Sippin, Reminiscing On Days When I Had No Blog

Since a couple years ago, the amount of media I consume could be quantified by the word "hella". I will admit that I haven't reduced the amount of media I interact with, but I have become aware of its profound effects on me and the masses. It has most definitely opened my eyes to work that happens behind closed doors when talking marketing; everything that companies and individuals go through in order to fulfill capitalist ideals. Yet, here we are. Using the internet and typing up feelings and responses online rather than on a sheet of paper with a pencil or pen. Media of all kind has become so indestructible in American society and I think this is why media literacy is so important. Media and technology are not going away anytime soon, its influence will increase, if anything. So we have to be able to dissect its message in order to not succumb to what they evoke. This can be portrayed in many different ways. 

For one, this class has opened my eyes to ways companies see consumption. As a source of profit and nothing else. Maybe the occasional fame and glory, but it all goes back to making money, regardless. I can now watch a commercial and know that most of the time, what they portray is simply a way to relate to a consumer and create a non-existence feeling of desire and need. Does race have anything to do with cat food? Absolutely not. And now I am able to watch this cat food commercial without feeling the need to buy the cat food. Nice. 

Being aware of how companies attack their consumers is crucial in a time like ours when we are constantly attacked with ads and standards and stereotypes that we must adhere to. 

Even though we had been learning about these concepts throughout the semester, I didn't apply them and reflect on them until it was time to write a post. I took in everything we were learning, but I never applied it to myself and my real life experiences. Because of this media blog, I became aware that I was one of those girls that were influenced by the media, that I was one of those people that fell into the stereotypes and perpetuated the cycle, I had lived a life the media told me to live. This class has helped me evaluate myself and how much of me is actually me and how much is just me trying to live up to a certain standard.

Today, it seems like most can't go about anything in their lives without promoting it. It all becomes a big game and sort of competition to see who has achieved the greatest level of a pre-determined "perfection". Media literacy has helped me understand that this is exactly what companies want. They want to create an environment where one needs their product in order to reach that level of superiority over others who don't have it. 

This blog has also made me aware of things that we don't typically talk about; other negative and sensitive effects of the media. We don't talk about how media regularly romanticizes pain, depression, and loneliness. Two men escaped a high-security prison in New York and the governor said it was probably influenced by a movie. The media's influence is so profound and is now reaching the masses faster than ever and earlier on in people's lives. Its influence can be projected in both harmful and progressive ways, but those two have become such polar extremes. Humans have walked the moon, but humans also hang themselves because they get called gay. 

This class and this media blog have helped me understand the in and outs of what the media truly is. I'm sure there is an abundant amount of information that I am still completely ignorant to, but this has helped me thus far. 

It's So Cute When Boys Are Demanding And Possessive!!!

I saw a tweet the other day that I had seen many times before and it was from the user "Girl codes" and it asked "I am the only girl that melts when a boy says 'come here' like it's so simple and innocent yet so demanding and possessive omg" with an emoji of a monkey covering its eyes.

https://twitter.com/WeAreGirICodes/status/605063789306880001

This is such an overused tweet, I'm sure at least half of teenage twitter users have seen it or have seen something similar to it. This kind of media is the kind that demoralizes our generation and only creates problems. This account is telling its 296 thousand followers that it is romantic and a girl's role to like this kind of attention and action from a boy. At the very least, 2,509 teenage girls, who have favorited the tweet, now have the idea that wanting a boy who is demanding and possessive is something desirable. These young girls are now aware that this is the social norm and this is the girl thing to do and want and feel. They will want to look for boys who offers this kind of action and will take it for romantic and cool. 

The problem then becomes when boys are also exposed to this tweet and begin to believe that in order for girls to fall in love with them, they need to be demanding and possessive. Boys can no longer ask if a girl wants to 'come here'. She will 'come here' because they will demand it and be possessive about it. 

With the rapid spread of social media that is now available, more and more teens will see this tweet and get a distorted idea of what a relationship should be like. Boys will be demanding and possessive and will not take 'no' for an answer because that one tweet said girls melt when they demand it. Boys begin to show these characteristics that largely resemble those of the dominant in an abusive relationship. The mass media has told them that that is what girls like, and 2,509 girls agree. 

