This post is going to be a little bit of a rant. Maybe a lotta bit more than a rant. I am extremely annoyed at the internet at the moment. You have been warned.
Last night my roommates and I decided to stay in and have a Just Dance extravaganza. (I do apologize to the people in the apartment below us; we shook the building quite a bit). The apartment possesses two wii controllers and houses four people which means that two people were sitting out per term. Because we're college students and incapable of making conversation, I spent a lot of time on my phone waiting for it to be my turn. Whilst scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I happened across a certain post by Sincerely Tumblr. Given the name, this particular account mainly reposts snippets of Tumblr blogs and, as I cannot get into Tumblr, I generally enjoy following them. This time though, I just got really really annoyed.
Somebody, I don't know who, posted a picture of two eyebrows, one done up or "on fleek" as the kids say, and the other just a normal eyebrow. A harmless picture. No. It was not harmless. Not. At. All. Some poor unfortunate Tumblr users (I assume male based on the comments but bear in mind this is Tumblr so I have no idea) commented that they liked the natural eyebrow better. Hallelujah, one might think. Some guys have decided women look better without makeup. No. This is Tumblr. You can never do anything right. Some girl decided these guys needed to be brought down a peg. She (again, we're assuming the user is a she because Tumblr) went off on these poor users for stating they enjoyed the natural eyebrow. Didn't they know girls wear make-up to feel pretty and good about themselves?? Didn't they know girls don't wear make-up for anyone else but themselves? Women don't need the approval of men to feel confident in themselves and couldn't the men understand that?
I am so disgusted by all of this I don't have the words.
I cannot tell you the amount of times I've heard how a man's comment can destroy a girl. Personally, I had a guy tell me my forehead was too big once, something I had never even thought about before, and now I live in mortal terror of having a forehead the size of Africa. People seek approval from others. That's just the way it is. That does not mean, though, that anyone deserves to be ridiculed for what they think looks good especially if it is different from your own opinion. My best friend likes guys with tattoos. I'm not a fan of tattoos. I'm a fan of the clean shaven or slightly scruffy jawline. She appreciates a full beard. Does this mean either of us is wrong? No. Do we tear each other to sherds for having different opinions? No. Does this mean that I get upset when a guy has tattoos or a full beard? No.
My point is, people express themselves differently. They're allowed to do that. You're allowed to have an opinion on the way they express themselves. You are. Don't give me that look. What you may not do, is judge them. Tell them or yourself that they are in anyway wrong for having that opinion. (Obviously, we aren't talking extremes here. I'm not sure the way Ed Gein expressed himself falls into the category of "allowing someone to be entitled to their opinion." Look him up). You especially may not inform someone you don't know over the internet that their opinion is wrong. You are telling someone you do not know that their opinion is inferior to your own. Anonymously. On the internet. Where it will be forever. Be nice. Respect other people and their opinions. And be sure to have a thick skin when you put your opinions out on social media.
Ok. I need to stop. Rant over.
Scroll on down!
A.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
The Modern Woman
A couple months ago I was rereading Gone With The Wind when I got the lyrics to Anaconda by Nicki Minaj stuck in my head. The combination was such an odd one that I had to stop and think about it and this is what I came up with.
For those of you who have had the grave misfortune of not reading all 1400 pages of Gone With The Wind multiple times, or watching the three hour movie, I will give you an extremely brief summary. The story is set in the last dying days of the Old South. The Civil War is displayed from the view point of a spoiled and opinionated Southern Belle, Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett, like the other Southern women around her, struggles to cope with the world she was raised in and knows, disintegrate around her. The women can do no more than watch helplessly from the sidelines. That was the Southern woman. She was helpless. She was ornamental. She was not expected to have ideas of her own. Scarlett is all but cast out from decent society when she becomes a career woman and takes charge of her own life. The women though, while ornamental, were the backbone of society. They were the neck of the household; anything they wanted, they could obtain, though it had to be manipulated through the head of the man. Women were highly respected and required the protection of a man. The young men were not allowed to call the young women by their first names without preceding it with "Miss" and even that act was one worked towards for months and could only take place after the express permission of the female. Marriage proposals were not accepted the first time, or even the second, but the third. Women were protected and men were expected to know how to protect them and treat the women like the fragile delicate creatures they were.
Contrast this with Nicki Minaj's recent Anaconda music video. The most known line of the song is "My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon." Obviously you can work out the sexual innuendo in this line for yourself. Nicki expresses that women have been empowered. They do not need a man to complete them. They are free to have ideas, to have their own goals, to do what they want, to sleep with whom ever they please. Men have accepted that women can think for themselves and are not, in fact, fragile helpless creatures.
