A few weeks ago, I went to the presentation and movie night about human trafficking by the gender studies class. Before that day, I had heard of human trafficking and knew a bit about what it is, but I definitely left with a lot more knowledge.
I really didn't understand how people got into the human trafficking industry. The movie shown, Very Young Girls, was very eye-opening. I learned a lot about how people get into the commercial sex industry.
Before seeing the film, I perceived it to be a choice. It seemed a lot more glamorous than I now know it is. Our society tends to glamorize the sex industry, though it is in fact very dangerous for many of the people involved. During the Uni Period talk, we watched the music video for the song P.I.M.P. by 50 Cent, which is a good example of the public perception of the commercial sex industry.
After watching the video, I knew that many women don't choose to enter the commercial sex industry, but rather are forced into it. Girls can be picked up off the streets by pimps and forced to work for them. Others may be tricked and conned by a pimp to enter the industry.
Once you get in, it's hard to get out. Pimps typically don't just let girls leave. Even if a girl does manage to run away, transitioning back into society can be difficult. There is a very heavy stereotype against prostitutes in our society. A lot of this comes from the fact that most people really don't understand how the industry works. People look down on girls who have left the sex industry just because they once were a part of it.
After seeing the film and going to the discussion, I made a decision to stop using the words "pimp," "prostitute," "hooker," etc. in normal conversation. I realized that the use of these words is another way to show how our society views the sex industry. It's not doing much, but I think that not using these words is one way of showing that I do not support the commercial sex industry.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
I'm a bad luck charm
I float down the dirt path with
no thought of where to go.
I come from here
and I go to there
and where is there I need not know.
I tried the one syllable thing, and that little poem was the only thing I really came up with. Writing with one syllable is definitely a lot harder than it seems. Do you know what else is hard? Writing in the dark. It's approximately 8:04 p.m. and my blog post is due in about 26 minutes and I just scrapped my previous attempt at writing a post using words with just one syllable. I left my room to eat dinner and when I came back, I discovered that everything is rebelling against me.
By this I mean that the lights in my room burnt out, and since today is not my lucky day, my dad is at a meeting and can't help me out of this dark situation (haha...). I am absolutely hopeless at doing nifty things like changing light bulbs; I doubt I could even reach the light fixture.
I'm feeling like a bad luck charm right now, since it seems like everything I touch has been breaking. Yesterday I finished all of my homework early and was planning on skyping one of my best friends from camp, Maya, who lives in Chicago. I log onto Skype only to find out that apparently my built-in webcam is broken. Upon closer inspection of the physical camera, it appears that part of it has fallen off.
My laptop is really falling apart right now in general. The casing on it is starting to crack and now the screen flops around lifelessly like a soggy noodle. Even more annoying is the fact that for the past two weeks, my laptop has been crashing every time I try to do complicated things like checking my email. In fact, it's looking like this post is going to go up late since I have just returned from the third crash in half an hour..
Anyway, I can tell that this post is becoming really whiny so I'll just end it with a joke that my friend Elliot told me a few days ago.
Elliot: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Elliot: To.
Me: To who?
Elliot: You mean to whom!
no thought of where to go.
I come from here
and I go to there
and where is there I need not know.
I tried the one syllable thing, and that little poem was the only thing I really came up with. Writing with one syllable is definitely a lot harder than it seems. Do you know what else is hard? Writing in the dark. It's approximately 8:04 p.m. and my blog post is due in about 26 minutes and I just scrapped my previous attempt at writing a post using words with just one syllable. I left my room to eat dinner and when I came back, I discovered that everything is rebelling against me.
By this I mean that the lights in my room burnt out, and since today is not my lucky day, my dad is at a meeting and can't help me out of this dark situation (haha...). I am absolutely hopeless at doing nifty things like changing light bulbs; I doubt I could even reach the light fixture.
I'm feeling like a bad luck charm right now, since it seems like everything I touch has been breaking. Yesterday I finished all of my homework early and was planning on skyping one of my best friends from camp, Maya, who lives in Chicago. I log onto Skype only to find out that apparently my built-in webcam is broken. Upon closer inspection of the physical camera, it appears that part of it has fallen off.
My laptop is really falling apart right now in general. The casing on it is starting to crack and now the screen flops around lifelessly like a soggy noodle. Even more annoying is the fact that for the past two weeks, my laptop has been crashing every time I try to do complicated things like checking my email. In fact, it's looking like this post is going to go up late since I have just returned from the third crash in half an hour..
Anyway, I can tell that this post is becoming really whiny so I'll just end it with a joke that my friend Elliot told me a few days ago.
