Trifecta

Hello, World!

I work for a major women’s magazine. This is probably a long overdue confession but I am beginning to hate it. Perhaps I am not cut out for the whole “9 to 5” job or maybe I’m jut not that into it anymore. I know there are hundreds of girls who would kill to take my spot but honestly, I don’t care. Everyone I work with pretty much sucks and they might be the most passive aggressive group of humans I have ever met in my life. I think it is the industry that turns people this way or maybe it is just that women intrinsically are jealous of other women. I can’t really figure it out. Whether it be jealously of their accomplishments, looks, boyfriend or whatever else, women are jealous. I remember walking into my boss’s office one day eating a cupcake (first mistake), she looked at me and said “HOW do you eat THAT and stay so thin?!” to which I responded “Umm, I don’t know, I don’t really gain weight” (second mistake). I could then see her lips purse up and her face turn green with envy. Since then she often makes comments regarding my eating habits and looks, it is almost like she resents me for it. Don’t get me wrong, my boss is no Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada, but she can be quite a handful. 

Jayne Manfield and Sophia Loren

Maybe women aren’t jealous of other women and maybe that is just something I have observed from my experience, but there is something going on and I think it is in large part due to the society we live in. In today’s world, I don’t think we could survive without media. In our daily life we often look to the media to tell us what we should be aware of and what is important. We are constantly surrounded by news of beautiful celebrities and billboards are plastered with stick thin models. In the United States alone, over 8 million people struggle from eating disorders and that number is increasingly yearly. Many suffer from body image issues and look to celebrities and models to see how they should dress and how they should look. You would think after reading this post that I hate the media, hate the fashion industry, hate the beauty industry, and hate basically anything that influences culture and society. But the kicker is, I don’t. I am still a girly girl obsessed with nail polish (literally obsessed), clothes, and all the latest beauty products. I’m just comfortable with myself and don’t feel the need to strive for what magazines and celebrities tell women is “perfect”. Although I am comfortable with myself (don’t get me wrong, I still have my insecurities), many women are not for a variety of different reasons. Throughout this course of this blog I am going to explore the effects of the magazine industry as well as mass media on young women in today’s society. I am going to incorporate my own experiences with the various topics I choose to touch upon which may include exploring the effects of the fashion, beauty, advertisements, sex articles, and fitness while also looking at how we can protect ourselves against the societal norms that are pressed upon us. Brace yourselves; this could be a bumpy ride. 

Above is a excerpt taking from a young woman's tumblr blog.  She illustrates the effects of media and society on women.

Profile

Well.... this is just disturbing.

What are you obsessed with? If you asked me this question I would tell you…. nail polish, cats, costume jewelry, and interior design (don’t ask me about the cats). Every person would have different response, but I don’t think you would get too many people responding that they are obsessed with celebrities. However, in America, we really do have an infatuation with them. I mean, I’d like to think I am not mildly obsessed with Justin Bieber, but sadly that’s false considering I follow every move of his on Twitter. What is so crazy is that circulation for almost every gossip magazine is over two million (and there’s a heck of a lot of them out there) AKA we L-O-V-E celebrity gossip. 

So, I found this blog that perfectly captures our infatuation with celebrities and thus relates to my blog as well, the blogger goes by “Urban Katie” (I’m going to take a wild guess and say her name is Katie) and her blog titled “Obsessed.” 
You can check it out hurr --> http://urbankatie.wordpress.com/ . Her blog was created for one of her classes (how fitting!) at the University of Virginia and as she writes in her “about” section of her blog she is a double major in media studies and American studies with a concentration in visual and popular culture. Sounds like she’s pretty damn smart. Katie may be a student but she has excellent insight and theories into why America has such a fixation with celebrities. Although she only averages about one post every couple weeks, her interest in the topic is portrayed throughout her blog as her posts are filled with thought and care.

Katie writes in her very first blog post,

“I want to use this blog to explore America’s infatuation with celebrity through an academic lens and examine topics such as celebrity replacing religion, celebrity “news,” and celebrities’ ability to influence.” 

My blog relates to Katie’s on the level that we are both writing about how media influences society. Katie’s blog focuses strictly upon celebrity influence, whereas my blog will explore this area as well as how magazines, models, advertisements et cetera affect women today. Katie’s blog will be a fab reference and resource when writing my blog because her writing is more academic, with frequent footnotes and links to case studies and scholarly articles. Although I don’t plan to have a formal voice in my blog like she does, she supplies content that may be relevant to the topics I choose to post on. My goal is to develop a strong voice throughout my blog and give the readers more than just straight facts in an academic format.