But at what cost?
Objectifying a women in the Old South was done in secret. The "bad woman" in Gone With The Wind is not a part of society. Men of dignity do not enter her house or even entertain notions of doing such a thing. The "bad woman" made a choice not accepted in polite society and she embraces it, even though the rest of society can hardly stand to talk about her. Objectifying women was a hidden process in the Old South. Meanwhile, we have a famous pop singer objectifying herself for reasons known alone to her and the objectification of women is so commonplace that she's barely scandalous. However, no one can deny that what Minaj did worked. I know who Nicki Minaji is. I have watched some of her music videos, even if I lost interest half way through. She's built career for herself, like thousands of other women today, and probably made more money in a couple years than I will ever make in my lifetime. She's a career woman and I give her my respect for having the guts to put herself out there and make something of herself.
Women have gained a lot in the world of business since 1864. Unfortunately, I believe we may have lost on the home front. People's eyes bug out when I tell them I want a lot of kids and stay at home with them. Marriage is a suggestion rather than a social norm. Motherhood is prolonged until almost the last possible instant. Michelle Duggar is an oddity for welcoming as many children as she is able to have.
All in all, a woman's mind is far more respected today than it was 150 years ago, but I don't believe the same can be said for her body. We have given up respect for our bodies for respect of our minds. Now the problem is; how do we attain respect for both?
Scroll down for respect!
A
For those of you who have had the grave misfortune of not reading all 1400 pages of Gone With The Wind multiple times, or watching the three hour movie, I will give you an extremely brief summary. The story is set in the last dying days of the Old South. The Civil War is displayed from the view point of a spoiled and opinionated Southern Belle, Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett, like the other Southern women around her, struggles to cope with the world she was raised in and knows, disintegrate around her. The women can do no more than watch helplessly from the sidelines. That was the Southern woman. She was helpless. She was ornamental. She was not expected to have ideas of her own. Scarlett is all but cast out from decent society when she becomes a career woman and takes charge of her own life. The women though, while ornamental, were the backbone of society. They were the neck of the household; anything they wanted, they could obtain, though it had to be manipulated through the head of the man. Women were highly respected and required the protection of a man. The young men were not allowed to call the young women by their first names without preceding it with "Miss" and even that act was one worked towards for months and could only take place after the express permission of the female. Marriage proposals were not accepted the first time, or even the second, but the third. Women were protected and men were expected to know how to protect them and treat the women like the fragile delicate creatures they were.
Contrast this with Nicki Minaj's recent Anaconda music video. The most known line of the song is "My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't-My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon." Obviously you can work out the sexual innuendo in this line for yourself. Nicki expresses that women have been empowered. They do not need a man to complete them. They are free to have ideas, to have their own goals, to do what they want, to sleep with whom ever they please. Men have accepted that women can think for themselves and are not, in fact, fragile helpless creatures.
But at what cost?
Objectifying a women in the Old South was done in secret. The "bad woman" in Gone With The Wind is not a part of society. Men of dignity do not enter her house or even entertain notions of doing such a thing. The "bad woman" made a choice not accepted in polite society and she embraces it, even though the rest of society can hardly stand to talk about her. Objectifying women was a hidden process in the Old South. Meanwhile, we have a famous pop singer objectifying herself for reasons known alone to her and the objectification of women is so commonplace that she's barely scandalous. However, no one can deny that what Minaj did worked. I know who Nicki Minaji is. I have watched some of her music videos, even if I lost interest half way through. She's built career for herself, like thousands of other women today, and probably made more money in a couple years than I will ever make in my lifetime. She's a career woman and I give her my respect for having the guts to put herself out there and make something of herself.
Women have gained a lot in the world of business since 1864. Unfortunately, I believe we may have lost on the home front. People's eyes bug out when I tell them I want a lot of kids and stay at home with them. Marriage is a suggestion rather than a social norm. Motherhood is prolonged until almost the last possible instant. Michelle Duggar is an oddity for welcoming as many children as she is able to have.
All in all, a woman's mind is far more respected today than it was 150 years ago, but I don't believe the same can be said for her body. We have given up respect for our bodies for respect of our minds. Now the problem is; how do we attain respect for both?
Scroll down for respect!
A
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Marriage: A Controversy
Florida became the 36th state in the Union to legalize gay marriage today. In light of that event, I thought I'd write a post about it all.
