This link discusses a teachers approach to gender within her her classroom. It truly amazed me and inspires me to continue to work for change.

http://togetherforjacksoncountykids.tumblr.com/post/14314184651/one-teachers-approach-to-preventing-gender-bullying-in

I dont see the button to embed the link, if you cant see it let me know and I would be glad to share it with you personally! =D

Women and Media 384 final Project

Women and Pornography:





How Porn affects and influences young girls and women

When you think about Pornography, people often associated it with humiliation, rape, violence, pleasure, entertainment, and of course, Jenna Jameson. The porn industry revenue over a billion dollars annually, and is possibly the only profession, where the star protagonist is always female, and receive a higher pay check than her male co-star. Pornography can be a positive and negative influence towards young girls and women because it can empower or in most cases degrade them. I conducted my own research on how young girls and women are easily persuaded through Pornography and how some women are liberated through porn.

Pornography is a controversial subject among people because it often makes people feel uncomfortable and has been accepted in American culture as an actual business since all actor/actress must be the legal age of 18 and older. Although, most women and young girls don’t have a long career in this industry, only a handful had made it big and crossover to non-adult feature films. Jenna Jameson is the perfect example of how Pornography had made her a successful figure toward women. Jenna is the most famous adult film star of all time that turned herself into a billion dollar corporation. Jenna Jameson is the most recognize porn star in the world and has even become an important pop icon in our culture. Like most girls who joined the porn industry, Jenna started out as a stripper then crossover into pornography films, when she was only 19 years old. Most porn stars start out young, because the youthful/fresh new face, represent new talent, and more money for the adult industry.

Link to document online

Patriarchal Conditioning and Religion

“Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” - Genesis 2. This was the excerpt from the bible, describing the creation of women from a Christian perspective. The Bibles interpretation on the creation of women is clearly that of a patriarchal nature, as it implies that a woman was made in the image of a man. Although it is not only Christianity that nurtures this type of view on women, Islam also shares the same fundamental deprecation. I plan on bringing awareness to how these two religions greatly influenced the world’s general understanding on women as subjective to men.

Throughout history society was spoon-fed religion, its influence is can be tremendous, and many times society blindly accepts the social norms conventional to ones spiritual views. Christianity and Islam are the two major religions in the world today, the two religions account for approximately a little over 30% and 20% of the worlds population respectively. Therefore its authority spans over more then half of the worlds population making these institutions the two most influential religions in the world. Like most religions, each has a book of teachings that its followers adhere to, for Christianity it is the Bible and Islam the Quran, in each the role of women is widely understood to be submissive to a man therefore fostering a patriarchal religious institution.

I myself grew up in a Christian home, thus I understand the nature of patriarchy in Christianity. Yet I have always believed that all, regardless of social class, race, or in this case gender should share equality. I believe that the best way to combat such old fashioned schools of thought toward women is by simply bringing awareness through education and application of knowledge gained. I plan on bringing awareness to such structural deprecation toward women by writing a research paper and providing power point slides to support my thesis.

link to paper

Patriarchal agenda

View more presentations from Owen Bartolome.

Women journalist in Bangladesh

I am often asked “ you have no fear?” “No” she said, "I believe the pen of journalist is stronger than weapon."

Journalist in Bangladesh have little to no safety at all. The choice of reporting, and educating people about the truth has become a tough and dangerous position for many. Some escape the country in hope of receiving safety and freedom. While others take the threats and violence as a challenge and continue to perform their role as a journalist.


Presentation

Media vs. Women: Who Defines Beauty?

Some things to think about:

Who defines beauty?

What is beauty?

Is everyone's perception of beauty the same?

Who gave the media the right to depict beauty a certain way?

I wanted to touch on the subject of beauty, and how women have to continuously look at different exposures in the media, and question their own.

Who Defines Beauty?

