Rationale

Rationale for Blog

I am happy to say I’ve been thankful that one of the tasks for ENGL 373 has been to create a blog, something I had never done before. I like that I can put my thoughts and ideas about topics, such as women in society, out in the world for the public to view on the internet. I’ve also been able to learn more through researching the topics I discuss in my blog, such as facts and statistics. They have a way of making information a lot more real (and less people can deny the information as well). Throughout my blog, I’ve tried to stick with a theme of how women are viewed in books (including children’s literature), advertisements, and even movies, in a sometimes-negative way. To enhance my ideas, I tried to keep my blog visually stimulating, with links, pictures, and videos.

The first blog I posted, “Mean Girls. Let’s Talk About it”, was a blog post about typical movies teens and young girls can get their hands on that have bad messages in them. In class, we had been talking about how women are seen in a way that’s called “girly” that holds a negative connotation sometimes (like in the video about running like a girl, or talking like a girl). In the movie “Mean Girls”, the main characters all wear pink and are really skinny, they’re boy crazy, and at one point even it’s even shown that they’re really bad at sports. I added information about women in STEM careers and also focused on bullying, a theme in the movie.

The next two blogs I wrote, I continued with women in the media and film. My blog “The Insanity of Beauty Standards” shows in what ways women are shown in advertisements and magazines. They’re depicted in an unrealistic fashion. And even though it’s unrealistic, women and young girls most importantly, see these images of a perfect women and want to be they. They wonder why they aren’t like that, and it can cause destructive behaviors and a bad self-image. I’m one to vouch for that, so I made sure to add my own experiences with this topic. Self-image came up in a couple of the books we read, and the one we were reading in class at the time was ‘Americanah’ where the main character ends up having issues with her body when she’s in America for a while. The idea of a perfect women is not a real, reachable idea. It should not be made a goal, and for some girls, it is.

The third blog focused on film, and that women don’t receive enough attention in movies (I touched on unequal pay as well). For class, we watched read an article on the “Ghostbuster’s” trailer receiving a lot of negative attention. I wondered why that was, because it seemed to be because the main cast was female. Upon further investigation, it seemed like this movie was a flop in general, but I wanted to learn more about women in film. In Hollywood, women don’t receive a lot of protagonist roles. They are also underpaid, even when casting in parts that are parallel with their male-counterparts. This is a theme of how women don’t fit into society, and aren’t as good as men at certain jobs (even something like acting) when this is untrue.

The last two blogs I created were about children’s literature and then on books and movies you can show and read to them. This also has a theme of women fitting into society. There was a lot of research that showed the lack of gender diversity in children’s literature, and the results were shocking. It makes girls feel like they don’t have as much importance as boys do. I went on to bring up information about the STEM field again, which lacks women, even though girls show an interest in these areas in elementary school. I showed a video as well with a mom and daughter taking books off a shelf that showed the gender imbalance in the books kids are reading. The next blog was a list I compiled on books and movies that are empowering for females, linking articles, videos, and stating facts along the way.  

I’m happy with my blog, and it’s helped me strengthen my value and I learned statistics I was unaware of beforehand. Overall, my blog has a consistent theme of how women are functioning in society, through ads, movies, and books. I’m considering continuing to blog because I feel strongly that women are as good as men, and that that’s a message we need to continue to spread.