My Portfolio

For as long as I can remember, I have taken sides against the media. I have written essays, made collages, done book reports, and gone off on random rants about how the media negatively affects self-esteem. In EPS 100, I argued that education needs to help students understand the media, which ties in with our discussions of media literacy. Exposing techniques such as airbrushing would allow students to realize that real beauty is not what they see on the magazine covers (or on TV, or the internet, or anywhere really). In theory, this would improve students’ self-esteem. But after watching this video about subliminal messages, which Alec posted on his blog a while back, I wonder if all this education is enough to stop the media’s influence. No matter where we go, we see images of “beautiful people”. We see ads telling us to lose weight, get whiter teeth, build obscenely large muscles, and wear the “coolest” clothes. Leanne and Rachelle ran into this problem- even a site intended to promote self-esteem and real beauty was not safe from these ads. (By the way, I hope you two were successful in getting the ads taken off). We are processing all of these messages, whether we realize it or not, and it is inevitably affecting the way we see ourselves. I think it is also important to remember that it is not only women who are affected in this way- men are also given unattainable standards by the media. So what do you think? What can we do to change the way the media affects our students (and ourselves)?