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.

Got to Have it?

       Everyone around me has been talking about the newly released iPhone and how they can get their hands on it. The ones who lucky enough to already own the device are idolized, and those who don't yet have it seem to be making plans for when they will be able to get hold of the hot new technology. According to apple.com, the sales of the device within the first weekend topped 9 million and sales numbers continue to rise.
  Although I will admit, I envy my friends who have the new phone already, I wonder what it is that makes us want this phone so much. Is it really the cool new features? Because as far as I can see, the only features that the new iPhone has that are not available for download on earlier apple devices, are the state of the art fingerprint scanner, and the newly improved camera. So then why does this new device make us so crazed. Personally I think it is because of the title that each iPhone has. The title at the time of the release that tells us that this is what society is going to envy. The title that says if you are among the first ones to own this device, you will be envied and idolized. I still remember the feeling I got of superiority when I got the iPhone 5 the day it came out. Everyone wanted to hold my sleek new gadget, and when my phone would die at a friends house and they would offer me a charger, I boast in my reply that I could not use their old iPhone 4 charger, because the new iPhone came with a brand new type of charger. Now almost a year of that iPhone's arrival, no one asks if they can see my phone, because this iPhone isn't one that is cool anymore, it is the iPhone 5s.
  The unappeasable desire to always have the newest gadget tells us something about our society. It tells us that no matter what we have, we can always have better. No matter what we say, we can always say better. No matter what we do, we can always do better. It seems to me that there is an ongoing unrest imbedded within us that we cannot control.
  Although it sounds bad, I think that this unrest is just what keeps us as a society on our toes, keeps every fall exciting to see what new technology comes out, and gives us something to always work for. If the need to always have the best is imbedded in who we are, the need for always doing our best must be too. A trait that helps us as a society move forward, and helps us be able to invent new things, such as iPhones. So maybe the desire that makes us want the new phone, comes from the desire to get the new phone.  

        The other day in my American Studies class we looked at an excerpt of Studs Terkel's "Division Street America." Although unable to read the book in its entirety, the small excerpt we looked at really stood out to me. Terkel interviews different members of the Chicago community, and hits on themes such as racial and class segregation of different Chicago. In the introduction Studs mentions that there are some wealthy northern suburbs of the city referred to as the "North Shore." Studs mentions how the North Shore suburbs "give or take a token black, are lily white," which is actually scarily true. Having been raised in the area, I was taught to appreciate where I came from, appreciate the school system, and the security and everything else that comes with living here. I had been told from a young age that in parts of the city only a short drive away, people were being shot late at night, and troubles of crime and poverty were taken precedent over the troubles of terrible school systems, and high school dropouts. Unfortunately all of these things are true, and although mayor after mayor tries to change the case, there has been little drastic progress on the situation. I had almost always associated local poverty with the "inner-city" as people refer to it. Yesterday however, I was introduced to a new group of impoverished Chicagoland natives, the Waukegan bulldogs.
After a long day at school my tennis team hit the courts to play the Waukegan bulldogs in a tennis match. Me and my doubles partner felt terrible during our match, when we would hit our softest shot, and the girls across the net would scramble away as if it were going to concuss them. The team looked as if none of them had ever picked up a racket, and the embarrassment their eyes broke my heart. Of corse, I had played them before on previous teams and noticed their lack of proper equipment, and skill, but since reading the Studs Terkel article, it dawned on me that these impoverished people who actually do live in the Chicagoland area, do not receive the attention that the inner city poverty does. I looked more into the numbers and found that according to USA statistics, in 2012 17.90% of Waukegan's population was living below the poverty line. In Chicago 18.45% of families are living below the poverty line. Although there is a difference in the numbers, they are surprisingly close. Never had I realized how poor these people actually were. In my school career we had been so driven to the fact that Chicago inner-city was poor (a sad but true fact) but teachers seemed to have missed another place just as bad about an hour north. Even Stud's Terkel in his "ABC's for non Chicagoans" introduction to his book, discusses the area from the city all the way to Lake Forest, but seems to miss the area only a few suburbs north that is in terrible shape as well. There could be many reasons why people including Studs broadcast the cities conditions but simply miss other poor areas such as Waukegan's. They could not include the area in their reports on purpose to draw more attention the the contrast between the extreme poverty in the city and the extreme wealth in the North Shore, or they could just simply not have any idea that there is crime and poverty happening outside of the inner-city. I feel that these areas should receive more attention and help for their worsening situations. As hard as it is to say it, although the city needs lots of help, there are other places that need it too. And there is a lot of work to do.

 

Competition

Today on CBS a brightly dressed news anchor reported a story about a man who failed at his goal to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a small wicker craft attached to about 300 helium balloons. The man, Jonathan Trappe from Maine, had already flown across the English Channel and over the Alps using his mechanism, but now he wanted to fly across the Atlantic. The story reminded me of the other recent news article about Diana Nyad, the sixty year-old women who swam from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, in attempts to break another record. What is it about these Americans that makes them want to do such risky things just to simply win the pride of achieving a "record" or being the "best". I believe that it is rooted from a young age, in the natural environment that american children grow up in.
The idea that kids need to be the best at something, at least as it seems to be impeded in the values of North Shore culture, starts at a young age. Babysitting this weekend, I talked to eight year old Jimmy about the sports he plays. At the young age of eight, Jimmy could already tell me his life plan in the department of his favorite pastime hockey. "Im going to first make it onto A1 travel this winter, then I'm gunna play a lot and make varsity at New Trier as a freshman, and then go to Michigan on a scholarship and play as a center on the varsity team there all my years at college." Surprised that the kid had more of his life planned out then me, we proceeded watching Spongebob. Then he chimed in, that in order to do this he had to take Will's (his best friends), spot on the team. The idea of such a specific plan, that started with the potent goal to replace his friends spot on the team, really got me thinking. It must be something his parents tell him that makes such a young kid want to say such a thing. Of course, it is completely normal for kids to have big goals, but deeper than that, it seems that in the society we live in, kids are raised to always be thinking about how to be the best, the brightest, and the fastest. World record books are a staple in every household, and game shows, and sports games are recorded on every DVR. It is no wonder that when some of these American kids grow up, they feel the never appeased desire to do such crazy things, just to beat everyone out. In a New York times article titled The Competing Views on Competition, Matt Richtel says "I’ve already done my part to promote the value of competition, almost completely unconsciously. I’ll talk about whether the San Francisco Giants just won their game. He knows that someone is going to be elected president and someone else is not." It is virtually impossible to grow up in our society without having some sort of competitive pressure at one time or another, but maybe, this is what makes our society thrive. The deep imbedded value of competition just might be the thing that gets our society thinking about how to solve the next problem, invent the newest medical device or smart phone. Some may argue that maybe then the discoveries and achievements made by people is simply out of self greed. The idea that they want to be the one who is known as the best scientist, or doctor, or computer programer, or swimmer. However personally I feel that maybe this is what is needed in every society. The idea that everyone wants to be the best, so then even if people do things out of personal greed, they do things that help the society grow as a whole.