Well I did not blog much lately so I feel a little strange so I will start with something personal.
I realized that I watched this movie in 11th grade with my marvelous English teacher. She was the best teacher I have ever had. Also this is true for most of my classmates. Then at the end of 11th grade, she left school. She was too good for us I think. Anyways I just remembered her when I saw the video and I felt different. Now she has a baby isn't it wonderful?
I would like to answer this question: "Do you feel that the media reflect or create the ideal image of beauty in our society – or both?"
I wonder who could say that "No, media does not create the ideal image of beauty."
Media creates almost all of our ideas. Media manipulates us. How can we deny that media does not affect us? It is impossible. I am not watching TV at Sabancı and also I don't read newspapers a lot. I just check the news and move on. I feel like I am changing. I feel like I don't judge or criticize people, ideas or any other thing that I judged or criticized before. This is because I am far away from the mass media.
As mentioned in the video, Killing us Softly, advertisements sell products. However also advertisements sell values, images, concepts of love and success. Unfortunately this is true and some of us don't realize this before someone mentions this. This is very sad. If media has the power to change our values then media must have the power to change our ideal image of beauty.
I always believe that today it is very easy to become beautiful because media gives us the formula, if you become skinny, if you have a small nose, if you are tall, if you have big eyes, if you have long hair and if you smile all the time then you are beautiful. It is that easy.
If you are fat, if you have big nose, if you don't smile, if you are short then sorry; you are ugly.
It is very hard to find a fat top model or it is very hard find a fat girl on a billboard. So sad...
We don't watch fat people in a Hollywood movie.
Why?
(irritating silence)
For me, no one is ugly because we are all different.
Guess who's back?
13 years ago
This is a great post, so much to respond to.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you say you think your teacher left because "she was too good for us" - in what way do you mean?
I really like watching British films and soap operas because the characters often are not "beautiful" or "perfect", and thus they better reflect real life. American TV characters are always airbrushed, I hate it so much.
And even companies like Dove and The Body Shop, which claim they are showing "real" women still use models with wonderful and firm skin, long beautiful hair and so on. There is nothing very revolutionary about this, is there? The models are simply a bit heavier (i.e. they have normal rather than anorexic bodies)
Thank you :)
ReplyDeleteWe all thought that we don't deserve her but I will tell you more about her tomorrow.
I don't follow soap operas or I don't watch films so much, at least these days, because when I am at the dorm I don't want to sit with myself and watch some other lives. I prefer to spend my time doing other things with my friends but I was watching the Big Bang Theory. It was very funny at first then at 3rd season all the characters don't seem to be real and I stopped watching it. I think it is very similar to this situation. Anyways maybe you will suggest some of them and I will watch them some time.
Ahh they do everything to make us all ugly I don't know why. Whatever we do we cannot be beautiful in reality but we look very good at photographs thanks to photoshop :)
Dear Elif,
ReplyDeleteThis is really nice post while i was reading,i realized that i am changed a bit too while i am away from this soap-operas.
I don't know about British movies but in couple of french movies i realized there are various types of people too- like in real life.
And United colours of Benetton is using a lots of different types of people, i like their billboards.
However, this type of advertising or movies are not majority :(