Superbowl commercials

There was one commercial in particular that reminded me a lot of the article that we just read. It was for SoBe Lifewater, and it featured a very scantily-dressed woman dancing, and then a gecko that appeared to be looking up her dress, but upon closer inspection was actually staring at the water. It was very similar to the ad that the article talked about, in which the boy appeared to be staring at the woman but was in fact looking at the product that was for sale. It uses shock value to sell the product, but in a very sexual way. It can certainly be seen as borderline offensive, but at least it had no underlying theme of violence like the ones in the article. However, many of the other commercials did not have a sexual theme, which was very pleasantly surprising.

wednesdays class

Our class on wednesday was certainly interesting. I dont't really have much more to blog about other than what i already have written, but my opinions stay essentially the same. However, looking at the article from a rhetorical view, she exaggerated a lot. Sometimes she got so incredibly carried away with her argument, that it was a little difficult for her to make a good argument. On the other hand, some of her arguments are spot-on, and the reason the women in the class got so involved in the argument is because we've experienced some of these things. Maybe we haven't had a violent act committed against us, but what about getting our butts grabbed? or getting rated from 1-10? Many of us relate to that.

On the other hand, there were several men in the class that got very defensive- and though sometimes it bothers me because this is a subject i feel very strongly about, i believe that they have a right to be defensive. Men are often lumped together as being all sexually demeaning, all "pigs", and that is simply not true. As i said in the last post, most of the men that i know are extremely respectful and certainly would would not be affected by any of the articles in a negative way. However, I believe that that it is simple fact that they often neglect- though of course most men are not sexual predators, violent, or demeaning, it is still statistical that more women get hurt in these ways then men, and therefore, the argument focuses more around women. Certainly a case can be made for men, but the fact still is, the problem is so much bigger for women because of sheer numbers.

As far as advertising goes; when Tony said that the point of advertising is to sell things, i certainly agree with him. However, I don't think that people, male or female, need to be demeaned for the sake of selling things. There are many other types of commercials that can work (like the "wtf?" ones.). Unfortunately, once censorship starts, there is no telling where it can stop, which is why this is such a complicated issue.

exploitation in the media

I have thought a lot about this article. It is something that affects me personally, and I can see the truth in what she writes. Although sometimes I feel as if she is going a little bit overboard ("Is the woman in the ad laughing or screaming?" when she is clearly laughing) Some of the other ads are extremely disturbing, such as the little boy looking up the woman's skirt, or the perfume ad. I am routinely reminded of the expectation of men to have power over women; I hear the phrase "pussy-whipped" almost every day, even from men that I consider respectful. Some of the biggest problems that I rememvber were in middle school- I remember the boys in my class rating us from one to ten, there was one that even would go around grabbing girls' butts- he was eventually expelled from sycamore for something involving the sexual harrassment of one of my best friends.
Often times, ads that show the reverse- such as the women staring at the man, etc, are viewed as funny, or feminist because of the objectification of the man. However, as the article states, there is a line to where objectification stops being funny and starts being disturbing, and the line applies to both genders. Unfortunatley, the media seems to put the line in different places for each gender.
Many women might read these ads and immediately target men as the cause of the problem, and men will immediately assume that women will do this, but in truth it is the media that is at fault; and history. In history, men have been the ones in power, and though women are certainly gaining power, the media is resisting by objectifying women and sexualizing them. though it happens with men, it simply happens more often with women.
On the contrary, after reading articles such as this and seeing this type of advertisements, I am continually surprised by how respectful men can be. I am often expecting them to act a certain way and then they don't; and so this type of advertising obviously doesn't affect everyone the way it affects some. That being said, it certainly does affect some- women and men both.
Women are encouraged to be sexual- I see it every day, many girls who lack confidence in their personality or intelligence simply exploit their looks because they are afraid that the other parts of them have no worth. I continually see women accusing each other of being "whorish", or not sexual enough. I see men accusing women of these things- the problem, unfortunately, is much more complicated than "men are pigs" as some women (and men!) will jump to conclusions and say. Each of us is affected by the society we grow up in- sometimes more so than we might think, and sometimes less so. Self-esteem plays a very large role in this; women with more self-esteem are more confident and therefore less "sexual", most of the time. They will put value on their personalities, their intelligence, their gifts, as opposed to their looks. and men will see this and appreciate it. I know for a fact many men that already do. The media needs to begin to encourage women to find that part of them- and men as well- as opposed to putting such weight on physical appearance.

Commercials

Deciding to watch the style channel, I knew that the commercials on this channel would be very distinctly geared toward the crowd that would watch the network. I knew that the commercials would be geared toward women, but what I didn't expect was the age group. I don't usually watch the style network, but I had always assumed it was something that more teenage girls would watch. On the contrary, the commercials are geared towards marraige-age woman. Several of which were for home improvement/ home-making products, such as disinfectant, or kitchen supplies.
One commercial in particular, which was for (if i remember correctly) a birth control pill, was obviously geared to women. However, the commercial had a physician reccomendation, in which an actual physician comes on the commercial to reccomend the pill, the commercial made a (i believe) conscious choice to make the phycisian a woman. Though a physician reccomendation is certainly a good thing to have in a commercial for a medical product, the fact that a female physician is helping to sell a birth control product gives it an even more powerful appeal to the audience because it establishes csoomething very obvious in common with the target audience- both women, and therefore both can speak the benefits of the product from actual experience as opposed to just medical knowlege.

Library was closed!

Today the library was closed!!!!! It was really sad. I think it's because the new wing of the library downtown is opening, which is a huge inconvenience to me. However, i have the newsweek so I have a paper source, technically. I am about to start working more on the paper tonight, although i have a lot of finals to study for.

progress

Today I went through my house and found a newsweek article and several very good online articles to help me start my paper. I wrote two pages about electric cars and ethanol fuel, and i believe the paper is going along very well. Tomorrow I will work more on it, and I will go to the library to get books to help write it. I am writing two paragraphs for each type of fuel, one paragraph with pros and one paragraph with cons.

physics+english?

We talked about alternative fuels today in physics, which i found really interesting obviously because I will write my paper about them. Mr. Napier was having a question day, and somehow we got on the subject of alternative fuels, which i gladly jumped into at certain points, although there were a lot of things that were said that I didn't know about, such as that on the subject of ethanol fuels, there is no clear data of its efficiency because the people doing the research are usually biased in some way. On the subject of Hydrogen fuel, we talked about how the biggest problem is that there would be a delay in pressing the gas pedal to when the car would actualy accelarate, because it needs to allow time to produce the hydrogen. However, this problem could be solved by using gasoline for the primary accelaration. Also, Hydrogen is highly flammable, and since it is a gas, if there is an over production of it, any small collision could, in mr Napier's words, level several blocks.

I found this interesting. I figured I would mark it as progress