Elliot: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Elliot: To.
Me: To who?
Elliot: You mean to whom!
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Time
Time is a weird thing. Sometimes it drags on, inching along as slow as a snail, and at other times it rushes by with dizzying speed. During a sports season, I have to do my homework in a significantly smaller amount of time than I would when I'm not in a sport. Working under this stress and pressure actually makes me work more quickly.
I'm mentioning this right now because next week I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands, because cross country season is almost over. I'll have several extra hours every day to do my homework or, more likely, to waste and procrastinate.
I'm sad that cross country is ending. While I'll be happy to have more free time, and I probably won't miss the tough workouts, it's a bittersweet ending. I still have next year's season, but it'll be different. For one thing, there will be new freshman. This year's seniors will be gone. Even crazier, I'll be a senior.
It's hard to believe that my high school career is more than halfway over. It seems like just yesterday that I was starting my first day of subbie year, lugging a backpack full of supplies for subbie science and wondering if I would make new friends. Though the long nights of studying seemed to drag by slowly, the time has passed so quickly.
College -- and the future -- is quickly approaching, and yet a complete mystery. While some days I may want to escape this town, I'm definitely not ready for it yet. For now, I'm trying to savor every moment and slow down time. I don't have unlimited time, but I want to make the most of my remaining time in high school. I wish I had realized as a subbie that five years at Uni would pass by so quickly, so I could've taken advantage of all the opportunities offered to me. Now, with less than two years left, I'm just wishing that I could have more time.
I'm mentioning this right now because next week I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands, because cross country season is almost over. I'll have several extra hours every day to do my homework or, more likely, to waste and procrastinate.
I'm sad that cross country is ending. While I'll be happy to have more free time, and I probably won't miss the tough workouts, it's a bittersweet ending. I still have next year's season, but it'll be different. For one thing, there will be new freshman. This year's seniors will be gone. Even crazier, I'll be a senior.
It's hard to believe that my high school career is more than halfway over. It seems like just yesterday that I was starting my first day of subbie year, lugging a backpack full of supplies for subbie science and wondering if I would make new friends. Though the long nights of studying seemed to drag by slowly, the time has passed so quickly.
College -- and the future -- is quickly approaching, and yet a complete mystery. While some days I may want to escape this town, I'm definitely not ready for it yet. For now, I'm trying to savor every moment and slow down time. I don't have unlimited time, but I want to make the most of my remaining time in high school. I wish I had realized as a subbie that five years at Uni would pass by so quickly, so I could've taken advantage of all the opportunities offered to me. Now, with less than two years left, I'm just wishing that I could have more time.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Perfect
I have sadly run out of videos of cute kids, but here's some babies eating lemons. Trust me, it's cute. What I'd really like to talk about is this video. It shows a model before a photo shoot once her makeup has been done, and after Photoshop has been used. The transformation is startling.
People just aren't perfect. Everyone has their flaws, even models. The last words to flash across the screen at the end of this video are incredibly true: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The images we are shown of models in ads are not what these women really look like.
Buying whatever product an ad is trying to sell will not make you look like the flawless woman shown in the ad. Sometimes it's hard to look at these images and not automatically think that you want to look like that person. Images like these can have a serious negative impact on a person's body image.
A few days ago, I was working on an open-genre assignment for creative writing. It was a collage about body image and the media, made of images cut out of magazines. Looking through these magazines specifically to find things that i found problematic was really interesting to do. Usually when I'm looking through a magazine, I don't pay that much attention to the ads. This time, I saw countless ads that showed a woman with flawless skin; perfect, shiny hair; and perfect proportions. Equally bad were the ads that objectified women. This ad for Orbit gum was one that really stuck out to me.
People just aren't perfect. Everyone has their flaws, even models. The last words to flash across the screen at the end of this video are incredibly true: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The images we are shown of models in ads are not what these women really look like.
Buying whatever product an ad is trying to sell will not make you look like the flawless woman shown in the ad. Sometimes it's hard to look at these images and not automatically think that you want to look like that person. Images like these can have a serious negative impact on a person's body image.
A few days ago, I was working on an open-genre assignment for creative writing. It was a collage about body image and the media, made of images cut out of magazines. Looking through these magazines specifically to find things that i found problematic was really interesting to do. Usually when I'm looking through a magazine, I don't pay that much attention to the ads. This time, I saw countless ads that showed a woman with flawless skin; perfect, shiny hair; and perfect proportions. Equally bad were the ads that objectified women. This ad for Orbit gum was one that really stuck out to me.
