9. Killing us softly

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.

8. Tough Guise

Today we watched "Tough Guise" and to be honest I wasn't expecting a film like this. Usually we watch boring films in class (I know that I am generalizing but I am doing this to exaggerate :)). However "Tough Guise" was very interesting, funny in some ways and heartbreaking.

"Tough Guise" was very interesting because I never realize the change the size of the toys. Maybe because I wasn't a kid in 1970s but I felt sorry about it. I should have realized it before somebody mentions it. He was right!! As the girls become smaller, boys become bigger and bigger and bigger!! UNBELİVEABLE. We as the girls; go on diet, sacrifice, eat less and spend hours in the gym to look smaller. Why are we doing this? Because an anonymous power* force us to do this. But why actually we are doing this? Don't we have brain? Does the shape of our body controls everything? Why do we care about how does a skinny jean looks like when we wear it? I could pretend that well I don't care about it, I can eat what I want, I don't need to spend my hours in the gym but this is not case, unfortunately. Sometimes even I am thinking how do I look like. This was the case of a girl but how about the boys? It seems like the boys don't care about their physical appearance but I think this is not true. Especially in high school and in college they do care about their physical appearance. When you go to fitness center in SU you could see more boys than girls.

"Tough Guise" was funny because the music video where black boys act like a Italian gangster and then white boys act like them and it looks very funny. Well the concept at the beginning is very funny. Why do we have classifications like Italian gangster, black boys and white boys. There are all people and these properties shouldn't make them different from each other. Anyways the video was very funny.

"Tough Guise" was heartbreaking. I slept at 4.00 am yesterday and I was planning to sleep after the lessons but when I got back to dorm I couldn't sleep because I felt sorry. The statistics made me very sad. I could guess that men are more dangerous but the statistics shocked me.


*I don't know who imposes us the men are stronger than women but I don't think it is only the media so I will think and read about this issue more and write another post. Wait for it! (I felt like 6 billion people are reading my blog :))