Media Literacy

To Shave or not to Shave

*What follows is an opinion based statement.

Shaving my legs on stage was not 'plan A.'

I originally had another, more subdued, idea for my fireside chat but decided to change it at the last minute. Why? Because I had the wonderful experience of being told, again, by a man what I needed to do to be attractive. One of these 'requirements' was to be clean shaven, and so I decided to oblige.

We have reached a strange time in society with the expectations of women. While we have been trying to reject the constraints of the past new ways of putting people into generalized boxes have emerged. There are so many online 'resources' detailing out how to be visually acceptable to society and they have begun to conflict. We are stuck between differing visions of the overall 'ideal woman.' The problem is this does not exist.

I wanted to communicate two main ideas in my presentation. First, that the expectation of women's appearances are lofty and draining. The idea that all women have time to constantly have perfect hair, makeup, fitness, and not hair an inch of body hair is unrealistic and damaging. We are human beings and we are not here as a gender solely to put all our effort into being judged on a sliding scale that often isn't our own. Secondly, I wanted to communicate that these things are choices and should not be dictated either way. I would never tell the world of women they need to stop shaving or wearing makeup. These things are sometimes things we do have time for and want to participate in. I definitely shave my legs, at home and on stage. The idea isn't that we shouldn't do these things, its that it should be a personal choice based on who that woman is. I prefer less makeup and to be clean shaven, because this is how I feel most confident. If another woman feels confident wearing a lot of ostentatious makeup and never shaving, then she has succeeded because the hope is that every woman can find a state where they feel comfortable and confident. This is what matters, not societies perceived standard of appearance.

So whether there are enough hours in the day to look perfect or not, it should be a personal decision not a general rule. While the opinions of others fall short in many ways, the idea that we can have these constraints assigned to us all so generally, and that we do these things to be attractive for men, are what I consider the most harmful. Preferences are okay, Sharing those opinions as rules or facts for all, is not.



I am glad to have been afforded the opportunity to express my opinion in a safe environment. I felt I could put myself out there in a somewhat vulnerable way and come out of the experience empowered. I am additionally glad for the opportunity to hear my classmates passionate opinions. While I may not have agreed with all of them, discussion was prompted and ideas shared. This community feeling of sharing is a way for all of us to get to know each other on a deeper level and hear how each of us views life and our place in it.

Food Truck Roundup

Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that in order to feel fulfilled as a human being, one must first satisfy physiological needs, then find safety, then actualize oneself within a social setting, and then top off their satisfaction with esteem and self-actualization. We chose to focus on the creator of the food truck roundup because we believe in the importance of communion in achieving the third level of Maslow's pyramid. The sharing of meals is such a vital aspect of humanity and community because it supports the idea that human beings should care for one another and ensure that each person survives not just physically, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually. Events such as the food truck roundup serve as a shared experience that helps individuals orient themselves in their social environment.

For example, Claire experienced something unexpected as she worked to film different aspects of the roundup. She was given free food and told to relax and enjoy the people around her. She was sent to a seat by one of the fires and instead of eating alone and returning to work, found herself included with the group. People became truly invested with how she was doing and wanted her to know how they were doing. She held pets and took group photos and truly felt a part of this group of perfect strangers that felt like family.

In Arlene Goldbard's essay, she says, "Every year more and more artists work in community cultural development, in participatory projects in which artists collaborate with others to express concerns and aspirations, recovering histories, beautifying communities, teaching, expressing cultural creativity as a universal birthright and a bottomless source of resilience." The food truck roundup is one of these participatory projects that seeks to inspire and uplift the community. The strong sense of community present in this event is due to the man who created it. Anders Taylor grew up with food truck roundups in California, and, upon moving to Utah, missed the sense of community they brought when found there was no such thing. He has worked hard to foster this community spirit and avoid a competitive atmosphere.

What we found special about the food truck roundup was the inclusive nature of its setup. The trucks were arranged in a circle pointing inwards, the fires had chairs encircled around them, and the stage was at the forefront to invite all to enjoy the entertainment. Because of these circles, the participants were welcomed to enjoy the company of others and relish in the warmth of community. The communion we can share at the food truck roundup gives us a sense of social belonging here in Provo.

