowed him to come back because there wasn't enough proof of the situation. How can any school allow for this to happen? Why would it be okay for any teen to go to school and be in fear the whole day that something awful was going to happen to them because of another student? This isn't right at all. By allowing him to come back it makes it seem like bullying is an acceptable thing to do in high school, and this isn't the best message to be sending to teens and kids, or even anyone who watches the show.

I would also like to know what messages Glee sends now about bullying and LGBTQ issues in its current episodes?

Hip Hop Wars - Tricia Rose

Connections

The video and the Q&A by Tricia Rose is something that I've never really thought about. I've never really listened to hip-hop (I've been mainstream pop, and now all I listen to is country). So this is something completely new to me. I guess I had an idea about what hip-hop was like, but never really knew it's origins or anything. When listening to the video and read the article all I could think of was some of the articles we've already read.

In Rose's Q&A the question "In these hip-hop wars, what's one of the more prominent arguments from critics that you counter in your book?" She says the argument is "Hip-hop causes violence". All I could think of when reading this statement is the last piece we read by Kimmel. It's not the violent words in hip-hop music, it's masculinity (though hip-hop music may talk about what a "real man" should be like, I'm not sure). Rose says that it thought to  "create violence" because where hip-hop originated, but this is unfair. It really just shows racism and other issues to put tis label on the music, when in fact thats not the case.

I even think the Christensen piece can connect to hip-hop. When she talks about stereotypes. It seems like hip-hop faces a bunch of stereotypes, violence being one of them. All the questions she asks in this section about films can also be questions you could ask about the music. "What do they talk about?.. What would young children learn about women's roles in society if they [heard this music] and believed it? What roles do money, possessions, and power play in the [music]? Who has it? Who wants it?..What would children learn about what's important in society?" Rose says that most of the music was and is about political movements, education and so on. This would be good music for a child or anyone to listen to with the positive message. But now most of the music is sexual and violent. The reason for it is because this sells? But why does it sell? 

Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence - Kimmel

Argument

Kimmel's argument is that masculinity and the taking away of masculinity are the reasons for school shootings that take place. He goes through the list of things that are always brought up "it's violent video games, music, television and so on" that make for "teens" to believe that it is okay for them to go to school and kill the people who surround them. But this is not the case, most reasonable people, even children and the young adults, know that these things that go on in movies and such are just depictions and not real life. Kimmel also states in the reading that there is no significant proof that violent media is the link to school shooting, because the shootings don't all occur within the same time of a game or movie release.
His argument that masculinity is the cause of the shooting does fit. It does make sense to me that because these boys who committed these acts were the victims of endless bullying and "gay-baiting", and that the reason that they acted out was because of it. People are only human as they can be before they break down. Kimmel then gives the examples of what happened to the boys. All of them were tortured by classmates, and the classmates were fine with how they treated them. They were all called "nerd, queer, gay, fag, shy, weird, and so on", and Kimmel is right in saying that in our culture today words like this take away your masculinity. And the last thing any boy wants taken away is that, I guess. I remember things like this took place in the small town where I went to school in, things like this still take place at the college we all attend, if you listen to the people around you.
I also agree with Daury that the reading really doesn't bring up the issue of mental illness. They say the whole cause is masculinity but it seems like it is only the beginning of the reason. Most of the boys who committed the acts where interviewed by psychiatric doctors and they said that they are not insane. But I don't really agree with that (this could just be because what I think of what they've done). I think mental illness plays a large role in school shootings.

This is a great movie (I think) about the Columbine shooting and gun control in general!

Cinderella Ate My Daughter/Brave

I read Cinderella ate my daughter and the movie Brave compliment each other well. Orienstein describes in the chapter how she had never shown her daughter any of the Disney movies, but yet she found her daughter waiting to be kissed by a boy to wake her up because she was Snow White. Orienstein goes on to say:
"I had never told Daisy the story of Snow White. I had purposely kept it from her because, even setting aside the obvious sexism, Snow herself is such an incredible pill. Her sole virtue, as far as I can tell, is tidiness - she is forever scrubbing, dusting, nagging the dwarves to wash their filthy mitts... She is everything I imagined my daughter would reject, would not, in fact, ever encounter or even understand if she did, let alone embrace: the passive, personality-free princess swept off by a prince (who is enchanted solely by her beauty) to live is a happily-ever-after that be ultimately control. Yet here was my girl, somehow having learned that plotline anyway, blissfully lying in wait for Love's First Kiss." 
I can understand why Orienstein wouldn't want to show her daughter this type of woman. Who really wants their daughter growing up thinking that the only why to have a life is to find the man who will take care of you for the rest of your life. (I remember watching these movies and wishing that my prince would come, but then growing up and having my parents, my father likes to stress this, teach my to be an independent woman.)

What I want to know is if the movie Brave had been around when Orienstein's daughter was young, would she want Daisy to see this one? The message of this movie is not the typical fairytale, Merida is not waiting for her prince charming (she more or less finds it disgusting). The message is more about family and independence. Merida has to figure out how to change her life path herself. Her mother has the same princess idea that the rest of the disney movies have (she needs to get married and "a princess is perfection" and so on). Merida wants nothing to do with this and turns her mother into a bear with a spell from a witch (so typical of Disney movies, there's always a witch). But she figures out how to reverse the spell herself, and in doing this she proves to her mother that being a strong independent woman is possible. This message seems more like something that Orienstein would want her daughter to hear.

Final Project - Oh Boy!

I really have no clue on what to do for this project. (My brian is still in Florida, and its slowly coming back. I'm also suffering a little from being contaminated with some gluten, not fun) I do remember talking with my group from the midterm project and Celine had a really good idea about what to do for the project.
We thought about doing something that relates to body image with teenagers. I think it would be cool to look at how anything that makes you look different and how teens feels about this. I think that they're the group that thinks that every one is looking right at them, and are the most self conscious, and this is the reason many disorders start in the teen years.
I know that I would want to work in a group, I like being able to get ideas with people. It's also nice to know that you have others to help you with the project as well.

This was from my awesome spring break! I'll blog about the experience later :)