Katie has a few posts that are directly relevant to my topic. One of her most relatable posts to my topic is entitled, “The Media and Female Body Image,”it focuses upon how women in the media are objectified and made to be seen as “passive” rather than “active” by men. Another similar post called “Media and Body Image Part 2” addresses how the media focuses upon images of perfection to market their products and celebrities. Many are aware of the false images of perfection presented in our society but they still have extreme affects on women today. In a future post, I hope to touch upon the topics she presented on a more personal level. Katie’s posts are highly informative however they lack a certain quality that makes the writing more assessable to the reader. Katie does not offer any personal stories or anything that the reader can particularly relate to. As someone with an attention span of 3.5 seconds, you got to grab me if you expect me to read something scholarly… ew. Most women can probably share that feeling of thinking they are inadequate to celebrities and models in magazines and on the news but I believe that the adding a person touch makes the reader feel more connected with the topic and the writer and therefore more engrossed in the writing.

Voice Critique

I remember the first time I didn’t do my best on a test in college. I was sulking, pissed at life, and fro yo was just not cutting it. I needed someone other than a friend who pretty much has to say nice things to me to tell me it wasn’t the end of the world. What I really needed was the blog, “Nourishing the Soul”. If you are feeling pretty bad about yourself then you should really check it out. By the title, you can infer that the blogger might be a cheesy, over-enthusiastic “you can do it!” type. And to be honest, that is kind of what she is. However, the blogger Ashley does it in a way that isn’t irritating or fake. Essentially, Ashley’s blog is about well… nourishing the soul. We live in a world where society and media make us for bad about ourselves for not being skinny enough or pretty enough. Ashley’s blog is basically here to tell you, you are enough.  Not only does it address body image issues, but also the pressures in being successful, having healthy relationships, and finding peace within yourself. By reading her blog you can get a sense of who Ashley is as a person, or who you imagine her to be. If I could guess Ashley’s story I would say she grew up not being the “cool” or “popular girl,” and she probably had pretty low self-esteem in high school. That sounds depressing and no, I am not sorry for sounding betchy, but by the way she writes, you can tell she hasn’t always been the person she is today. She definitely gets those little everyday insecurities that most of us get even though she has grown from where she once was. But, everyone gets them. Just today I was trying to figure out a way to cover a zit that I thought was humongous on my forehead (it’s really not that big), and at work I felt like everyone was staring at it, definitely a little insecure… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7elZMMv2pE

Anyway, the first post of hers I would like to point out is “You are not a fraud. No, really. You aren’t.” Well first off, thank you Ashley for making me feel good about myself and telling me I’m not a fraud when in actuality I am kind of bullshitting my way through life. So she starts off by telling a story, which I am always partial to and her voice pops right out at you. The first place I notice this is when she compares her nervous stomach somersaults to the gold-medal gymnast Shawn Johnson. She writes,

“I had always thought this was an expression, and now I was quite certain that this organ was competing with Shawn Johnson for best all-around gymnastics performance.”

She then basically has a conversation with herself bantering on about her lack of knowledge and experience for passing an exam. She often uses italics to emphasize her point, which in her case does the job. The writing itself it pretty simple, it’s not LOL (ew, can’t believe I just used that acronym) funny but it makes you smile and that’s all I really need to stay semi-entertained. Her posts are a mix between silly, inspirational, and psychological. Being a psychology major, I dig it, it’s informative but relatable. Her posts seem to follow similar formats, start with story, get all psychological and conceptual, end with some inspirational food for thought. At the end of this post she says,

“If these thoughts plague you, know that you’re not alone. You are also not really a fraud. It’s just your mind’s way of trying to hide you from your greatness – that sneaky little devil trying to slyly sabotage you.”

I like that she personifies her mind, it’s playful, lighthearted, and oddly relatable (story of my life).

Get an idea of what her blog is like?

In another post “Why I get tired of ‘You are beautiful’", her word choice is encouraging and likable. While society sees being slightly overweight as less than ideal, Ashley writes that being large is beautiful. Instead simply saying “overweight” she writes “gentle curves of flesh around bellies.” Later on, instead of writing something more commonly seen like “drop dead gorgeous,” she writes, “the aesthetic quality that launches a thousand ships and intrigues our visual senses.” Her word choice is unusual and has a sense of enchantment to it. I like the general vibe of Ashley’s blog, any time I am feeling down, I know I can take a gander at her blog and instantly perk up.