Week 14 Reading

Everyone has their own opinions on what beauty is, mine is beauty is what you make of yourself and love about yourself.  I have always been called "chunk", clear back to high school!  Back then it did hurt my feelings to the extent that I would take diet pills at every meal instead of eating.  It got to the point that I started having the shakes if I didn't take a diet pill.  My senior year I actually passed out in class.  That was the most embarrassing moment in my life and I realized that no matter how people talked to me, what names they called me, or the amount of weight I put back on, I was going to be happy with myself.  As I have gotten older, I have had a fluctuation of weight change!  I'm currently at my heaviest I've been in years and at my lowest of eighty four pounds back in October.  I was told that I looked anorexic and just plain looked sicked all the time.  At the time I had no idea why I was so thin until I had test done to find out I had a medical condition that caused me to lose weight and gain weight.  Back and forth on this roller coaster for years.  Most young women don't have the problems I have had that are treatable and resort to binging or purging to be what they think is accepting in today's society.  Some even go through the surgeries to better perfect their bodies that they think are not already perfect.  What I say is brace what you have.  No one can make you feel inferior but yourself!

Week 10 readings

bell hooks explains that black males feel as though they will have a better life if they do not work and just become hustlers of the street.  While I don't completely disagree with that, what she does not put in there is whether they were brought up this way or if they just assumed the role of a hustler from seeing maybe a make fatherly figure do it or just others on the streets doing it.  I wouldn't think that someone would think that would be the life to live without someone showing them that it was okay and a way to provide a good life for themselves or their family.  She states that most of them end up in prison and it's just a way to survive, become part of a gang, become a part of their culture.  Well what about the culture of working, how has the life they may have lived not want to make them want to better themselves.  I know they have the mentality of wanting their money now, setting their own hours, not having a dress code, etc., but why is it that even on television do we show that, "money is god, and the outlaw guy who breaks the rules prevails". (hooks 168).  I guess coming from a home that taught me morals and that you had to work to survive was the only way to be I feel like everyone should be that way, but everyone has someone who could have taught them that doing illegal things is not the way to go. 

A Passage from Hip Hop Reader pg. 119

In the section that talks about how 2 Live Crew is the first group to be prosecuted for their obscenity in a recorded musical because of their race is compared to some other artist and how they sexual explicit themselves  are not prosecuted.  It states that Madonna has masturbated, seduced a priest, and depicted group sex on stage and has never been prosecuted.  They are claiming the reason for this is strictly based on her race, she is white.  2 Live Crew is black so it makes them worthy of being prosecuted for their music.  I do not think it was based on race.  I just think that 2 Live Crew is exploiting women, and probably ninety five percent of the complaints that the county had came from women so the judicial system had to do something about it.  Madonna was a role model for other women, teenage girls still to this day dress like her for special occasions that require an eighties theme or for Halloween and men wouldn't complain about seeing something like that.  It's all about how it is done.  If a white group of rappers where to say the things in a music video like 2 Live Crew did, I wouldn't buy their music either.  The way the sing it and display women is just plain disgusting.  Madonna never said even an ounce of the words in her music as 2 Live Crew has.

Ethos of Hip Hop Artist Warren G

Warren G, born in Long Beach, CA in 1970 was the little brother of R&B/Hip Hop artist/producer Dr. Dre.  He began singing with Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg with Regulate in 1994.  His lyrics to his songs all have meaning behind them, telling a story of his life.  What he saw growing up and how he overcame them.  He has been in some trouble for drugs but all charges dropped due to not enough evidence.  He has the creditability of his experience, the been there, done that, seen it, heard it, scenarios.  He explains in his interview with Chuey Martinez on you tube, how hip hop and rap music is different.
link- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o0dIH6L8DQ
He has had a musical background his whole life because of his brother being in the industry and was brought up around numerous other artist. 

Writing Assignment for 1/25/11

I have chosen the ad for Nikon CoolPix 3100.  The ad shows a women that looks as if she is looking at herself.  On the left she is a skinny white woman with dark hair and a small bust.  On the right side of the picture she appears the same with a difference in the size of her bust line.  What the company is trying to show is that if you buy their camera with all the features, it will enhance the photo, as if giving the woman a bigger chest.    I feel as though the ad is targeting both men and women to purchase their camera.  The men would see the picture of a woman with larger breast and feel that if they purchased the Nikon CoolPix 3100 that any picture they take will be enhanced.  With better features.  A woman might purchase the camera so that she will see herself as better looking once the picture was taken.  Nikon uses "beautiful" people to attract a bigger variety of people to purchase their product.  Not only would someone who may not have issues with the way the see themselves buy it, but someone who wants to feel better about themselves might purchase it too.

Biography

I come from a large family, I have four sisters and one brother and I'm the oldest.  I have five nephews and two nieces with hopefully another one on the way, we will find out next month!  I spent my school years here in St. Joseph, MO and spent my summer's in Aurora, CO!  Family came from both places so we got to enjoy both.  I love to read, there has never been a book I have yet to find that I just didn't like and could not finish.  Classmates will find that I will always volunteer to read and I pretty much write when I have to.  I found last semester that some things are easier to write about than others and hope to find my way through it this semester.  My strengths in reading are that I can usually read something once and be able to remember it, writing not so much.  I find that sometimes my words seem to run together so I have to keep reading my own papers over and over until even I understand what I wrote.