A couple weeks ago I was skiing for the weekend at a resort in West Virginia. I couldn't get a girlfriend to be my ski buddy, so I found myself spending the entire weekend with my dad. This was fine with me. My dad and I have an excellent relationship and, as I spend most of my time at college or camp and away from home, I treasure every minute I get to spend quality time with him. A bit of back ground on my dad; he's got a PhD in History and spends pretty much all of his time thinking about what's going on in the world and how it's going to affect him. We got onto the topic of gay marriage while 30 feet in the air, our legs dangling off the ski lift.
While my dad and I don't exactly see eye to eye on the topic of gay marriage, personally I don't really have much of an opinion one way or the other as long as I don't have to do anything I don't believe in, my dad brought up an excellent point. His very unnerving factoid was that he has never seen any statistics on how many gay marriages there have been since it was first legalized.
Once I got home after the weekend and warmed myself up, I powered up the old laptop and did a quick Google search. Now, gay marriage has been legal in the US since 2004, when the state of Massachusetts decided to legalize it. That means, that since 2004, if you were gay and really wanted to get married, you could move to Massachusetts. I did a quick search after that to find out the number of gay marriages there have been since 2004. Firstly, it was a little murky to find the actual number of marriages. About the fourth link down, I found one article by a place called Pew Research Center. This article did hold exactly what I was looking for. It gave me the numbers of gay marriages to happen in each state, there were nine at the time, that allowed gay marriage, withholding Maryland and DC. The number they gave me? 71,165. Over a time span of about nine years, 2004-2013. The Numbers from 2014 hadn't come in yet. I then ran how many marriages happened in the United States in 2013 into Google. The first link I came across told me exactly how many marriages happen a year, how old the bride commonly is, how old the groom is, how much money they spent on the wedding. The number of US marriages a year? About 2.3 million. Multiply that number by 9, and you get 20.7 million marriages. I then divided 71, 165 by 20,700,000, a trick I learned in grade school to calculate my test averages. My number? .00343. That's .003 gay marriages to happen in the US since it was first legalized.
It isn't that gay marriages aren't happening. It's just that the demand for them isn't as high as the media would have you believe. It isn't even close. It's virtually a non issue. I'm sure, if you happen to spend any time on any social media platform with young adults, you've seen the image of the two little old ladies who got married in their 90s after decades of waiting. You know multiple celebrities, like Ellen Degeneres or Neil Patrick Harris who are gay and have gotten married. I'm not saying that you shouldn't believe in gay marriage if you do or stand up for it. I'm here to say that gay marriage is drastically over publicized and given far more media attention than it deserves. Focus your energies on a cause that affects a much wider percent of the population, like racism for instance, and work on erasing that. Gay marriage isn't going to go away and it will probably become legal everywhere eventually, but affects too small a percentage of the population to justify all the hype. Do your research, find a cause you believe is worthy of fighting for, and don't just go with the flow.
Scroll the day away!
A.
A couple weeks ago I was skiing for the weekend at a resort in West Virginia. I couldn't get a girlfriend to be my ski buddy, so I found myself spending the entire weekend with my dad. This was fine with me. My dad and I have an excellent relationship and, as I spend most of my time at college or camp and away from home, I treasure every minute I get to spend quality time with him. A bit of back ground on my dad; he's got a PhD in History and spends pretty much all of his time thinking about what's going on in the world and how it's going to affect him. We got onto the topic of gay marriage while 30 feet in the air, our legs dangling off the ski lift.
While my dad and I don't exactly see eye to eye on the topic of gay marriage, personally I don't really have much of an opinion one way or the other as long as I don't have to do anything I don't believe in, my dad brought up an excellent point. His very unnerving factoid was that he has never seen any statistics on how many gay marriages there have been since it was first legalized.
Once I got home after the weekend and warmed myself up, I powered up the old laptop and did a quick Google search. Now, gay marriage has been legal in the US since 2004, when the state of Massachusetts decided to legalize it. That means, that since 2004, if you were gay and really wanted to get married, you could move to Massachusetts. I did a quick search after that to find out the number of gay marriages there have been since 2004. Firstly, it was a little murky to find the actual number of marriages. About the fourth link down, I found one article by a place called Pew Research Center. This article did hold exactly what I was looking for. It gave me the numbers of gay marriages to happen in each state, there were nine at the time, that allowed gay marriage, withholding Maryland and DC. The number they gave me? 71,165. Over a time span of about nine years, 2004-2013. The Numbers from 2014 hadn't come in yet. I then ran how many marriages happened in the United States in 2013 into Google. The first link I came across told me exactly how many marriages happen a year, how old the bride commonly is, how old the groom is, how much money they spent on the wedding. The number of US marriages a year? About 2.3 million. Multiply that number by 9, and you get 20.7 million marriages. I then divided 71, 165 by 20,700,000, a trick I learned in grade school to calculate my test averages. My number? .00343. That's .003 gay marriages to happen in the US since it was first legalized.