So when boys begin to be violent and demand a certain action from a girl, it is 'simple' and 'innocent'. It is what the boy should be doing and what the girl should be expecting and enjoying. 

This kind of attitude is what promotes abusive relationships, especially at a young age where they are exposed to technology and social media. It encourages boys to be imperious without repercussions.

" Islam "

When you think Islam you probably think ISIS and beheadings and violence and oppressed women. You probably think women are raped on the daily and mass murdering is planned. You probably think, or you may not, but you most likely think that Muslim women stay secluded and have to ask their male spouse for permission to do anything at all. This is what the media religiously spreads so, naturally, these are your first thoughts. The media has done a fabulous job of creating a one-dimensional outlook towards Islam as a religion and portraying that narrow mindset out into the public. Props.

But Muslims have elected 7 women as heads of state in Muslim-majority countries. How many female heads of state are there in the US????
As a society and in forms of mass media, certain demographics pick and choose what airs and what the rest of Americans see. Most of those limited portrayals of Islam being of Islamic extremism of female genital mutilation, ISIS, stonings, and other brutal actions. These are the only things that get views and are worthy of headlines so these are the only things Americans are exposed to in regards to the Islamic religion.

It then becomes simpler and neater to label all of Islam as a religion that promotes violence and female oppression. It's too much work to go into detail about what Islam truly is and what it means for those that aren't a part of ISIS or Al Qaeda. There is no longer a discussion about the story of three women that got stoned to death, it is now a discussion about how all Muslim-majority countries stone their women to death and thus, how Islam promotes women oppression and all Muslim Americans are violent and hate women and are probably terrorists.

There is only bigotry when it comes to Islam. We generalize one and a half billion people as one unfavorable characteristic and that is why we have conflict. Because some Americans only get fed a certain portion of the rest of the world and they assume it all to be factual and genuine. Yes there are women in Saudi Arabia that are not allowed out of their homes, yes there are women in Pakistan that have had acid spilled on their face, but this is not what Islam is. People promote violence, people promote oppression. Making facile assumptions about Islam is the last thing we as a people need. Yet it happens constantly.

MISSrepresentation

"Baby be the class clown / I'll be the beauty queen in tears." This is a line from Lorde's song "Tennis Court" that precisely highlights what the media feeds our generation. With these lyrics, she exposes the underlying truth that we all know to be true: that men must be the careless, funny ones while women suck up their pain and flaunt their beauty.

For quite some time now, the media has been spreading a distorted image of what it means to be a woman. It has been defining in greater and greater detail what women should act, think, feel, and look like. They then portray a completely polar image of what is supposedly "ideal" and that is what screws with everyone's mind. A notion of mainly western beauty and lifestyle standards have been forged by the media and taught to increasingly younger and younger generations. The media then strays from those images and shows reality TV shows, movies, music videos, commercials that portray women as worthless sex objects that are constantly catty and over-emotional. The media portrays two contrasting extremes that only work to emphasize an unattainable goal and reinforce the outright impotence of women as a whole gender. 

This representation of women has been the basis for the fundamentally outrageous generation that is being molded. The media has contributed to the hypersexualization of women that eludes from anything intellectual or non-superficial. Women are now seen as sex objects used solely for the pleasure of men. Our gender has become a joke. The media has aided both men and women to strip women of their integrity and has triggered a different mindset. Women begin to self-objectify by seeing themselves as a tool that can be sculpted to an outsider's pleasure, while men see women as unstable, anxious lesser-beings. Both men and women begin to have a mindset that begs solely for sex appeal, one being dominant and the other being the submissive. 

Women are set to higher, seemingly unrealistic standards that are the measurements of their worth. There is a limited portrayal of what it means to be a woman and be valuable. These portrayals pressure women and girls to pursue and achieve a certain kind of beauty that condones worth based on appearance rather than merit or education. When there ARE women in power, the aren't taken seriously. Their intellect is set aside and their appearance becomes the course of the discussion. A white male in government once said that "People simply don't want to see the face of a woman on a dollar bill." Women, especially women of color, in positions of power are torn apart for their looks. An overweight, white, eighty-year-old male is perfectly fine on a dollar bill, but god forbid a woman on one. 

