...Heidi Klomhaus English 102 Dr. D. Pineda 10 December 2013 Child Beauty Pageants: What’s The Harm? Although there are many adults who suffer various consequences of child pageant participations, they still look back at their childhood and have some good memories of fun. Some even enter their own children into these pageants. Unfortunately, however, the damage is still the same and the cycle continues. Child beauty pageants are detrimental to the psyche of young children because these pageants promote sexualization far beyond their years and lack regulations to govern the actions within these contests. Because these children are being pushed into time-consuming, grueling preparation for these pageants, and because their performances are considered to be far beyond their years leading to self-objectification or sexualization, and the lack of regulations within these pageants there should be some boundaries set to minimize the psychological effects of participation within these contests. As we approach the Christmas holiday this year there are many who remember the horrific murder mystery of JonBenet Ramsey, a former child pageant star, and wonder if her participation in the beauty pageant world is what ended her short life. It’s been 17 years since her body was found in the basement of her parents’ home and her face was plastered all over the news. When the name JonBenet Ramsey is heard doll-like images flash through our heads from her pageant photos. Would she still...
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...CHALLENGE THE MEDIA Table of Contents: Introduction Testimonials Websites Activity Article: Media and Girls Books and Reports Take Action 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 End the Sexualization of Girls and Young Women in Mainstream Media Children are exposed to a barrage of sexual and violent images through mainstream and other media. As children gain more access to media through technology such as phones and computers, the time per day that children are exposed to images is increasing. The average high school student spends as much as 8-10 hours a day with some type of media, according to recent findings from the Geena Davis Institute. Studies estimate that counting all ads, logos, labels, and announcements a child is exposed to 16,000 images in one day. (Youth Media Reporter 2009). Media and Violence Against Women Often, media such as TV, commercials, movies, music lyrics, and even Halloween costumes, sexually exploits girls and young women; and it perpetuates unhealthy and unrealistic stereotypical portrayals of both young men and women. Sexually violent material can contribute to a social climate in which violence against women is more accepted. According to several studies by the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2007), men and women exposed to sexually objectifying and violent images of women from mainstream media were more accepting of rape myths, sexual harassment, sex role stereotypes, and interpersonal violence. Such structures of violence allow violence against...
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...Week 2 Reading summaries Claude Fischler “Food, Self and Identity” (1988) * Food goes deeper than being a source of nutrition, it is central to our individual identity given that we are constructed, biologically, psychologically and socially by the food we choose to incorporate into our lives. * Omnivore’s paradox: One of the fundamental components of our identity as omnivores is that we have the autonomy, freedom and adaptability to consume a wide range of food. However this liberty also implies dependence and constraint. Omnivores cannot obtain all the nutrients it needs from one food alone and omnivores must also avoid harmful foods. * The principle of incorporation dictates that food and cuisine are a central component of the sense of collective belonging. * Disgust is a socially constructed biological safeguard. The psychology of eating behavior reveals that children have the tendency to accept only a limited range of food they are familiar with. This gives us insight into our natural instinct as humans to put new exotic foods through thorough examination before we consume it. * Because of how complex identifying a food can be based on its cultural origins, the culinary system provides a pre-fabricated matrix where one can identify a food by understanding its place in the world. * In today’s society as food is becoming more processed and integrated through globalization our cultural and physiological identity through food is becoming...
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...years old across all regions in the Philippines. Teenage pregnancy is prevalent in the Philippines due to the influence of media, absence of good role models and lack of financial resources. Messages from the newspapers, magazines, radio and television have always had a great influence in shaping adolescent behavior. The media and advertising business has always been successful in making people recall their brands. Advertising not only encourages consumers to buy goods and services they cannot afford, but also appeals to the emotions of the customers. Sex appeal is used to sell products in many ways. The people in the media industry take advantage of the audience’s responsiveness to sexual stimuli to make a profit. The increasing sexualization of content in the media suggests teenagers that these are normal ways to behave. Advertisement and the media have found ways to sell sex, regardless of the target audience. Sex talk is typical in magazines like Cosmopolitan, FHM and Maxim. Sex is the main theme in TV series like Desperate Housewives, Gossip Girl and Sex and the City. Nudity is prevailing in movies like American Pie, Love & Other Drugs and Fifty Shades of Grey. Lyrics with sexual innuendos are rampant in songs like Feels Like The First Time, Milkshake and Physical. The prominence of sexual themes in magazines, television, movies and music influence the desire of teenagers for physical contact (de Castro-Cuyugan, 2014). These types of...
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...PROJECT: AMERICAN APPAREL Marketing Strategy AMERICAN APPAREL Abstract American Apparel has been experiencing a declining trend since 2008. My aim is to identify the reasons why this has been, and continue, to happen. Even if the world financial crisis had an important role at the end of the day, there surely are other actual and potential threats the company has overlooked: for example, right 2 days before the beginning of the decline the CFO resigned; they didn't properly manage internal control especially regarding the financial closing; they cut the advertising budget during 2009; they have been opening stores without considering cannibalization. While trying to describe the mistakes American Apparel did during the last 6 years, an evaluation of its recovery marketing plan to put the company back on the right track will be made. Company's Strategy American Apparel (from now on APP) is a clothing manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing company headquartered in Los Angeles, founded in 1988 by Dov Charney, who is still its CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors. During the late 80's and the 90's, when the identity of APP was being modeled, Charney was living his life between Canada, South Carolina and California and that deeply influenced the company: while driven by the initial intention to bring affordable American t-shirt to Montreal people, APP slowly developed interests in fashion to please the young in Los Angeles, yet maintaining...