The Perfect Lie
The Pressure!
Wobbly Wobbly Wob Wobble Wobble

Skin Deep

For my final project I decided to create a documentary- type video on beauty pageants. I compared pageantry with body building contest, showing the pros and cons of each. I soon discovered that both competitions are more similar than anyone could ever imagine. Further examining the similarities it brought upon a bigger issue. This issue would be how women have evolved throughout the years in comparison to men. Women haven’t always been taken seriously, and seen to be lower than men because they’re unable to do what men could do. However, while creating my project I realized that women are most definitely capable of doing the things that men do. For example, with both extremes of competition spectrum beauty pageants and body building contest you see both men and women compete in each. If this is possible then this could open up a whole opportunity to prove that women are just as strong and powerful as men, and hopefully one day can be seen as equals with men.

This link directs you to my final video as well

Religion and Women

Funny but True

Woman have been subjected to patriarchal views and influences in many aspects of life, even the so-called divine ones. Yes, it is evident that religion is androcentric at times. My focus upon this matter is through the religion of Islam and through the religion of Buddhism. I delve into the misogynist aspects of the religion and point of certain characteristics which could be focal points for feminists to construct their arguments against patriarchal establishments.


a few key points:

1- Koran's interpretations.



2- Muhammad's family.



3- "Muslimwoman" and Feminist writers.



4- Buddhist's apparent indifference.



5- Yet, being a woman is more unfortunate and they're treated unequally.

Portrayal of Latinas in Television

http://somoslatinas.tumblr.com/

An interesting thing I've come to discover is that a lot of the men and women that I work with do not currently have or have ever had a connection or relationship with other Latinos. They then later base the things they say about Latinos due to what they think they know because they have seen or heard about it in it in films and television.

Therefore, this brought me to my project and my interest in learning more about how my culture is being represented and how other Latinas feel about this representation. As a Latina that was once confused by the message that the media provided me with I feel concerned for other young Latinas and I want to help open their eyes. I hope to show the way we're being portrayed as well as how and why this isn't correct and at the same time get their opinions on how we can improve this image.

Don't Clip The Clit

Female genital mutilation also known as female circumcision is an procedure most commonly practiced in over 28 countries throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Arabian peninsula. This procedure involves removing partial of the clitoris or sealing the vagina as a cultural belief that it purifies girls and stops premarital sex. It can cause death and has many immediate complications as well ass problems in the long run, not to mention unbearable pain. Although it has been internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women, it is still being performed. This has to come to a halt and cultures should be aware that this is completely wrong.

References

New York Times Article -Sara Corbett

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/femalegenitalmutilation/index.html

Youtube Documentary- TNPevents

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDJyZIPvExY

United Nations Population Fund

http://unfpa.org/gender/practices1.htm

Women in Music Technology

So For my Final Project I did a zine, which I can only Display a couple of pages online right now seeing as my computer is having difficulties uploading it. But I basically wanted to research the amount of participation of women in the field of technology, when it deals about music production. There isn't many women who are participants when it comes to being a sound technician, or even a lighting technician for a live show. I thought this would an interesting topic and so here is a little bit of what I have.

http://simplebooklet.com/publish.php#wpKey=jHubP8F4yCIAyDefnHSyWf#page=0

JUNGLE BOX: A ZINE ABOUT MAKING STUFF

This zine was born in 1998 as I watched two co-workers commandeer our company's mail room resources to create their personal local art and culture zine. As a young woman, the allure of expressing myself in such an uncensored, uninhibited and blantantly rebellious way was tantalizing. At the time I didn't think I had enough to say; that, lacking the badassness of the mailroom guys I couldn't, maybe even shouldn't, make a zine. Now that I've had my fill of things I dont want to see and am not interested in, including zines by badass young men, I finally have.

CHECK IT OUT: ZINE

CONTACT ME IF YOU WANT ONE:

sheenaqueenofthejunglebox@gmail.com

Progress Charged Guilty

We live in the day and age, in which technology is key in a modern society. However, is all progress good? Can it be both good and bad? I believe graphics editing programs like Photoshop are both good and bad. In my essay I explore how modern technology effects advertisement, and how advanced use of such technology can bring harm, both psychological and physical.

