Concert of my Life
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Some of my posts will be emotional or controversial. Always refer to the "Read More" sentence. Thanks.
I write a lot about social/political/world issues and you may or may not agree with my opinions. I am not and do not claim to be an expert on any of the topics, and am only presenting my thoughts formed from knowledge gained through research or school. Feel free to let me know what you think, I am always open to new ideas and perspectives.
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New Page to collect all Posts related to Society/World Issues: Thoughts on Society
Not surprised at all. Those “models” you see in advertisements are often more than 50% fake these days, made skinnier and more “perfect” through the magical wonders of Photoshop.
Addendum: I just checked the H&M site and verified this. A lot of the pictures of models in the sleepwear section have literally the same body, just different skin tones and different faces.
Addendum_2: Wow. They do it for men too. Different men’s clothing are modeled by the same fake “model” body, but with different skin tone and different faces. Whoever works at H&M’s marketing division must be really sloppy and really lazy or something. Either way, it still highlights how Photoshoping and fake bodies are just a part of the business.
There’s more:
Students Teaching About Racism in Society is a Student Org at Ohio University. I’m the President, any questions… MESSAGE ME! :)
Oh My Gosh I love this. This is genius, and needs to be done more often!
(via kaechan91)
A great piece at Sociological Images about one advocacy group’s advertisements meant to stir discussion and depict sex workers as more than just their stigmatized occupations, to depict them as human beings first.
Every now and then when a post comes up on my Tumblr feed, a picture of some incredibly fit and slick/good looking guy, I can’t help but feel just a small smidgen of sadness. Usually it’s accompanied by some comment or multiple comments regarding how hot the guy is. It’s not a big deal, but it’s there, this little thought of “Well, I don’t look like that. Will anyone ever look at me and think ‘That guy looks good’?” Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never compare myself to the guys in those pictures. I intend to get my weight under control and be more fit for health reasons but I like the way I look and I’m not going to wish I looked like someone else.
There’s a lot of (good) talk about how women shouldn’t feel the need to look like models pushed by the mass media. I think it goes both ways that men also may feel pressured to fit a certain image to appear “hot” and desirable.
Reblogging myself. Thinking about this again.
I found this very interesting blog/article style site. Part of a larger umbrella site about society, Sociological Images is supported by user submitted images and videos of media that perpetuates negative societal norms. I came upon the site while doing research for a tumblr post I was thinking about. This is potentially a longer post so click Read More if you’d like to read on about this topic.
Hit Read More
Right now, these picture are both a point of pride and a point of total embarrassment and pain. Backstory: I used to take thousands of pictures of people in band, and as a historian, that meant that I had to have at least one or two “good” pictures of people. Back near the end of Junior year in high school it was someone’s birthday and I had the brilliant idea of photoshopping a picture of them for their birthday.
What started as a little “gift” exploded into making photoshopped “birthday images” for basically everyone I had a good picture of, and wanted to give something a little more special than “Happy Birthday :D” on their FB wall, which was a lot of people. Over the course of the rest of my high school days I made around 95 of these “birthday images”, mainly for people in band. The inevitable downside of this was of course that my moral code (of “equality” for all. I’ll post about this soon hopefully) caused me to be making photoshopped birthday images almost every other day. And I felt so bad when I really couldn’t find a good picture to photoshop.
And of course, when college rolled around, I wanted to continue this practice. But it proved to be much more difficult than I had imagined. Birthday images for Band people was easy because I had 3 years of pictures to back me up. In college, I had just met these people. And while in band everyone would have to attend events and I had to take pictures, not so with college. I made a couple for some in Whis Wood but I was horribly inconsistent. And then the same with SPOP. One day I decided I had to start making birthday images for Staffers but after about four I got both lazy and couldn’t find good pictures (my camera sucks with room lights and i dont like using flash) for most people. It’s also weird making birthday images for band friends because I don’t have any recent photos. I know it’s my fault that this thing fell apart. If I give the right kind of effort maybe it can be revived.
I’m writing this because ever since I started making birthday images I effectively stopped writing Happy Birthday’s on people’s walls. In part because I had thought I would have time to make them a birthday image, but also in part because I still feel that a simple “Happy Birthday” isn’t enough. Which is stupid because for so many people I have basically neglected to give Happy Birthdays to in the past year and I feel like #$%@ because of that.
To conclude, if I haven’t written Happy Birthday on your wall, it’s not like I don’t love you or anything. To the contrary I really do love you, and wanted to do something “more” for you. But my own faults and mistakes prevented me from expressing my congratulations at your advancement in age. My sincere apologies and also my sincere wishes that you had or have a Wonderful Birthday!