When women and girls aren't able to reach  photoshopped standards, they are not beautiful enough. They are not powerful enough. They are fat, they are ugly, they are worthless. If they try too hard to fit into the standards, they are sluts. If they don't try hard enough, they hate men. These criticisms are guided by the mass media, by everyone that isn't female, by the white male that states women are decorative and useless. https://twitter.com/linedhearts/status/600777024957886464 

This scrutinization of women since birth is so prominent that young girls feel they need to start acting and looking like the girls they see on TV. Twenty-four-year-olds playing the role of fourteen-year-olds. They being to put on makeup and high heels at young and younger ages. When they get criticized, they say they don't do it to impress. That they don't do it for others.

It is one hundred percent okay for girls to wear makeup as they please, but what they don't realize is that the standards for what makes them feel beautiful and confident are already set by someone else. They may not be trying to impress someone, but the reason they feel confident and beautiful in makeup is because that is what they've seen and been told all their life. With makeup, they resemble models and celebrities more, they are closer to reaching that goal of what it means to be a perfect woman. Contour can help your face look slimmer and your boobs look bigger and that makes you feel beautiful because that is what you know to be a woman. The media has been selling these standards of "skinny with curves" to an extreme point. They will be quick to tell you that these standards aren't bad for your health and simply condone a healthy lifestyle, but forget that pushing these unrealistic body images is also bad for your health. 

Women simply replicate the reality of a world they now know too well. 

Women and the Media

"We are the girls petrified of business school / Boys who learn to manifest success by refusing to take no for an answer"

"Give me a god I can relate to / commandments from a voice both soft and powerful / Give me one accomplishment of Mary's that did not involve her vagina"

For years now, the media has been portraying women as the catty, skanky, appearance-obsessed humans that serve solely to please men. Women and girls are constantly being degraded and objectified to a point where the women, and young girls especially, begin to succumb to what the media feeds them. They walk into the oppression and injustice because they almost accept it as an inevitable reality.

Women don't get talked about unless it's about how much skin they're showing. There is police brutality against black women too, but it's not covered by the news. The media will encourage you to shun your awful confidence, then explicitly point out your every flaw. 

There is an unrealistic, superficial standard that women must live up to in order to be considered anything at all.

The media will show Kim Kardashian in all her glory but not a female CEO. 

We as a culture have been conditioned to want to see other things. We are driven towards what has been constructed as the "cool" or what a girl should be wanting to watch and feel and think and what a boy should be wanting to watch and feel and think. We reenact what we see and what we see is wrong. 

Comedian Cecily Strong called out media coverage on women politicians for focusing on the appearance of the females rather than on their merit. At the White House Correspondent's Dinner, she had the audience repeat after her and take a vow that stated, "I solemnly swear not to talk about Hillary's appearance, because that is not journalism." She also made a disclaimer at the beginning where she said, "I promise, since I'm only a comedian I'm not going to try to tell you, politicians, how to do politics or whatever. That's not my job. That'd be like you guys telling me what to do with my body. I mean, can you imagine?"

She precisely called out the government's role in the dehumanization of women. Allowing anything or anyone other than themselves to govern the rights of their body is objectification at it's finest. It encourages men and women to see women as things that can easily be controlled by outside forces. It reinforces the idea that women are feeble little creatures that wouldn't know how to handle themselves. 

The media, or in some cases the lack of media coverage, works to perpetuate a stereotype of dull, worthless women. The media we get now is conducive to gender segregation and oppression. People are scared of what might happen when women are able to take control. For years, there has been an accepted truth about women: that they belong in a home watching their kids and cooking a meal. Half of the population isn't ready to know what the other half is capable of. 

Twittertwittertwitter

What happens when mass media tells teens that whatever they do or have or think is not enough? What happens when teens are constantly told that there are celebrities that have an unattainable yet seemingly utopian lifestyle and that these are simply "goals"; never a legitimate reality for anyone normal.
What happens is the creation of a generation that self-deprecates because it has become the rather "cool" thing to do.
It suddenly becomes witty and down to earth when you are able to lessen your own value as a human being. It becomes the norm and it becomes funny.

