Hey Everyone, Its been short while since we posted anything, school work get's the better of us at times, but I found this article that I taught was really interesting and would like to share just an excerpt from it to view the entire article follow the link:

No Disrespect

In February 2012, PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer about their Oscar nominations for their roles as Aibileen and Minny, Jim Crow–era domestic workers in The Help. "I'm pulling for both of you to win on Academy Award night," Smiley ventured. "But there's something that sticks in my craw about celebrating Hattie McDaniel so many years ago for playing a maid"—a reference to the actor who won for her role as Mammy in 1939's Gone with the Wind. "I want you to win," Smiley concluded, "but I'm ambivalent about what you're winning for."

Davis countered that it is hard for black actresses to find multifaceted roles in Hollywood, and that pressure from the black community to eschew portrayals that are not heroic makes it even harder: "That very mind-set that you have, and that a lot of African-Americans have, is absolutely destroying the black artist…. If your criticism is that you just don't want to see the maid...then I have an issue with that. Do I always have to be noble?"

For black women, particularly those in the public eye, the answer to this question is often a resounding "Yes." They are required to be noble examples of black excellence. To be better. To be respectable. And the bounds of respectability are narrowly defined by professional and personal choices reflecting the social mores of the majority culture—patriarchal, Judeo-Christian, heteronormative, and middle class.

Spencer ended up taking home an Oscar later that month for Best Supporting Actress (Davis lost to Meryl Streep for Best Actress), but Smiley had articulated a discomfort many in the black community felt about their big-screen roles. For all its popularity and acclaim, The Help illustrates that Hollywood still filters (and distorts) the lives and histories of minorities through the eyes of the majority; celebrates white saviors; and, 72 years post-Mammy, is still more comfortable casting black women as maids than as prime ministers, action heroes, or romantic leads.

Where Smiley trod lightly, some people have been more explicit in their criticism of Davis and Spencer. In an open letter to Davis on the film-industry site Indiewire, black filmmaker Tanya Steele wrote, "Currently, the vanguard of black culture is still healing wounds from their past. Wounds that racism has created, wounds that drive you to gain acceptance in the larger culture. The acknowledgment comes in the form of a paycheck, exposure, star status, acceptance. An acceptance that is more important than our legacy. Isn't it that simple? How else could a black woman…take the role?"

Much-needed criticisms of The Help and the characters of Aibileen and Minny have come from sources like the Association of Black Women Historians, which, in its own open letter, challenged various aspects of the book and film, including misrepresentations of elements of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism. But there is something else floating in the ether: the idea that the role of a maid is simply too ignoble for a 21st-century black actress. That idea is merely respectability politics at work.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/no-disrespect

I love bleaching my skin! Say whatttttt?

I love to bleach my skin! Well that's how a lot of people feel lately.  We live in a world where people discriminate you for all sorts of reasons, from the color of your skin to the color of your hair and if we all had the same color skin or hair we would probably be discriminated by the color of our eyes.


Some dark skin people resort to bleaching their skin to "look attractive" and become a browning,caring less about the health risks which include cancer. The amount of products available on the market are endless. The infamous cake soap (a clothes bleaching product), fair and white, topiclear and emami, just to name a few.

In Jamaica it has apparently become the norm to bleach your skin as one lady who was interviewed by the Jamaican Gleanor admitted that she buys bleaching cream for her 15-year-old son who attends high school. "Him did likkle bit too dark. Ah now him cute and the likkle schoolgrl them nuh stop rush him now that him a browning. Mi nuh see nutten wrong with it. Mi haffi tek care a mi pickney."

Now bleaching creams and bleaching tablets do work, just ask dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel, Soca Artiste Patrice Roberts and former baseball player Sammy Sosa. In an Interview, Vybz Kartel said that he sees bleaching your skin the same as relaxing your hair or getting a tan and he even has his own line of skin bleachers called 'VYBZ'.