There is just so much wrong with this. Is it really necessary to show a woman taking her clothes off to sell a pack of gum?
Ads don't portray reality. They show us what they want us to believe, which is a skewed version of what's actually true. I'd like to say that I'm not affected by these skewed portray of women, but that wouldn't be true. There's always something to strive to be, even if it's completely unachievable. I've been trying to look at images that I see in the media more objectively. I look for things that can't possibly be real. As I'm bombarded by images of flawless people, I try to hang onto the notion that it's a lie. Nobody is perfect.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
I like superheroes
It's truly amazing how insightful kids can be. In this video, a little girl, Riley, talks about the negative aspects of marketing. She discusses the fact that girls are supposed to buy pink and princesses, and boys get the superheroes.
"Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses!" Riley exclaims, making a very good point. So many things in our daily lives are separated into "girl things" and "boy things." At a young age, our society tells kids what they should like.
For all of my birthdays through my preschool years, I was given Barbies and other dolls. I quickly grew bored of dressing them up and having them go to balls. Instead, I began to give them horrible haircuts and then using the mangled dolls to fight crime and achieve world peace.
I'm against the idea that pink is a girl color and blue is a boy color. "The companies who make these try to trick the girls into buying the pink stuff," Riley muses. I think this isn't just the fault of the companies who make toys, but also society as a whole. This brings me to another story.
I was at a little family reunion when I was around 10. One of my cousins, Karlei, had pink Crocs, and our 3-year-old second cousin Zachary decided to put them on. He really wanted Crocs and didn't care about the color, but his dad sure did, spending a good half hour making snide remarks about the fact that his son was wearing pink shoes. He told Zach that "pink is a girl color" and "boys don't wear pink."
This is exactly the wrong type of message to send to kids. Why is it wrong for a boy to wear pink? It's just a color. This video really inspired me. I think it's great that this girl understands something I've just begun to realize myself. Our society tells us a lot of things about what we can and cant do, but how important is it to be "normal?" I think it's better to be yourself and not let anyone else dictate how you live your life.
"Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses!" Riley exclaims, making a very good point. So many things in our daily lives are separated into "girl things" and "boy things." At a young age, our society tells kids what they should like.
For all of my birthdays through my preschool years, I was given Barbies and other dolls. I quickly grew bored of dressing them up and having them go to balls. Instead, I began to give them horrible haircuts and then using the mangled dolls to fight crime and achieve world peace.
I'm against the idea that pink is a girl color and blue is a boy color. "The companies who make these try to trick the girls into buying the pink stuff," Riley muses. I think this isn't just the fault of the companies who make toys, but also society as a whole. This brings me to another story.
I was at a little family reunion when I was around 10. One of my cousins, Karlei, had pink Crocs, and our 3-year-old second cousin Zachary decided to put them on. He really wanted Crocs and didn't care about the color, but his dad sure did, spending a good half hour making snide remarks about the fact that his son was wearing pink shoes. He told Zach that "pink is a girl color" and "boys don't wear pink."
This is exactly the wrong type of message to send to kids. Why is it wrong for a boy to wear pink? It's just a color. This video really inspired me. I think it's great that this girl understands something I've just begun to realize myself. Our society tells us a lot of things about what we can and cant do, but how important is it to be "normal?" I think it's better to be yourself and not let anyone else dictate how you live your life.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
I LIKE MY WHOLE HOUSE!
This video is of a four year old talking about how she likes everything. It's really adorable, and my initial reaction was to want to watch it again and again. But then I got thinking.When I was younger, I definitely liked stuff a lot more than I do now.
As we get older, we find a lot more to complain about and become more picky. I had some pretty traumatizing experiences as a 4 year old, and yet all I remember is lots of fun and good times. As my friends and I spent our time pretending that we were fairies, my baby brother was suffering from cancer.
I'd really love to get my younger perspective on life back, because these days I find myself making a lot of complaints. Wow, my nail polish is chipped UGH WHAT AM I GOING TO DO. Well, when I was four I would have been super excited that I was wearing nail polish and I probably would have been the coolest girl in preschool.
So often we look at the negative side of a situation instead of appreciating the fact that the situation even exists. It can be hard to look on the bright side because we just aren't used to it, but it's something I'm trying to do. I want to see the beauty in the world instead of the few unpleasant bits.
Think about Jessica, the little girl in the video. She starts off by saying that her whole house is great, and she can do anything good. Then she lists all the stuff she likes, including everything, her hair, her haircuts, and her whole house. Her sweet enthusiasm is really incredibly motivating. When I feel tired, I sometimes watch this video to get myself pumped up about life again.