Twitter in all its complexity is a major faucet of youth culture. It replicates the teen mind with its ideals and standards and subconscious shaming.
Twitter is primarily used by teens so all the "popular" accounts are often similar and tweet about the same teenage dilemmas and mishaps. Twitter's retweet feature allows for a rapid distribution of a tweet and makes it that much easier to spread the tweet. This means that although you, specifically, might not be following this certain account, their tweets can still make their way to you as people you do follow retweet it.

             

These kinds of tweets have been very widespread and have undoubtedly started to shape the way the rest of the population sees itself. Once these tweets get out and people see that popular accounts are the ones distributing it, the viewers switch to their preconceived mindset that whatever is getting big hype is the popular and socially acceptable thing to do. Mainly teens, but anyone exposed to these kinds of tweets, feel the sense that there is no way that we, normal civilians, are able to ever compete with the grand lifestyles of high-class celebrities. Teens begin to feel that there is no way to ever attain a sense of happiness and contentment if it isn't the same happiness that Beyonce or Kylie Jenner are used to. They receive the message that whatever lifestyle they currently have is not good enough if it isn't like that of a millionaire. What teens tend to forget is that these seemingly perfect lives are unrealistic. The number of seventeen-year-old girls that own a house and three cars is a very small number. Still, teens feel that they must strive to reach these standards or be completely worthless

These comparisons are so demeaning yet so common that teens, especially girls, begin to have this mindset on their own. 

In this case, I think the feedback loop began with the media because they show this beautiful girl who has the very prominent cheekbones and weighs under 120 pounds and is blonde and famous. These beauty standards have been defined by the media and these teens are simply assimilating to what they have been taught is beautiful. When they realize that they do not look like Johnny Depp's daughter, they immediately label themselves as ugly and disgusting. 

This shows the reality assumption that teens are obsessed with their appearance and high status. That they are overly consumed by materialistic desires and superficial aspects of life. They use this reality assumption in order to make it seem funny, as in the first tweets, and to relate to more teens. 

Recently, there has been an immense growth of the power and use of the media but there has similarly been a boost of awareness in regards to the aftermath of social media's influence. In fifteen years, I think that there will be an extreme increase for these two sides, where there will be those who are completely absorbed with social media and religiously preach it in all aspects of life. But I also think that there will be those that believe more harm has been done by social media than good so they will want to rid it. 

Flo

Flo is your local Progressive agent and this is her family.

This commercial, I think, is the epitome of Progressive advertising because it reaches the consumer on so many different levels.
Throughout the whole commercial, they successful employ wit and humor and the aspect of plain folks in order to relate to viewers.
They start out with sunny little Flo and her family, mind you, Flo plays all the parts of her creative relatives. This creates the sense of humor because Progressive makes it way too obvious that they are in no way trying to make it seem realistic, they are bluntly making this commercial for entertainment. It makes the viewer want to keep watching because it's something original and the advertising isn't as direct.

The commercial makes use of the advertising technique of plain folks with the mix of a reality assumption in order to relate to the stereotypical American family in all its complexity. Progressive assumes that most American families would be able to relate to this commercial because they show the overly involved mom, the fashion blogger sister, the annoying brother, the jokester dad, and anger stricken grandpa. They take these assumptions to the extreme in order to make the commercial funnier and more appealing, but still make use of that stereotype.

This is one of the longer Progressive commercials, being a solid two minutes where most are thirty seconds or less. Throughout the span of this time, not once do they mention the company or their products. They make no reference to any tangible thing they are selling you, rather they attempt to sell you the high concept of family and understanding. They want to make it seem like they understand you and all you constantly deal with in regards to family.
They use reification to the extreme by simply having Flo star the whole commercial. She has become the face of progressive as a bird has been for Twitter or an apple for Apple. They don't outright tell you it's progressive, rather they expect you to associate Flo with all things Progressive.

The Progressive slogan is "Local Agent." Their main pro is the fact that they offer something relatable and someone just like you. This commercial exemplifies the meaning of "local" in a way that make you feel that Progressive truly is someone who understands you.