Leena - Teens in the Media

EXTENDED COMMENTS: Traditionally, the boys’ locker room is a secret kept place only for young men. Women have no access to these locker rooms, and are unaware of the many ways they are mentioned and described to other young men in the walls of their own schools. In Alexis Jones’ Ted Talk about Locker Rooms, she identifies a problem which is the mindset that programs and teaches young boys to think about, treat, and speak about women, calling them “auto-pilot” where they are given little to no reason to things, but still believe “that’s the way things are “. But says who?   I decided to discuss some of the main points Emily mentioned in her blog post. I chose Emily’s post because I can relate and agree with multiple points she discusses in her blog. Emily explained her frustration with knowing little to no information about the world we live in and not letting teens speak for themselves, and I agree with both statements. We are just set to live in these preconditions of life

HYPERLINKS I decided to use hyperlinks to discuss the issues that both authors Peggy Orenstein and Susan J. Douglas raise in their readings: LINK: Disney Princesses: Good for Boys, Bad for Girls In the reading "Cinderella Ate My Daughter", Orenstein argues that Disney Princess teaches children before their parents do, what it means to be a female or a male. Disney Princess's portray the passive, personality-free female who is swept off her feet by a prince, who is attracted to her beauty more than anything. In contrast, males are seen as adventurous and aggressive. These very same notions of gender are presented in the toys sold to young children everyday. This article explains a study that was done on 198 preschool-aged children and analyzed their attitudes about gender and body image. 96% of girls and 87% of boys were familiar with Disney Princess media. The study found that girls who consume Disney princess media are more likely to have generated stereo

CONNECTIONS: Selfie City makes claims that less selfies are taken than assumed and mostly images are taken of food, cats, cars, houses, and friends. While analyzing selfies between 5 cities (Bangkok, Berlin, New York, Sao Paulo, and Moscow, they claim that more young women around the age of 24 years take the most selfies and tend to pose more expressively. Teen Vogue makes claims that once called "self portraits" became popularized due to the invention of I Phone 4 (with a front facing camera) and social media. The obsession with selfies expose the need to be noticed. With the mask of social media sites, people can show the ideal image of themselves and build self esteem. This connects to readings we've gone over in class For example: Croteau explains that media texts can be seen as key sites where basic social norms are created . The term SELFIE once unknown is now a word in the dictionary and socially accepted by our president, celebs, and neighborhood.

ARGUMENT: In the article “A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence” by Rebecca C. Raby, Raby argues that discourses are implied unevenly between adolescence in different social locations making their effects unequal between individuals. The discourse on teenagers is significantly affected by gender, class, and race. A discourse is a set of meanings, images, stories and statements that produce a social understanding of things or people. Since discourses are understood by society, they claim to be the truth being reinforced into our perception of reality. Our consumer culture has been able to manipulate teenagers in a variety of ways, while framing adolescence as a stage that requires a degree of self-reflection. Popular concern about adolescence is of being dangerous, ungoverned, and in need of control. Discourses however cannot be a reflection based on society’s perception, for example with adults because every teenage experience is different. Focusing on the concept

What do we learn about teens via the media? The film " The Mean Girls " (2004) tells the story of Cady Heron, a young "tom-boy" teenager who was once educated by her parents in Africa. The movie tells her story transferring into a public school for the first time. Her experience involves drama, cliques, and rules that were implied into the social culture of high school. Cady finds herself involved with a group of girls "The Plastics" which she experiences the highs and lows of her teenage life. This film portrays the culture of high school to be unexpectedly crazy. Cady was a student with good grades, pressured into fit in a culture different than something she has ever experienced. As a teenager, I shared some of the same qualities of Cady, being a "tom-boy", I always wore sneakers and always made the Honor Roll in school. Entering high school, I thought of the worst. The media portrays high school to be a place where one is not accepte

Quotes: Based on the Article titled "Framing Youth" By Lesley Bogad, I decided to elaborate on three quotes mentioned in the text: 1. Dominant discourses about youth — adolescent development, age, erasure of difference — secure the weight of their voice(s) through repetition and reproduction in mainstream texts, popular culture and “scientific” studies which naturalize them as a part of the “common sense” of American culture. This quote explains how the most common written and spoken ideas about youth regarding their development throughout adolescence and puberty, as well as the ways society portrays them as different than any other group secures the common sense in American culture about teens. Along with researchers and scholars with heavy weighted voices who follow these same discourses, common sense of inexperienced and emotional youth remains embedded in our culture through television, films, and magazine covers. Youth as a category has a very little weighted vo