Little Girls?

  Recently I came across an anti-obesity campaign in Atlanta Georgia, strong4life, released this photo as part of its ad campaign to stop childhood obesity. The poster (shown here) is of a heavier young girl, but the unflattering camera angle makes the girl seem even heavier then she is. The girl in the black and white photo stands with her arms crossed, and with an an angry look on her face. Bright red letters read “warning, its hard to be a little girl if you’re not.” It seems to me that this photo suggests that to enjoy your childhood as an average American girl, you must be skinny.
   
  The word that most sticks out to me is little. It refers to being little in age, and in size. The way the ad uses it as a play on words, puts an emphasis on it. Making the distinction that in order to be a child or "little" girl, you must in fact be skinny or "little". Is this poster telling us that in order to fit into American society you must be skinny? I know many people say that Americans are pressured to look like barbie, and be fit and thin, but we are getting the same message from anti-obesity campaigns as well! Will my love for cheeseburgers cause me not be able to fit into our society!?

Funny or Disgraceful?

     In American Studies today, we had a discussion on the Minstrels of the 1800's. For those of you who don't know, Minstrels were people who dressed up in different costumes, and put on shows for money. Many of these minstrels were African American people. Some of these African American Minstrels would mock themselves, putting on a skit of jokes about African American stereotypes. Since it was so profitable, white people began to doing the same kinds of shows. To make matters even worse, the white person would cake their face in charcoal, to give the impression that they were actually black, these people were called black faces. I saw a recreated version of such a skit on an informative website about these black faces. I urge you to check out this link to watch this video. It gave me chills and filled me with disgust that someone could mock such an innocent class.
To make matters EVEN worse, sometimes the blacks would also paint their faces black, so they could make even more fun of themselves. It seemed so weird to me that people would do such a thing. Go on stage and make fun of themselves, and dehumanize their own race and culture.
My research was cut short because I had to go with my advisory to see our schools "Lagniappe" show. Every year, my school puts on a play called Lagniappe. In this show, written by students with no teacher input allowed, skits are put together making fun of our school and community. Immediately my mind went back to the Minstrels. Never before have I really questioned why we do this show at our school, but always just enjoyed the hilarious skits making fun of everything from our teachers to stereotypical "north shore moms". But there was an unmissable connection between the two. Both were satirical shows pointing out the flaws of a certain culture. I began to wonder if a really these types of shows were a bad thing? I never thought of Lagniappe as rude demoralizing our culture. But since learning about the Minstrel shows, my old favorite Lagniappe show seemed like a disrespectful practice. Knowing that the two different events were on much different scales (Lagniappe not being none to anyone really outside of our New Trier community) made me feel better. But I still wonder if the roots of these satirical shows really make them wrong to see.    

Who is College Really For?

Upon entering junior year at my high school, everything changes. From the first bell there is a tension that is present. Everyone knows that junior year is supposedly the toughest year of high school, and in preparing for college everyone knows what they need to do to get in to the school they have in mind, or maybe the schools their parents have in  mind. Many parents put immense amount of pressure on their teens to get good grades, and higher test scores. They want their child to get into the "best schools."
  An article by the Boston Globe, entitled Parents Get Competitive on College, discusses the pride that some parents get when their child is admitted into an elite college. One contributor Bruce Feiler quotes that “There are very few benchmarks by which parents can evaluate whether they’re doing a good job, and for a certain segment of parents, there’s no better benchmark than college admission."
However shallow this might seem to some, it is really a reality. I personally feel that a lot of times it is the parents who pressure their students to the point of over-stress in this junior year. It seems to me that there are many parents who are more worried about what school their child gets into, then the child's quality of life, currently and when the child starts his or her first day of college.
I remember dropping my older sister off at college early this fall. Upon walking around the campus and seeing all the scared faces of incoming freshman, it hit me that it is truly more important to find a place where you are comfortable then where it is considered "more elite." My sister attends Miami of Ohio and for her the school was her dream school. But if faced with the choice between that or say Harvard, I feel as if my parents would've insisted she attended Harvard, even though she fits in perfectly at Miami and couldn't be happier. Her face on the first day was relaxed and at peace, as if she had just made a perfect match in a puzzle.
Many of even the most intense parents would probably agree that it would be disheartening to see their child walk into a place where they plan to live for the next four years, and not fit in or be completely miserable. But even with this being said, it seems that in the rush of college planning most parents would pressure their child to choose a school that was considered "harder to get in to." I wonder what it is about the rush of college planning that really makes parents make so uncharacteristic choices? And although the benchmark of admission to a school is definitely a factor, I feel as if there must be something more.
So what is a "good school", is it a school that generates the most income, a school that is ranked at the top of the lists, a school with the most caring professors? Or is "good school" all a relative term?

You mean Teddy?

I recently viewed an bizarre documentary called Grizzly Man. The documentary was about Tim Tredwell, a grizzly bear fanatic who died being killed by a ferocious bear, ironically trying to save the grizzly himself. Although alot of the film made me really thing-k, one thing that caught my eye was when the director showed shots of Tim cuddling up with a plush furry bear. My mind couldn't help but see how he treats the toy bear and the real bears so similarly. Tim runs up to the animals and talks to them and touches them, the kind of behavior that got him killed.

What I found fascinating was thinking about how hazardous these animals were, and how innocent the toy representation of them was. The way that Tim treated these bears, and his stuffed bear, reminded me of when I was a child playing with my own stuffed teddy bear. I would cuddle up with it, bring it all over my house, and even outside into my backyard. I loved my stuffed bear, as many children do, but until recently did I really begin to wonder why it is a bear that seems to be the quintessential toy for every American child. An animal that is so dangerous and ferocious somehow made into the most adorable fuzzy creature a child can get their hands on. I think it is funny that out of all the stuffed animals made, it is the bear that children seem to be most drawn to, or that our society portrays children to be drawn to. It is in our society that I have begun to notice other cases of where we try and take something that is actually big and scary, such as the grizzly bear, and make it something cute and fun and innocent. Take toy soldiers for example. Many will agree war is not a fun thing, it is very serious, heavy, and devastating, yet children play with toy soldiers, and play games of war, for fun.
I wonder what these things say about our society as a whole? Are we good at taking things with a grain of sand, and not really worrying about the significance behind them, for it is all fun and games? Or are we disrespecting those who give their lives for our country, and comprising all of their troubles down into a plastic green figure for children to laugh about while hiding in their sand boxes?
    I personally feel that it is a somewhat combination of the two but mainly the fact that we take these things with a grain of sand to save us the trouble. We take things that are really a big deal and make them not seem like a big deal to save ourselves the distress. Take the government shutdown as an example. Although it seems so strange to think that currently the people who represent our country have all just stopped doing their job, we do not really fret about it. No one has mentioned it in school, and my parents do not seem to be in fear that it is that big of an issue. I think we do this because if we worry too much about something we cannot control, and something that will soon be back to normal anyhow we will cause ourselves unnecessary distress. We take these things as less of a big deal, or look at the happier side of them for our own good. If we worried that anything closely relating to war or soldiers was directly correlated with death and despair, we would drive ourselves crazy! Just as if we looked at every child's teddy bear as the one who killed humanitarian Tim Tredwell, we would be living in a world of grief.