Sexism and Gender Roles

Sexism and Gender Roles Depicted in the Media 

Unlearning Myths that Bind Us

Christensen

   Although over the past 100 years the standards of beauty have changed one thing hasn't. Boys and girls are told at an early age that they are supposed to be beautiful in order to attain success. Christensen feels that Disney movies, cartoons, fairy tales, and romantic movies all make girls think that their objective in life is to find a man who is not only attractive but also makes a lot of money. In order find that man the girl must be beautiful. She is expected to be thin, have beautiful hair, nails, and teeth, she has to smell beautiful and wear pretty dresses. Girls also are expected to have nice jewelry. All of these things force a girl to be what she may not necessarily be and makes her have to become an avid consumer.
    These unfair expectations are also present for boys. Boys are expected to be strong, handsome, smart, masculine, as well as wealthy. Boys are taught to play with Tonka Trucks and just like how girls play with Barbies, boys play with action figures. Boys and girls are strongly influenced by the toys that they play with. Most children depict what they aspire to be through toys. Boys play with GI Joes and a lot of the time they want to look like a GI Joe or pretend they are in the military. Girls play with Barbies and dream of being as beautiful as Barbie.

    After children are done playing with toys they begin to be influenced by the media as they become adults. Teenage girls start reading Cosmo and see these beautifully photoshopped photos of celebrities with captions underneath them telling the reader that they too can be beautiful. The truth is that not everyone looks like Jenifer Aniston or Kim Kardashian. In fact, the pictures you see on the magazine covers are merely representations of the people they are portraying rather than real photos.
     Men start to try their best to emulate their idols as well. Boys often times will try to look just like their favorite football player, or maybe they want to look like their favorite body builder, or action movie hero, or their favorite actor. Boys will begin to have body dysmorphia issues just like women do but in a totally different way that is completely misunderstood. Men are expected to be confident, masculine, and strong both physically and mentally. However, not all men fit these norms. Not every man is going to be strong, not all men will be wealthy and they obviously aren't all smart. Yet we are not supposed to talk about our inadequacies because we are supposed to be mentally strong as well.

Safe Spaces

Safe Spaces

Making Schools and Communities 

  Welcoming to the LGBT Youth

By Gerry August

    In Gerry Augusts book Safe Spaces he talks about what LGBT students have to deal with daily in our school systems. Gerry concedes that our teachers should not only be accepting of LGBT students but teachers should also be advocates for LGBT students. By advocating for LGBT students to be incorporated into the classroom several key American crisis could be nearly eliminated. 

     Nearly 40% of Americas homeless population is composed of LGBT people. The large majority of them are homeless simply because they were rejected by society. Many families do not accept their children once they have come out and after these people are rejected many of them don't have anywhere they can go. My feeling is that if we were able to make these students feel accepted and incorporate gay history and literature into the classroom as well as have open discussions about homosexuality, the majority of  students who aren't homosexuals would feel more comfortable with the idea of homosexuality. 
    "Heterosexual students who have no LGBT friends or family also need positive LGBT representations if they are to have a full understanding of the human experience. And yet,  when asked if they were taught about LGBT people or history, less than 12% of LGBT students replied in the affirmative" 
                                                                                                                 -August
    By introducing children to the reality that there are homosexuals in the world and that they are no different from heterosexuals in any way other than their sexual preference we could drastically reduce bullying. With a reduction in bullying the result could be a major drop off in youth suicide. As we are all aware, youth bullying, suicide, and homelessness are all prominent issues in our country right now.

    This week while doing my service learning at Alan Shaun Fienstien Elementary School in Providence Rhode Island, I took the time to look through the book shelf in my 5th grade class room. I was curious to see what the kids are reading these days and I was pleased to see that in a predominantly black school there was a plethora of books about black history and even some Latino history books. What August states is that along with those books about race there should also be books telling the history of LGBT. He states...
    "More than 12% of Seans bookshelf should be devoted to Latino experiences, more than 4% of African American experiences, and more than 10% to LGBT experiences. Imagine Seans Bookshelves bursting with books that chronicle the range of human experience- both mainstream and marginalized youth would benefit."                                                         -August
    August would probably say that this school is doing fairly well when it comes to catering to the average student in terms of reading materials for all races. However, August would be very disappointed in the fact that there still isn't any child friendly written material for the youth in that class room. By todays standards, chances are that in that class room right now, whether the children know it yet or not, there is at least one LGBT child present. That childs life would be much easier going forward if there were even just one book on the shelf just for them.

