eden's magical media blog

Reflection Critical thinking, the media blogs specifically, were a great way for me to improve my analysis skills and give me a better understanding of the way that media is used to manipulate me. Looking back at my first media blog, I discussed how happy I was that media is becoming more inclusive. I was excited about people of all colors, genders, sexual orientations, and body types were being included in the media we consume, but after the class I realized the true reasons these people are a part of advertisements. It is all for monetary gain. Companies do not care about inclusion, they only care about ways to make money and appeal to a broader audience in order to do so. The same companies that sold one body and one skin type, have somehow managed to sell me my own identity, commodifying people or color and other minorities as a way to get more money. Once we isolate the true drive of all advertisements and all companies, it is much easier to see through them and not as easil...

Media today is always about grabbing people’s attention. No one has the time or energy to really pay attention to an ad or a news story, so everything is about advertisements that are seconds long or trendy hashtags to pass around information that is quickly forgotten. This loss of attention span makes us more easily manipulated, as media not only controls what we see but also the way that we analyze and remember it. It is hard to start a movement if everyone forgets about it after it stops being trendy, yet different advertisements pay more and more money to stay trendy. How does this affect our perception of the world around us? One where we are torn between issues of social equality and advertisements for makeup products or skinny teas. The best example of this is the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. For some reason, this was a big controversy, with many white people feeling excluded (even though that really isn’t the point). The point it, for a couple of months it got a mas...

The under and misrepresentation of women in politics is much worse than anyone could have expected, subtly and sometimes more blatantly woven into discussions so that even women start to believe them. I know that there aren’t enough women in politics, and the problem of under-representation is one that I can understand. One that can easily be solved by just adding more women to the political sphere. The connection between under and misrepresentation, however, is one that I did not make. The reason there aren’t many women in politics is because of the way women are portrayed, taking away potential role models for young girls who want to become later involved. This vicious cycle results in the status quo: a world ruled by men. Since fourth grade, I have wanted to be a  Supreme Court Justice. One of my role models was Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first female woman of color on the Supreme Court. I always had her to look up to, and before I was exposed to a lo...

What does it mean to be a feminist? By definition, feminism means “ the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” So anyone who believes that men and women should be equal meets this definition. Unfortunately, this definition of a feminist has been warped by the media to mean something else entirely. Now a feminist is seen as someone who hates men, believes that women should be in power, and doesn’t shave their legs (what men usually believe) or must always be going to protests, advocating for equal rights, stopping every person that makes a joke, and owning their body 100%, someone who never does things for a man (what women usually believe). The problem is, nothing good comes out of these definitions. The only result is people feeling left out of “being a feminist” or do not want to identify with that term because it stands for something that many think of as bad. Media has been the main factor in spreading these two definitions. Look at things like the ...

Women in media have always been oversexualized. With sex icons changing from Marilyn Monroe, to Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus, the role of women in media, and the way for women to reach high position in media is by being sexy and powerful, an idea that media has captured and sold to consumers in a neat package: the midriff. The midriff is more than a bared stomach, more than just an exposed sliver of skin, but is the embodiment of the ideal woman. A woman who is obsessed with her appearance, and uses her sexuality in order to gain power/ control others. She is not real, rather appeals to what women want to be. Or at least, what media wants them to think they want to be. Of course some of these traits exist in women: yes some women are obsessed with appearances, and some are obsessed with the approval of men, but is this due to media, or because that is the way things just are? Or more concisely, is media a mirror or a feedback loop? The answer to this is blurred because of the way med...

What happened to reading? What happened to getting into bed late at night with a book and not wanting to sleep because you are in the middle of a good chapter but every chapter is a good chapter so once you finish the good chapter you still aren’t ready to sleep because there are so many more and your parents come into your room and it’s 11 but you are in third grade and your bedtime is 8:30 so you wait for them to sleep then you pull out the super cool pen you have that has a flashlight at the end of it then you read until you fall asleep with the book in your lap and when you wake up in the morning the light is still on and you have lost your page so you quickly search for it as you rub the sleep out of your eyes and hurry up to get dressed so you can read on the couch? Just me? Oddly specific anecdote aside, it has been so long since I have been able to get together with someone and talk about a book in depth. Not a school book, but a book we have both read in our spare time...

Merchants of Cool. If I am going to be entirely honest, even the title makes me cringe a bit. It seems torn between two generations, or like one generation desperately trying to fit into the mold of another. This title is the epitome of “I’m not like other moms, I’m a cool mom” which is not something anyone should be striving for. This desperation to “be one of the teens” be it to genuinely understand them or turn them into a conquerable market makes me rethink the way I consume and the sort of advertising I fall for. Yes, I can laugh at the kids in the movie for being so blindly dependent on the idea of autonomy that they don’t see the way they are being manipulated, but more often than not- I am that kid in the movie. As such a large market, teens have the power to make a major impact on a company’s sales. In theory, consumers should be in charge of the market-but companies have made sure to stay one step ahead so that teen life and the market are one and the same. One of...

Hey everyone! Let’s see if today’s blog post is something we can all agree on. Repeat after me, “Do not be a white supremacist.” Now hold onto that, that’s a mystery tool that we will be using later. See while this statement may seem so simple, apparently, there is more than meets the eye, as proved by the recent resurgence in hate crimes. Not to name any names, but every since our oh-so-beloved president was put in office, white supremacism, or to put it nicely, white nationalism, has been on the rise. Yeah we can blame Trump, and I will, but media also plays a big part in perpetuating white supremacist ideals, only circulating certain information to fool a larger audience. See here is the problem, media finds a way to circulate cases of terrorism when it related to other races (prominently jihadism), but when white supremacists execute terrorist attacks, information is not as quickly broadcasted. According to a study from the University of Alabama, white supremacist groups receive...

Often times, people fail to realize how much of an impact that the language they use can have on other people. In an age of social media, this problem has only worsened. People feel safe behind a screen, be it a phone or computer, and have no issue using offensive slurs/ insensitive phrases because they will never have to deal with the consequences of their action. Very few people I know would have the nerve to come say n*gger to my face, yet I see many that I know feeling very comfortable using it online where they think their actions don’t count. This environment is only cultivated by social media, with people flippantly throwing around words like retarded, f*g, and d*ke, without thinking about the impact their phrases have on others. Yes, I am sure that people who say these words “don’t mean it” and have no malicious intent, but people need to realize that the words they say and put out into the world have real power. Not only is it a reflection of themselves and the way they ch...