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...PROSTITUTION IS NOT A CHOICE LEARN A BOUT TH E TRA FFI CKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS WORLDWIDE, AND FIND OUT WHAT CAN BE DONE TO END THIS WID ESPR EAD PROBLEM … Soroptimist International of the Americas-1709 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 - 215 893 9000 - www.soroptimist.org SOROPTIMIST WHITE PAPER Prostitution is Not a Choice I think so much about what has happened to me. Why these men did what they did to me. Old, disgusting men. It was horrible. They knew I did not want to be there, but they paid their money. They used me. I was their property for the night. They destroyed me. (14-year-old girl at Casa Hogar, a shelter in Costa Rica for children rescued from the country’s sex trade1) OVERVIEW Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest “profession.” In reality, it is the world’s oldest “oppression” and continues to be one of the most overlooked human rights abuses of women on the planet today. 2 Prostitution of women is a particularly lethal form of violence against women, and a violation of a woman’s most basic human rights. While society attempts to normalize prostitution on a variety of levels (discussed later in this paper), prostituted women are subjected to violence and abuse at the hands of paying “clients.” For the vast majority of prostituted women, “prostitution is the experience of being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted and battered.” 3 It is “sexual terrorism against women at the hands of men and little is being done to stop the carnage...
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...MEMORY-WORK: AN INTRODUCTION Jennie Small University of Technology, Sydney Research methodology, from the perspective of Critical social science, is considered as: inherently political, as inescapably tied to issues of power and legitimacy. It is assumed that methods are permeated with assumptions about what the social world is, who the social scientist is, and what the nature of the relation between them is (Lather, 1991, p.12). Critical social science moves away from description of behaviour as enduring social fact to attempting to understand how behaviour is produced, thus recasting behaviour as “the effects of contingent and contested processes of change” (Churchman, 2000, p.100 citing Scott). Feminists and those working within a social constructionist paradigm have debated whether there are research methods specific to such approaches. In other words, is there a social constructionist or feminist method? Schwandt (1994), in discussing constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human enquiry, commented that “what is unusual about the approaches cannot be explained through an examination of their methods. They are principally concerned with matters of knowing and being, not method per se” (p.118). Feminists have also considered that it is the methodology and outcomes rather than the methods which define the research as being feminist. Nonetheless, while feminists have adopted a variety of methods, they have tended to prefer qualitative...
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...COSMETICS ADOPTION AMONG YOUNG MALE ADULTS IN MALAYSIA CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem Background Personal identity is increasingly sought by consumers and one is recognized based on what one consumes (Firat & Venkatesh, 1993). People try to become the being they desire to be by consuming the items that they imagine will help to create and sustain their idea of themselves, their image and their identity (Bocock, 1993). Judgements about individuals are no longer made upon occupation or role in production but rather on what is consumed and how individuals present themselves (Firat, 1993). Through the possession of products, consumers can display their successes reflecting their personal achievement (Mitchell, 1983). Postmodern consumerism is obsessed with appearance and consumption, where style is a substitute for identity and presentation overshadows essence. This concept is part of a culture that have feminized men (Brod, 1995) and considers women and men as equally involved in the practices of consumption (Bocock, 1993). Masculine and feminine differences have been abolished by the postmodern patterns of consumption (Kacen, 2000) and these patterns of consumption are both determined and enhanced by the types of products consumers invest in (Seabrook, 1999). The construction of the male consumer of who they are, of their identity as men, is now achieved as much through style of dress, body care, image and having the right look, as do their female counterparts...
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...Best Retail Brands Founded in 1974, Interbrand is one of the world’s largest branding consultancies. With nearly 40 offices in 26 countries, Interbrand’s combination of rigorous strategy, analytics and world-class design enables it to assist clients in creating and managing brand value effectively across all touchpoints in all market dynamics. Interbrand is widely recognized for its Best Global Brands report, the definitive guide to the world’s most valuable brands, as well as its Best Global Green Brands report which identifies the gap between customer perception and a brand’s performance relative to sustainability. It is also known for having created www.Brandchannel.com, an international online exchange and resource about brand marketing and branding. For more information on Interbrand, visit www.Interbrand.com. For more than 30 years we have been creating retail brand experiences for companies around the world. Interbrand Design Forum’s talent for game-changing innovation spurred us to create a business model that integrates analytics-based strategy into what began as a design and architecture group — the first and only company with such a comprehensive offering. Our broad range of services includes: retail design, brand strategy, shopper sciences, packaging, digital, documentation and rollout. This unique ability to address retail’s growing complexity has led many of the world’s top companies to our doorstep and propelled Interbrand Design Forum to the forefront of...
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