Aria- Richard Rodriguez

Aria
Richard Rodriguez

Reflection;

           In Richard Rodriguez piece "Aria" he tells the story of his childhood. He voices the struggles of learning a new primary language and the nuances that come along with speaking a new language in public.
  Learning a new language can be extremely difficult. One of the main reasons is because when you have to speak that new language publicly people notice that it is not your first language. People notice that you do not know certain words, or they notice your accent, or maybe you just don't speak period. This is the daily struggle of immigrants in our country and it is a struggle that I am very familiar with.
  My wife came from Brazil when she was 9. Just like Rodriguez she picked up the new language very quickly. Children have it pretty easy because they are forced to speak english in our school system and if they want to make friends and fit in they will learn the language as quick as possible. Children also have the mental capacity to learn the language at a faster rate. As an adult it is much harder to learn because most adults are working and don't have the time for school. Most foreign adults also have friends from their native country which keeps them from having conversations in their new language.
      My Mother and Father in law came to the United States in their mid 30s and as soon as they got here they started working. They worked day and night and my wife stayed with family members so that they could work as much as possible. They made a life for themselves in the United States and they eventually did start to learn English. My mother In law went to CCRI to take english as a second language classes and she learned enough to get by. However once she got through the first couple of classes she never went back and because of that her English has not developed any further.
      My Father In Law had a different story, he came ere and hated living in America. The culture change was uncomfortable for him, as well as the climate, and especially the food. It took him 13 years before he made any kind of effort to learn the language. He spoke primarily Portuguese with his friends and family and barely spoke with me. He just like Rodriguez father he didn't speak publicly and it was evident that he was embarrassed by his lack of fluency in the english language. So over the last 2 years he decided to start taking ESL classes and because of this his english has improved immensely. We now have a better relationship, his business is growing and he has accepted that he is now an American and will never go back to Brazil.

Kozol; Amazing Grace

St Annes Church South Bronx, NY

Amazing Grace
Jonathon Kozol

    In Amazing Grace Jonathan Kozol proves that the inequality and the oppression is supported by the United States and continues to shape our culture. 
   In White Privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack  Peggy Macintosh listed 50 day to day events that as a white middle classed man I don't even have to think about. Macintosh explains that the effects of white privilege are evident in everything that people of color or of lower class go through on any given day. Simple things like going to the grocery store and getting "special" attention from the clerk. An example given by Kozol is how a major company like The Times newspaper is not being sold in the ghetto because they advertise items that poor people cannot afford. However, by not making this newspaper available to this demographic they are withholding the news from these people. Now, there are certainly many different ways to get your news these days, but the Times is what the people prefer to read and The Times is essentially saying that their product is too good for poor people.
  

South Bronx Mott Haven

Another example given by Kozol that proves the government does not help the poor is the building of an incinerator in Cliffies neighborhood. The incinerator was going to be built in a nicer part of New York but the people took a stand and the state was unable to get clearence to build the incinerator. So instead of coming up with a different plan they decided to plop the incinerator in the middle of South Bronx. This is an area where pollution runs rampant already. Children have to take Albuteral in order to breath and now they have the added pollution of the incinerator added to their already poor living conditions. It's just further proof that the government is out to make sure the poor stay poor and the rich stay happy.

  

Land of Limitations- Kristof

U.S.A Land of Limitations

By Nicholas Kristof

      In Nicholas Kristoffs August 8, 2015 article he dives into to the topic of "social mobility" which is the idea that people can or cannot move from one social class to another. Kristof makes his stance very clear, he feels that whatever class your parents and or grandparents were in will be the class that you yourself will end up in as well. He states that the "intergenerational income elasticity" in the United States does not measure up to some of our fellow 

countries like Canada, Sweden, 

and Japan.

  

This graph helps to better understand where the U.S.A stand in comparison to
other countries around the world in terms of their ability to change economic classes. The line in the middle represents the median range.

This bar graph gives a clearer picture of how we stand as Americans compared
to other countries when it comes to changing economic classes.

      My stance on intergenerational earnings elasticity is that your chances of jumping from one class to another is better here in the United States than in many other countries. If you refer to the graph you can clearly see that the countries that are struggling most with this reside primarily in the western hemisphere. This is why you see so many immigrants coming from countries like Brazil, Argentina and Peru. 

  The United States is referred to as the "Land of opportunity" and even though that may have been disproved in this article, the United States is a primary destination for immigration because of its safety. Many immigrants are leaving their home countries to flea from war, violence and poverty.

Curitba, Brazil

  My wife for example is from Curitiba, Brazil. She moved here with her family when she was 9. My wife comes from a family that would be considered upper middle class in Brazil. Now what many people don't understand about Brazil is that there is almost no middle class. In my wife home country you are either rich or you are poor, there is no middle. What happens as a result of this is you have two different types of people, the people that have nothing and will do anything to survive and you have the people that have everything and give nothing back. This leads to a ton of crime and corruption which was a major deciding factor for my wives family to come to America. In Brazil employees get paid monthly and her father got holdup at gun point two months in a row immediately after cashing his check. They came to America for safety and a better school system to send their daughter to. 

  So maybe the United States may no longer be the land of opportunity,

 but it should still be known as the land of the free. 

Who is Jeff Jacques?

I am Jeff Jacques

My wife Jen and I have been married for 4 years
We have two Beautiful kids...

We just got adopted him last week but he
is too young to come home, only eight
weeks left!

 <-Bradley is a 3 year old Morkie

     Hank is a 5    week old Beagle Lab mix --------->

Jen and I are in the middle of one of
the biggest years of our lives.
This year we bought our first house

I also started my own personal training
company after working for Professional
Fitness for nearly 7 years

This summer we got really into hiking and last weekend we hiked the Mount Lafayette Loop in Franconia Notch, NH. It's an 8.8 mile hike that includes reaching the summits of Mount Haystack, Mount Lincoln, and Mount Lafayette!