Essay

Digital enhancement

Yellow Girls

A short adaptation from YELL-Oh Girls! (forward by Vickie Nam)

I wrote a 6 page script, and realized if anyone was going to watch it, there had to be major cuts. I plan on making it a podcast, but from doing this I learned that my English kinda stinks too. -Sooo maybe just a picture essay.

Production notes aside, I really identified with this anthology- and brought up to many Asian American groups. I have yet to hear a girl not say "Whoaa, that's my story...". -I really want to fine tune some more things, for the sake of a deadline, I have this- but I honestly do want to show this to my little cousins and nieces who tell me to stop talking when I try to speak in Chinese because they say the language sounds funny.

It's my personal goal to see to that we can have more Asian American figures that all can recognize. Being under represented causes much misinterpretations and misconceptions about individuals.

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Women in DIY Punk

In my (very) short video, I discuss the history of women in punk rock and DIY. I explore the beginnings of the genre with Patti Smith and Debbie Harry, then how the Riot Grrrl movement appropriated the music through DIY music in order to promote feminist ideals. Finally, I examined modern females in punk today.

Here are some of these bands:

Bridge and Tunnel

The Measure [SA]

Lemuria

Slingshot Dakota

Laura Stevenson and the Cans

RVIVR

PS Elliot

Punch (Professor, show this to Davin)

Heartsounds

Cheeky

Little Lungs

WITCHES

Pop Stars and Body Image

For my project, I wrote a paper about the effects of idolizing pop stars on young girls' body images. I was inspired to write this paper because of my own experience fawning over pop stars like Britney Spears as an adolescent. Several studies (that I cite in this paper) show that watching music videos has an adverse effect on girls’ body dissatisfaction. It is for this reason (among others) that I think media literacy should be included in school curriculums. In my research, I found many articles calling for a need to include media literacy in school, but few U.S. schools have actually been able to do so.

Pop Stars and Body Image PDF

Pop Stars and Body Image PowerPoint

Circle of Friends: Positive Teen Magazine

Circle of Friends -- Link

Throughout the semester in class, we've talked about many issues with advertisements geared towards teens or women in general. I wanted to take this opportunity to create a zine for teenage to read and feel good about themselves. Inside the zine, I wrote about Bell Hooks, Jean Kilbourne, and Michelle Phan. I also included a health section and a book section. Throughout the zine, I have advertisements, but not the negative kind. They are ads from Reel Grrls, Guerrillagirls, Kilbourne and more. I really hope that they can learn something from it and live above all these negativity.

Women Imagined.

Women in Speculative Fiction:


           The fiction which we imbibe on a daily basis plays an undeniably large role in the collective creative conscious of our society. The things we imagine have direct correlations to the things which we have already seen imagined. It has been said that every idea stems from another, and also suggested that there is no true originality in the world. While this may be an extreme interpretation of certain evident truths, it is also not to be taken lightly. The things we come up with, imagine and daydream about are all directly related to what we have seen, done, or been told about in our lifespans. This is exactly why fiction, and the depiction of different minorities, namely women, in our fiction is so important.

 In fact, what many people consider the very first science fiction novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), was written by Mary Shelley.

While it is generally accepted that science fiction itself, as a genre, has an overwhelmingly male audience, women have always played a prominent, if understated, role.

In the early 20^th century many female fiction writers wrote under pseudonyms or gender ambiguous names.
 C.L. Moore: Catherine Lucille Moore, famous for her contributions to Marvel’s famous series “Weird Tales.” Andre Norton: named “Grand Master of Science Fiction” by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1984
 Leigh Brackett Hamilton: whose last credit before her death was the script for ''The Empire Strikes Back'' (in collaboration with Laurence Kasdan).