Game for Change

http://www.philome.la/CaitStratton/under-pressure


A problem I see in our society today is the result of conflicting opinions on motherhood. It seems that no how you choose to parent, someone is adamant you are running your children’s lives. Often time this judgment comes from other mothers on the blogosphere. There are a few terms for this such as ‘Mom vs. Mom’ and ‘The Mommy Wars’.
I am not a mother, but as someone who has a mother and the potential to become a mother there are aspects of this that bother me. The fact that so much of this judgment comes from other moms is, to me, a shame. Instead of supporting each other in what is probably one of the hardest jobs, people are attacking each other’s style of parenting.  One issue in particular resonates with me. Some people say a mother cannot work outside the home without neglecting her children. Others, who are working moms, push back saying it is working for them.
My mother is a woman with more than one story, a concept explored by the TED talk we viewed. She is mother, a wife, a teacher, and a working mom since I was 12 years old. Previously a stay at home mom, when my father was laid off she went back to teaching speech therapy at a local elementary school. After this she never again was without a job. It wasn’t that added income, my father found an excellent job not long after; it was that she loved the challenge and helping children. While she was originally worried about the change, it worked for our family.
In this game I focused on showing the issue through a mother who had seen both sides. Having no experience as a mother I drew from my own mother’s experience and some of the stories expressed online. You begin as a stay at home mom heavily involved with her son’s school life with a social circle of similarly occupied moms and end as a working mother dealing with a new set of challenges. I wanted to giver her more than one story and show her emotional conflict over how to move through this transition.  Problems such as judgment from other moms, pressure to put work first, and the guilt over leaving your children with another person are addressed. There are also issues such as the conflicting emotions of enjoying being at work and missing your children.
My aim was to show both sides of the story, with maybe a leaning towards the sympathy for working moms as it provides a basis for crafting a set of choices to incorporate in a game. I also wanted to show some of the judgment stay at home mothers receive by giving them one story and portraying them in a negative light. In this way I hoped to show how both sides are often perceived and help people understand that we should be supporting each other in our individual family choices and not tearing each other down.


Sources

http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/family/features/n_7837/index3.html

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/parenting-roles/value-of-stay-at-home-moms/the-value-of-stay-at-home-moms

http://drphil.com/articles/article/284

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/welcome-to-overwhelmia-the-modern-day-madness-of-working-mothers/2014/03/13/1dd71bc8-aabf-11e3-98f6-8e3c562f9996_story.html

World Building

      Our main idea was to look at a world that shines a spotlight on the everyday, average person. In a Disney movie, both a street rat like Aladdin and a princess like Jasmine get equal time to sing and dance their way through life. Everyone is the star of his or her own story. This is a well-known idea and a famous way of looking at life. William Shakespeare said that “all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”  The world that we have created makes this a reality. In our society everyone shines through their ability to sing and dance about their lives. This has some unfortunate drawbacks however. If everyone is a star than who is there to fulfill the supporting cast and backup singing? The truth is that we are all the supporting cast to those around us. We are the harmony to each other’s lives and others are the support for us. So in this vein, we have created a world in which spontaneous musical numbers are performed daily and those who shine brightest are the most talented performers.
     Even a society based on spontaneous musical numbers needs infrastructure. Musical numbers are an addition to their everyday lives which will inform their performances. But, since jobs must continue to be completed, the musical numbers will in turn influence how they perform those jobs. For example, a street sweeper might break out into a Stomp number as he cleans the roads. This was in part why we chose newspaper as a medium. It is a media form consumed by the masses which allowed us to represent diverse elements of society. We wanted to show as many aspects of our proposed society as possible. This included the singing woodland creature advertisement, the need for a confetti blower operator, and even the report on a baseball game. All these articles were influenced by the fact that musical numbers dominate every individual’s life. Even the court cases revolve around the musical aspects of life. With this in mind the newspaper's formatting is inspired by musicals. The title font is large and cartoony, and the fonts themselves differ as we wanted it to have a whimsical, creative look.  
       The reading described the process of designing as an “exploration” in which the imagination is “link(ed)...to its material form.” We experienced this exact process in the construction of our world. An interesting part of that was making sure that we were all “grab(bing) hold” onto the same vision. At one point we had to decide whether this world would be Musical centered or Disney centered. We determined that because we wanted to explore the idea of a musically saturated world, that this would be our focus. From this point, our alignment actually led to a deeper exploration that yielded more physical material forms. Therefore, this homogeneity of vision was an important principle in our design, and essential to holding a concept as big as a designed world together.

