Collaborative Proposal-So far (Blog 9) November 19, 2009

For my group’s proposal project, we have decided on the general topic of how the media affects teens: breaking into three subgroups of peer pressure, domestic violence, and body image. Today was really productive in working with my group because I feel like we cleared a bunch of questions and concerns up since we actually had all of our group members there.

 

My individual section is the domestic violence subsection. So far I have created an outline and found a couple of good sources that I will definitely use in my section as well as a video for the visual presentation in class. I have also been the one that has been setting up our specific schedule and plan for the paper, which I like because I am one of those people that needs some control over what our group is planning. I think this stems from the fact that I have been in groups before that ended up with me doing all of the work, which I felt was unfair but also better because then I could assure that we would get a good grade. Well, being abused in my group is not one of my concerns because I feel like all of the other girls in my group are responsible and we are able to communicate effectively already in the beginning stages of the project. We are all pretty much on the same page as far as when we are going to get things done and that we will definitely be corresponding through email during Thanksgiving break. I am also glad that we will be getting an individual grade on the project. I am not worried that our paper overall won’t be good, but it seems fairer in the case that someone flakes on their part. (But I’m pretty sure this will NOT happen.)

 

Even though I feel pretty confident about how we will work as a group together, I do have a few minor concerns. These include actually writing my section and making it cohesive with what everyone else has going on in their sections. I also feel like I have a lot to talk about for having a subsection; I don’t want to write a million pages when everyone else writes two or three—then it would be obviously imbalanced and look like I am trying to dominate the paper. In general though, I feel pretty good about the paper and feel prepared enough to get started writing.

Blog 8: Collaborative Proposal November 9, 2009

For our collaborative proposal project we want to explore the ways that society interprets domestic violence involving women and how the media affects women.  Both of these have adverse effects on the way women see themselves and how they function in today’s world.  We will break our paper up into separate sections and we may group sections on women and sections on teens separately. 

Katherine:

My topic for our group project is body image and the effect on teen girls. I wanted to see if there were any campaigns out there that influence teen girls body image in positive ways. I wanted to look into the dove campaign for real beauty and the influence it has on young girls. There have been several commercials and ads that promote the idea that being beautiful is being yourself without trying to fit into stereotypes of ideal, cookie cutter beauty. I also want to look at the statistics of young girls with eating disorders and see how the numbers have fluctuated over the past years. I chose this topic because body image has always been interesting to me and in today’s society it especially affects teen girls. This is something I can relate too. I can remember being a young teen and reading the articles with the perfect models and wanting to look just like them. And I can also remember seeing the first dove campaign ad and how excited I was to see normal women in magazines. The effect of the dove campaign had a powerful influence on me and helped me see what it means to truly be beautiful.

Caitlin:

My topic for our group project is how the media creates a certain mold for women to fit in.  The media tells us we should all be tall, skinny, blonde, and unintelligent if we want to be like everyone in Hollywood.  My group could use advertisements showing skinny women with tanned skin and long flowing hair, or pictures of the most popular celebrities in our culture today in order to show examples of how women are portrayed.  This idealistic image can then be compared to how normal teenage girls are and show how these celebrities are the role models we strive to be like.  When we strive to be like these role models, we feel like we all need blonde hair, have to be super skinny, and have golden skin.  We not only feel pressure from other girls to fit this mold, but because men see this on TV and in magazines, they start to look for women who fit this idealistic image as well.   This topic would allow us to interview people who have struggled to change themselves from the pressure they felt from the media, or we could even interview guys and ask what they look for in a girl as far as looks go and compare them to the majority of the stars in Hollywood.  For paper research, we could look up statistics on the amount of girls that feel pressured by the media, or the average weight of celebrities/models compared to the normal teenage girl.  There are several dimensions such as TV/movie stars, models, girls in advertisements, and even popular girls in high school/sorority girls that we can use as examples of the media effecting.

Kirsten:

I am centering my topic around the fact that relationship abuse and dating violence are so prevalent among teens and young adults.  The common statistic is that 1 in 3 of teens has experienced violence in a relationship.  This can seriously affect both the boy and the girl in the relationship: he thinks it is okay to be controlling and she is emotionally scarred.  There are several videos that I could use for the visual aspect of the project such as the Rihanna interviews, which were amazing, and a domestic violence video starring Kiera Knightly.  My section will be about telling the signs of domestic abuse and getting help for these young people because injuring someone else is not okay.  I chose this topic because of the incident with Rihanna and the video that Kiera Knightly has done.  I think that these strong women can be an example to girls struggling in abusive relationships that they are not helpless, and that they can find help for themselves.  I am not a victim of domestic violence myself but I am interested in it.  Things I want to find out are, how does the violent occurrences affect the rest of that girl’s life?  What can we do for young men to educate them about what violence is and how it can be prevented?  I mean to answer these questions in my section of the proposal as well as advocate that we need to help both the boys and girls who are part of these relationships.

Ebony:

My topic is child abuse. I am a child development minor, so we study development in children a lot. I have learned about the ways abuse affects families. I want to look at the trend between spousal abuse and how often it trickles down to the children. It is usually a cycle prevalent throughout families, unfortunately. A lot of people don’t like to talk about child abuse because it is so sad. However, it happens, so I want to bring this to the forefront of everyone’s attention. In my child psych class, we saw pictures of children taken to hospitals and it nearly broke my heart. Children are some of the most innocent creatures on Earth. The fact that people consciously choose to hurt them should not be overlooked.

Blog 7- Collaborative Proposal November 2, 2009

One issue that I would really like to research about for the collaborative proposal project is animal abuse.  This issue is important to me because I am really interested in animal rights and helping to save them from people who mistreat them.  I would say that the people affected by this issue would be those who own pets because pets are a large responsibility and need a lot of care.  Abuse is classified in many different types: it is not just physically beating an animal but neglecting one.  If you do not take your animal to see a vet if it experiences an injury or a problem, that is considered abuse.  Not feeding an animal or giving it clean water to drink is also a form of abuse.  People who own pets need to be aware of how to take care of their animals properly because so many abuse cases can stem from them just not knowing what to do with them.  Specifically, horses are victims of many abuse cases because they require complicated, extensive care and cannot thrive on food being thrown at them every once in a while.  I think that visuals will play a large role in this project because many are shocking and upsetting.  If a person actually sees the abuse going on, it will be harder not to do something about it.  The type of argument could possibly be an argument of what abuse is really defined as, and advocacy to stop it by sharing knowledge or reporting it to the police.

 

The other issue that I am interested in is domestic violence.  I watched a video done by Kiera Knightly advocating against domestic violence not long after the incident with Rihanna and Chris Brown.  I would like to research about it because the whole dynamic of an abusive relationship is very complex.  Why would a woman go back to a man that beat her?  It doesn’t necessarily make sense but there has to be a reason since many women do stay in an abusive relationship.  I think the target audience would be people that possibly know others in these types of relationships or women at risk of being in an abusive relationship.  I would definitely show the video that I watched, because it is very compelling and gut wrenching to see Kiera Knightly being beaten by her “boyfriend.”  I think that the argument would be more investigative than the first because I want to find out some reasons why the women stay in abusive relationships and why some do not.  The argument would not be centered on “abuse is bad” but more about why it happens and why victims stay victims in that kind of situation.  It would require a lot of research but I think that if I could come to a conclusion with my group and we could draw a particular argument from it, it would be a really good topic to present.