A New York Times article entitled “Women And Science Fiction” published in 1982, by Susan Schwartz, illustrates a budding and blossoming world for female science fiction writers, a world which had already been paved by several trailblazing women, and sheds much light on the progression of women in the field of science fiction writing.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/books/women-and-science-fiction.html?pagewanted=all

By the early 60's so many women had entered the field that aficionados liked to boast that sf had conquered sexism. Ursula Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Joanna Russ and Kate Wilhelm brazenly published under feminine first names, and science fiction fans, traditionally a vociferous lot, didn't seem to mind…

An amusing anecdote from the piece tells of a James Tiptree who began to win multiple Hugos and Nebulas, the aforementioned prestigious science fiction awards, for gripping and horrific stories such as “The Women Men Don’t See.” Tiptree came to be lauded by several male authors as the masculine reply to the recent overwhelming female contributions. Shwartz quips:

Science fiction fans and writers admired Tiptree's adventurous life, which included a childhood in India and Africa as well as wartime security work in Washington. ''There is to me something ineluctably masculine about the work of Tiptree,'' a male author proclaimed in an introduction to Tiptree's collected stories… In 1977, however, to mingled consternation and glee, Tiptree announced that she was actually Dr. Alice Sheldon, a research psychologist who had indeed spent her childhood in India and Africa and worked in the Pentagon during World War II.

 Television series like the futuristic “Star Trek” introduced female actresses to the country in a way that had never been seen before. The original series included a female crewmember aboard the Enterprise (The ship these space-travelers voyage in), and not only was she a woman, but she was also an African-American. Lt. Nyota Uhura and Captain Kirk shared the first example of an interracial kiss ever aired on national television, and it almost wasn’t aired at all.

                                                                                       Nichelle Nichols

The privilege of working with such an unrestrictive genre should not be taken so lightly. There are benefits and pitfalls to being able to portray a futuristic or fantastical society. What we as a people have to strive towards is depicting what the future should actually hold, not what the public has been groomed to accept or pay for. Speculative Fiction, as an art, is a powerful tool, and a valuable weapon that can be used for the betterment of society as a whole. It simply needs to be used in the right way.  

My actual essay:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/75306447

Sources:

http://www.wiscon.info/
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/books/women-and-science-fiction.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.startrek.com/database_articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_speculative_fiction

Real Latinas Have Curves...Do They?

For my final project, I created a short video documentary about the struggles that Latina women face as they attempt to find the balance between the conflicting messages that the media and their own family and culture are sending them in regards to body image and weight. Latinas comprise a large portion of the population of women suffering from some form of an eating disorder in the United States. Usually, it is these conflicting and, often, confusing messages from the media and Latino culture that engender these eating disorders.

Through a series of interviews, I chose three women who conveyed, in my opinion, most eloquently and precisely, how damaging these messages can be on a woman's life. By also speaking of my own experience struggling with an eating disorder on the documentary, I wanted to remove that "fifth wall", as they call it in theater, between myself and all the real women out there, and have viewers feel that element of authenticity and relativity in my message. I chose to film walking at the beginning of, and throughout, the film in order to once again give viewers that same sense by feeling as if they were seeing the same world I was seeing through their own eyes. In the end, I really wanted people to ask themselves if real Latinas really did have curves and really think about how dangerous, sometimes life threatening, the media and a critical culture can be for a Latina.

The documentary, overall, took a little over a month to develop. I did the producing and editing on my own using a combination of my slr digital camera, a flipcam, Garage Band, and Final Cut Pro. Here are some stills from the video.



One advertisement shot at Times Square.













A second advertisement of a woman in a provocative outfit and pose shot at Times Square.











Advertisements like these indirectly tell women they need to be blonde, tall, and unrealistically skinny to be beautiful. Shot at Times Square.











Screenshot of Jessica Melendez, one of the interview subjects included in the documentary.











Screenshot of Illeana Perez, another interview subject.

Gelene Harding, a third interview subject.











