Our group project was about women being used as an object for the media. We selected this topic to learn more about the history and present time of women’s role playing in the media’s eye. We learned what type of woman the media is looking for and how it affects people of all ages. Whether someone is looking at a commercial ad on television or an ad from the magazine, the media is pointing out the same features in every person. They want you to see an extremely thin woman, being 5’8 at 100 pounds, with barely any clothing on in a sexual. For most natural women, we see this as the ideal woman and therefore push ourselves to eating disorders to look this way. Young adolescent girls are the most affect when it comes to the media. They are so drawn into the media these days and with peers at school, it leaves no choice on what you look like, but it’s what you HAVE to look like just to fit in these days or to not be teased.
The Reading and Reflection Groups helped us to learn about women studies’ concepts and ideas because it adds a group effort in learning the material. It also helps to understand the materials better when you’re working in a group and can have a discussion about a specific topic that may be clear to one person and not the other. Building the materials in a summary of someone’s own words is very helpful for the whole class to understand what the topics are about in everyday talk.
The Group Project was helpful to learn on our own specific topic that maybe we’ve always been curious about but have never done the work to find out more about. It’s also an eye opener to what’s going on in today’s world about women and what goes on in other countries around the world. You never truly know what happens across the world or understand why people can just abuse women like they do with magazine ads, underpaid labor work, and so on.
We enjoyed being in this class and learning about women more than we thought we could. Hope you continue teaching this class and sharing your knowledge and experiences.
Amy and Marlin