Textual Poaching

         Which one is the real woman? In this case the picture on the right most accurately represents the revered form of Marilyn Monroe we are familiar with. Her image has recently made rounds on the Internet sometimes paired with the phrase, "Real women have curves." While this message was meant to promote the idea that skinny isn't the only beautiful body shape and as a woman, I find it just as exclusive and potentially harmful.

         For years there has been a dialogue on the harm Photoshop and the effect impossible images of toned, skinny women have on the self-image and esteem of girls. The negative option women can have about themselves is not a new issue; it has been discussed at length in all forms of media from blogs to Dove soap commercials. Despite this people still insist on telling us how we need to look and think to be a ‘real woman.’ Recently there has been an interesting trend where now it is shameful to be skinny. The recent single “All About That Bass” by Megan Trainor promotes the idea of being comfortable in your own skin, but not without slamming all the “skinny bitches” for being “stick figure silicone Barbie dolls.” I find this flip of extremes troubling. It seems we as a society still feel we need to define what the ideal woman should be by her body shape and yet can’t agree what that is. Are these messages really that harmful? After all Megan Trainor supposedly means well. As Jenkins explores in "How Texts Become Real" it is the meaning attributed to a text that gives it weight. In the Velveteen Rabbit, the boy's investment gave the toy added significance. It is a similar situation to all texts with this dual message to women. They may mean well at face value, but those whom are excluded from this new 'correct' view of womanhood might see their perceived faults mirrored in the text.  

I presented the two images above, one the true image of the famously voluptuous Marilyn Monroe and the same image I doctored to flatten her all of her curves, to show that both images represent real women. Women come in all shapes and sizes, and not fitting someone’s ideal shape cannot take away our womanhood. Our gender is not dependent on whether we have an hourglass figure or are flat as a board. I used the images of Marilyn because she is an icon of female sexuality. The original photo shows her true curves and true self and the second, while obviously changed, is still clearly of a woman. She may not have” all the right junk in all the right places” but that doesn’t warrant the shame of being told she isn’t woman enough. 

         I do not condone the practice of photo shopping a person to completely change their figure. In fact, even the action of shaving off Marilyn Monroe’s curves bothered me. It was so easy and by the time I was done it really wasn’t her body any more. This is a common issue discussed among women, but its unoriginality does not invalidate the emotions each of us feel facing these conflicting messages. As a woman in this environment I have felt pressures from both ends of the spectrum. I am neither curvaceous nor petite. So if a real woman is petite and small or has bodacious curves, what does that make me?

WebSpinna - The Wrap Up

The Webspinna battle was an excellent study on the way new material is created in all art forms. In the reading, the author spoke about the plundering of fragments of literature to form new products. This portion of the text particularly struck us because it seemed to describe the essence of the battle itself. While it was incredibly frustrating to try and find individual fragments of sound from such a wide pool of possibilities, the unlimited nature of the project offered us the opportunity to create something new and interesting. Furthermore, these samples in ways that are out of context to give them new meaning.
            We decided to explore the concept of dreams vs. nightmares because of its ability to be interpreted in many different ways. We didn’t want to be limited by something too specific; we wanted to be able to use a wide array of clips. We were able to use sound effects, music, and voice-overs to express our specific vision of what happens to dreams when nightmares creep in. This included our ability to take clips out of context to portray our vision. For instance, the “It’s a Small World” song was created for a children’s ride to convey joy; however, we took the annoyance of hearing it repeatedly and turned its effect from joy into fear.
            We especially liked our battle because we took care to provide a strong narrative. We took common nightmare scenarios such as drowning and falling, and incorporated them into a dream sequence that was continuous. We then used the abrupt ending to snap the audience out of the nightmare and remind them it was only a dream.
            One of our pivotal sound clips (which ended up not playing) was from the movie, I, Robot. Referring to the robots, Dr. Lanning says, “One day they’ll have secrets, one day they’ll have dreams.” This film prompted us to consider what dreams are, and what it means to have dreams. Our dreamer became aware she was fighting a nightmare and recognized that she could manipulate the scenario. This idea came from our consideration of dreams relating to sentience. Another influence was the film Inception and how the dreams become more complicated as the dreamer’s subconscious fights back against the protagonist. This film helps to indicate that while the dreamer fought and lost, it does not mean that the dreamer cannot fight again.
            It was nice to see everyone’s live battles on Thursday because while we chose a specific, narrative path, it was interesting to see the directions that the other battles took. It reinforced our appreciation of the unlimited creative possibilities the project offered. This helped us to see that creativity is such a fluid thing which can be formed into many different things and portray the feels.