A home base for Ms. Christensen's and Ms. DePalma's ELA classes. Check in here to find someone's blog, to access resources for class assignments, or to look for mentor texts.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
An 8th Grade Girl Takes a Stand
I was so inspired by this article in The New York Times. Read it and respond for an extra credit homework assignment! Leave your thoughts in the comments as well!
I was looking through seventeen magazine and teen vogue recently and I noticed that the girls/women look almost god-like. Seventeen did start a campaign called "body peace" but I feel like it was just to put an end to the bad publicity. They continue to have photo-shopped dreadfully unreal models on every page. I saw a picture of a hand in a article about how to grow your nails longer and not even the hand looked real. The skin was still smooth, the nails were perfectly shaped, there wasn't even one cut or hangnail. They can't even let girls have a realistic image about there nails? I am frustrated to no end by how magazine editors just don't really care about the girls reading the magazine. There are very few teens in "teen vogue" or at least they look it. So none of the models are at the awkward stage the readers are at. All of the clothing is clothing the majority of girls just wouldn't feel comfortable wearing either because it is too sexy or it's just not practical. A model posing in a hallway and a real girl trying to get to class are two very different things. All the advice makes life and emotions seem much easier than they are. The answers to whether or not some one is your friend just can't be answered by a generic 10 question multiple choice quiz. I feel like the advice (horoscopes, quizzes etc.) can misguide girls especially at such a vulnerable stage in life. We can easily come to trust "seventeen" and "teen vouge" as there is a sense of security. Like nothing could ever be wrong in those glossy pages. So why not take advice from such all-knowing powers? Such magazines could be fairly harmless if they were realistic.
I was looking through seventeen magazine and teen vogue recently and I noticed that the girls/women look almost god-like. Seventeen did start a campaign called "body peace" but I feel like it was just to put an end to the bad publicity. They continue to have photo-shopped dreadfully unreal models on every page. I saw a picture of a hand in a article about how to grow your nails longer and not even the hand looked real. The skin was still smooth, the nails were perfectly shaped, there wasn't even one cut or hangnail. They can't even let girls have a realistic image about there nails? I am frustrated to no end by how magazine editors just don't really care about the girls reading the magazine. There are very few teens in "teen vogue" or at least they look it. So none of the models are at the awkward stage the readers are at. All of the clothing is clothing the majority of girls just wouldn't feel comfortable wearing either because it is too sexy or it's just not practical. A model posing in a hallway and a real girl trying to get to class are two very different things. All the advice makes life and emotions seem much easier than they are. The answers to whether or not some one is your friend just can't be answered by a generic 10 question multiple choice quiz. I feel like the advice (horoscopes, quizzes etc.) can misguide girls especially at such a vulnerable stage in life. We can easily come to trust "seventeen" and "teen vouge" as there is a sense of security. Like nothing could ever be wrong in those glossy pages. So why not take advice from such all-knowing powers? Such magazines could be fairly harmless if they were realistic.
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