Link to full documentary available on youtube at : http://youtu.be/VsPHImG8gO4

Sluts Say "Yes"

The current feminist movement called SlutWalk is a global fight against victim blaming of sexual assault and abuse. Slutwalk was initiated in Toronto, Canada, in February 2011. The movement started up in reaction to a comment made by a Toronto police officer named Michael Sanguinetti. He stated “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Sonya Barnett and Heater Jarvis decided to use the word slut in their response and gathered over 3,000 at Queen’s Park in Toronto for ‘Slutwalk’.

Some rape myths usually sound along the lines of ‘Did you see how she was dressed? She was asking for it.’ or ‘Rapists look for clothing that is easy to remove quickly, they carry around scissors specifically to cut clothing off.’ Both of these statements are false. Acquaintance rape is the most common type of sexual assault and accounts for over 80% of all rape cases, and 50% of them happen on dates. (Marshalledu.com) Acquaintance rape occurs when someone you know or trust forces you to have sexual intercourse.

Under current legislation, the New York State Law affirms that convicted sex offenders are charged with 10 years of probation for any felony sexual assault and 6 years for a misdemeanor sexual assault charge. (SVfreeNYC.org). Under this rule, convicted sex offenders don’t spend a single night in jail. In fact, statistics show that 15 of 16 accused rapists walk free.

What can we do to stop this? Change the face of rape culture.

A) Stop blaming the victim and start blaming the rapist

B) Change the way we communicate with each other

C) Enforce stricter legislation on convicted sex offenders

D) Help public movements such as SlutWalk be heard on a global scale

Link to my Final Project Paper: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75294260

The Black Butt

Since before slavery the body of a black woman has been continually objectified. From our hair, to our skin color, to our body structure we continue to be seen as an object or seen in parts opposed to a human being. Being a black woman carries many burdens; burdens that stem from being black and from being a woman.  Black women have continually struggle with their body images.  I chose to do my project on the objectification of the black woman’s butt. The black women as it is understood through an ignorant stereotypical lens, are expected to have large butts. The glamorization of this one body part has had a damaging effect on black women. Women who do not have large butts often feel that they are not black enough or woman enough because they do not fit the stereotypical norm of what a black woman’s body should look like. Throughout the existence of black women there has always been some type of control on their bodies, whether it be physical or socially or culturally. There is always some form of control on their bodies, how they feel about their bodies, and how their bodies should look like. I became extremely fascinated with the notion of objectifying of black women’s butt. I decided to do a documentary on the objectification of the black woman’s butt. This story is told by black women. This will be a condensed piece of work in which I would like to further expand on in the future.


The link to my video


http://www.youtube.com/user/Simbasush?feature=mhee

Women and Immigration

Hispanically Speaking News

I decided to focus my final presentation on the treatment immigrant women experience by laws like the Arizona's SB-1070 and what they experience when they are detained by ICE. I was inspired one day when I was watching the news and heard of a woman who had an abortion while detained and received no medical help. How can people let this happen? As a result, I decided to make a zine to raise awareness.

My brother, Robert, helped me with the format of my zine.

Link to my final:
MediaFinal384Fall2011

Western Influence in South Asian Media

Western influence in South Asian Media has been increasing in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and especially India. My main focus is Indian media because it has the most influence in other South Asian countries with the most success in ads and movies. Advertisements have changed so much within the past decade that it's become noticeable to different demographics in the desi (South Asian) community. One of the most noticeable marketing strategy has been the role of women, young women specifically. Commercials have changed from being more family oriented to overtly sexual. The female model's image, which are played mostly by Bollywood actresses, have very distinct features. The more "American" an Indian model looks, the more ads she'll be cast in. The obsession with skin whitening creams and Bollywood actresses endorsing beauty products for women in India have been one of the leading factors to marketing success. The success of movies, fashion, music and products have been credited to the young women luring consumers with their looks and ability to be an actress, spokesperson and model all at the same time.

Final Project Presentation:

Women and Media on Prezi

Women and Media Presentation Explanation