So what I'm saying is this. Look on the bright side. Appreciate things like you would have when you were a toddler. I'm pretty sure we'd all be a lot happier with our lives if we did that.
As we get older, we find a lot more to complain about and become more picky. I had some pretty traumatizing experiences as a 4 year old, and yet all I remember is lots of fun and good times. As my friends and I spent our time pretending that we were fairies, my baby brother was suffering from cancer.
I'd really love to get my younger perspective on life back, because these days I find myself making a lot of complaints. Wow, my nail polish is chipped UGH WHAT AM I GOING TO DO. Well, when I was four I would have been super excited that I was wearing nail polish and I probably would have been the coolest girl in preschool.
So often we look at the negative side of a situation instead of appreciating the fact that the situation even exists. It can be hard to look on the bright side because we just aren't used to it, but it's something I'm trying to do. I want to see the beauty in the world instead of the few unpleasant bits.
Think about Jessica, the little girl in the video. She starts off by saying that her whole house is great, and she can do anything good. Then she lists all the stuff she likes, including everything, her hair, her haircuts, and her whole house. Her sweet enthusiasm is really incredibly motivating. When I feel tired, I sometimes watch this video to get myself pumped up about life again.
So what I'm saying is this. Look on the bright side. Appreciate things like you would have when you were a toddler. I'm pretty sure we'd all be a lot happier with our lives if we did that.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Thumbs up for rock and roll!
Over the summer, I saw the cutest Youtube video. It's basically a kid saying that he believes in you and if you believe in yourself, you will know how to ride a bike.
I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about what the little boy in the video was saying. Believing in yourself can be a really hard thing to do, especially if you've already failed at whatever it is that you are trying to do. Trying new things can be pretty intimidating.
Right now I'm trying something new: cross country. I thought it was going to be the worst thing EVER, but it's actually pretty fun. Meets are stressful, but afterwards I always get this sense of accomplishment, especially if I've just gotten a good time.
There are definitely times that I wonder, "Why the heck am I doing this?" Well, it wasn't entirely my choice--my dad signed me up and told me later. I thought that I was going to die a slow, painful death. But I went running a lot over the summer, and when practice started I realized that it really wasn't that bad. Sure, it's tiring and it can get really hot sometimes, but in the end I have to admit that I'm in the best shape I've ever been in.
My only regret is that I didn't start cross country my freshman year. The truth is that before sophomore year, I was considering doing cross country. I just didn't think I would be able to--I didn't believe in myself. I was sure that I would be the slowest person and that I would be miserable.
The kid in the video starts off by saying "I feel happy of myself!" Well, after a good meet or even a good practice, I feel a bit "happy of myself." I'm happy that I did it. Happy I didn't give up. Happy I didn't quit, but instead gave cross country a chance.
Trying new things can end badly. But that doesn't always happen. It's better to try and have the possibility of failure, than to not do something and regret it. You just have to believe in yourself. If you think you're going to fail, chances are you will. Give something new a shot, and you might just surprise yourself by how fun or fulfilling it is.
I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about what the little boy in the video was saying. Believing in yourself can be a really hard thing to do, especially if you've already failed at whatever it is that you are trying to do. Trying new things can be pretty intimidating.
Right now I'm trying something new: cross country. I thought it was going to be the worst thing EVER, but it's actually pretty fun. Meets are stressful, but afterwards I always get this sense of accomplishment, especially if I've just gotten a good time.
There are definitely times that I wonder, "Why the heck am I doing this?" Well, it wasn't entirely my choice--my dad signed me up and told me later. I thought that I was going to die a slow, painful death. But I went running a lot over the summer, and when practice started I realized that it really wasn't that bad. Sure, it's tiring and it can get really hot sometimes, but in the end I have to admit that I'm in the best shape I've ever been in.
My only regret is that I didn't start cross country my freshman year. The truth is that before sophomore year, I was considering doing cross country. I just didn't think I would be able to--I didn't believe in myself. I was sure that I would be the slowest person and that I would be miserable.
The kid in the video starts off by saying "I feel happy of myself!" Well, after a good meet or even a good practice, I feel a bit "happy of myself." I'm happy that I did it. Happy I didn't give up. Happy I didn't quit, but instead gave cross country a chance.
Trying new things can end badly. But that doesn't always happen. It's better to try and have the possibility of failure, than to not do something and regret it. You just have to believe in yourself. If you think you're going to fail, chances are you will. Give something new a shot, and you might just surprise yourself by how fun or fulfilling it is.
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