It isn't that gay marriages aren't happening. It's just that the demand for them isn't as high as the media would have you believe. It isn't even close. It's virtually a non issue. I'm sure, if you happen to spend any time on any social media platform with young adults, you've seen the image of the two little old ladies who got married in their 90s after decades of waiting. You know multiple celebrities, like Ellen Degeneres or Neil Patrick Harris who are gay and have gotten married. I'm not saying that you shouldn't believe in gay marriage if you do or stand up for it. I'm here to say that gay marriage is drastically over publicized and given far more media attention than it deserves. Focus your energies on a cause that affects a much wider percent of the population, like racism for instance, and work on erasing that. Gay marriage isn't going to go away and it will probably become legal everywhere eventually, but affects too small a percentage of the population to justify all the hype. Do your research, find a cause you believe is worthy of fighting for, and don't just go with the flow.
Scroll the day away!
A.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
I'm Already Struggling
It's already hard for me to continue to write for this blog. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I'm going to take a stab at several reasons.
The first reason being that a blog post is a creative undertaking. You have to think about what you're going to write and how you're going to write it. You also have to think about the reader. Are they going to like it? What if they don't? What if they do? I feel putting yourself out there creatively is much harder than anything else because firstly, it's very subjective and secondly, there's a little bit of yourself in said creative act. Therefore, if someone deems your creative endeavor bad, it feels like they have also condemned a little piece of you to be bad and that's a very frightening and disheartening concept. Nonetheless, here I am and I don't know if this is good or bad yet.
Not knowing where this blog might be going is another concept I find hard to deal with. Generally, the end is always in sight. The semesters over, I just have to make it till then. College ends in two and a half years and then I can move on. Anything so tangible being so uncertain is a little hard to wrap my head around. Of course, I have no followers as of yet, so I wouldn't be letting anybody down if I stopped. Well, except myself.
Lastly, and I think I'm going to make a whole blog post about this next week, I'm an internet kid. I grew up in a world where anything I wanted to know or find out about was at my fingertips. I could always find something funny to watch or something cool to learn about. Basically, the internet has always been easy. This blog makes the internet hard.
We'll have to see where this goes.
Scroll along for the ride!
A.
The first reason being that a blog post is a creative undertaking. You have to think about what you're going to write and how you're going to write it. You also have to think about the reader. Are they going to like it? What if they don't? What if they do? I feel putting yourself out there creatively is much harder than anything else because firstly, it's very subjective and secondly, there's a little bit of yourself in said creative act. Therefore, if someone deems your creative endeavor bad, it feels like they have also condemned a little piece of you to be bad and that's a very frightening and disheartening concept. Nonetheless, here I am and I don't know if this is good or bad yet.
Not knowing where this blog might be going is another concept I find hard to deal with. Generally, the end is always in sight. The semesters over, I just have to make it till then. College ends in two and a half years and then I can move on. Anything so tangible being so uncertain is a little hard to wrap my head around. Of course, I have no followers as of yet, so I wouldn't be letting anybody down if I stopped. Well, except myself.
Lastly, and I think I'm going to make a whole blog post about this next week, I'm an internet kid. I grew up in a world where anything I wanted to know or find out about was at my fingertips. I could always find something funny to watch or something cool to learn about. Basically, the internet has always been easy. This blog makes the internet hard.
We'll have to see where this goes.
Scroll along for the ride!
A.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
The Happily Ever After Complex
So, you watched the final episode of How I Met Your Mother. If you didn't, stop reading because I'm about to spoil everything for you.
I watched the final episode, and like most humans with a heart, I was annoyed. I desperately wanted Ted to actually stop chasing after Robin and move on with his life already. I wanted Robin and Barney to work out, and not just because I'm in love with Neil Patrick Harris and I want his on-screen relationships to work out just as much as I want his off screen relationship to work out. Personally, I was pulling for Robin and Barney to have a long and happy marriage with a surprise baby. I also didn't want The Mother to be DEAD. Essentially, I wanted everyone to live happily ever and that just the problem. No one really lives happily ever after. Ever.
I feel like most of our television shows and movies depict everyone living happily ever after. The hero accomplishes the long arduous task. The boy gets the girl. The girl gets the boy. Sure, some semi-important character, Fred Weasley, Dumbledore, Prim, Augustus, might have died, but the Dark Lord was vanquished, the corrupt government was toppled, love triumphed. There is rarely an ending of any story that leaves everyone in despair.
How I Met Your Mother took all the growth and development the characters accomplished through the years and threw it away. Barney regressed to his womanizing ways, Ted never let go of Robin, Robin bought back all the dogs she'd gotten rid of. I think, myself included, that everyone was annoyed that the writers threw out the progress but, what everyone was more annoyed about, was the fact that Ted and The Mother and Robin and Barney never got to live happily ever after. Life is unhappy and hard enough without having to see the people you live through vicariously onscreen suffer as much as you do. However, I think the writers of HIMYM were really onto something. Life isn't flowers and roses and happiness. I don't know what it's about, but it isn't that. So there's no reason why our entertainment needs to reflect that. In the end, what's more thought provoking and what can you take away lessons you can apply to your life? An unattainable happily ever, or a real life scenario you can truly relate too and struggle with?
Scroll Away!
A.
I watched the final episode, and like most humans with a heart, I was annoyed. I desperately wanted Ted to actually stop chasing after Robin and move on with his life already. I wanted Robin and Barney to work out, and not just because I'm in love with Neil Patrick Harris and I want his on-screen relationships to work out just as much as I want his off screen relationship to work out. Personally, I was pulling for Robin and Barney to have a long and happy marriage with a surprise baby. I also didn't want The Mother to be DEAD. Essentially, I wanted everyone to live happily ever and that just the problem. No one really lives happily ever after. Ever.
I feel like most of our television shows and movies depict everyone living happily ever after. The hero accomplishes the long arduous task. The boy gets the girl. The girl gets the boy. Sure, some semi-important character, Fred Weasley, Dumbledore, Prim, Augustus, might have died, but the Dark Lord was vanquished, the corrupt government was toppled, love triumphed. There is rarely an ending of any story that leaves everyone in despair.
How I Met Your Mother took all the growth and development the characters accomplished through the years and threw it away. Barney regressed to his womanizing ways, Ted never let go of Robin, Robin bought back all the dogs she'd gotten rid of. I think, myself included, that everyone was annoyed that the writers threw out the progress but, what everyone was more annoyed about, was the fact that Ted and The Mother and Robin and Barney never got to live happily ever after. Life is unhappy and hard enough without having to see the people you live through vicariously onscreen suffer as much as you do. However, I think the writers of HIMYM were really onto something. Life isn't flowers and roses and happiness. I don't know what it's about, but it isn't that. So there's no reason why our entertainment needs to reflect that. In the end, what's more thought provoking and what can you take away lessons you can apply to your life? An unattainable happily ever, or a real life scenario you can truly relate too and struggle with?
Scroll Away!
A.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
College: The Ups and Downs
Here I am. About to finish my third semester of college. I'm actually supposed to be working on several different assignments, all of which are due this week, but I'm listening to One Direction, surfing the internet, and writing this blog post instead. Go me. But seriously guys (speaking to the huge number of people that are reading this, of course) college is a tedious time. Don't get me wrong. Higher education has its perks like being on your own and being able to do your own thing. See, that's exactly my problem. I'm on my own. I don't mind being able to do things for myself but college is a very lonely time in my life. I'm a naturally talkative and outgoing person in a group, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel like I have no one to talk to and no one to share anything with. College is truthfully a very selfish time in your life. Think about it. You use other people's money (generally) to work on a career path that will be all your own. Other people's problems don't matter to you so much because your struggles, will I get an A or a B on the next exam?? are so much more important. Life doesn't give you a whole lot to be proud of or invest in and you're too busy trying to pass to go find out what you can invest and be proud in. Personally, I believe college to be very overrated and over priced and, while I'm trying to make the most out of this experience, it's hard to keep it from being an unproductive and isolating time. But those are just my two cents.
Keep on scrolling!
A.
Keep on scrolling!
A.
I Have No Idea What I'm Doing
I've started this blog because I need a creative outlet that has the potential for being read by someone else. I want to be held accountable for what I say and do on this blog because at this stage in my life so much of what I do is frivolous and not meaningful. College is a time in your life where you are frequently doing a whole lot of nothing and I go crazy like that. I need something to put creative energy into. I paint a lot and that's great but I'm very self conscious about what I paint so I don't really share it with people or put myself in a position where I can get any feedback from anyone. I'm also not very good at the internet so I couldn't Tumblr or Youtube or anything like that. I believe blogging could be very beneficial for me because I have a lot to say and, if you're reading this when you're probably supposed to be doing something else, you have time to read. With that said, welcome to my blog. I hope to be able to spread positivity and give my frank opinions on the world around me.
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Scroll on back up!
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