The question remains, does bleaching your skin mean that you are ashamed of your color, have low self esteem, or is it as Kartel says, just like relaxing your hair. No big deal! Do black people lighten to enhance their beauty like makeup or plastic surgery? Were we brainwashed from slavery to believe that lighter skin is synonymous with beauty? Or is it that because its a trend mostly done by black people, society assumes that they do it because they dislike being black? We can even say that if skin lightening is said to imitate white culture, then tanning imitates black culture.


Evidence have shown that lighter skin people are sometimes considered before dark skin people, even when it comes to employment. Earlier this year, Aero Mexico, a Mexican Airline and its Ad agency, apologized for a producer's casting call requesting that only light skinned people apply as actors for a television commercial. The commercial has not yet been made, but the casting call specified it wanted "nobody dark skinned," only actors with "white skin". Hmmmmm.

Skin bleaching is not a new phenomenon, it has been taking place centuries ago. I was looking at some Ads from the 1940's and felt so ashamed and disgusted by them. I asked a friend of mine who is addicted to skin bleaching, about her views on the airline's Ad preference and she said "you see why I will never stop, I love bleaching my skin."

 

So 

Women in the Visual Media

How Do we as Women view ourselves in the visual Media?

Although throughout history women have  been sexually objectified, now more than before young girls are equating their worth  with their body image, and with the advent of the social media, and more so visual media, not only are women being seen as objects , nowadays it is often the image of a woman’s body that can be the driving force behind many a  decision that is made, its usually the Alcohol  label with the most scantly clad ladies , the magazine with the beautiful woman on the cover, the movie with the hot new actress that usually generate the most consumer interest.

“They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?" 

Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk

From an early age our young girls are taught that they don’t have to worry about their looks, that beauty is only skin deep, but more than ever before young girls are being  bombarded with images, mainly from the media that tell them differently, many young girls now want to  look  and dress  like reality TV stars,  movie stars and music icons many of whom offer little or no moral  ethic,  young girls s are particularly vulnerable because they are impressionable  which makes them primary targets of advertisers. Most young girls fail to grasp that they are being targeted and  pressured into accepting social concepts which may have no real truth to them but are being incessantly  pushed on them by the media.  

In 2011, images of 10-year-old Thylane Loubry Blondeau appearing in French Voguemagazine fuelled debate amongst child development experts and government on what restrictions should be made relating to sexualisation of children in the media. 

link: http://mediasmarts.ca/gender-representation/women-and-girls/media-and-girls

        A question arises, are we as women becoming what the media made us, have we become so gullible that we are willing to accept anything form of media content shoved at us with out firstly questioning the motives of advertisers, many of them being women themselves, having a hand in the way in which women are depicted in magazines, commercials, TV shows, movies, music. 

Are we only our bodies??

AS much as we try to avoid  advertisements we can't, they are EVERYWHERE. Can you think about how many advertisements you are expose to a day? They're everywhere telling us to be thinner, have healthier hair, cook more, clean more, smell nicer and it seems as though it will never end.

but c'mon, who doesn't like a good ole, funny, clever advertisement right? Here's just two of our favorites:

BUT then most times we have to sit through some HORRIBLE ones. One question though people,why do you need a woman in bathing suit acting all over sexual to advertise a BURGER or CAR OIL or a SOFT DRINK?? seriously??

Take a look at this video below:

 This advertisement is blatantly sexually objectifying women. Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person merely as an instrument of sexual pleasure, making them a "Sex object". It contributes to rape culture, and it encourages people to see women as sexually available inactive objects, and not as individuals with their own feelings and thoughts




I KNOW for most of you men, you may not see anything wrong with this  *rolls eyes*: BUT sexually objectifying images tells women that they are only wanted for the use of their body.  Can you imagine a generation where women ACCEPTED that they are only useful for their bodies? That's scary.

Many of us have at least one female on our Facebook, Instagram, etc that just take out pictures of their boobs, butt, or in their underwear, some men go wild for these things, but have you stopped to think where they got the  "this is normal" to do these things?  They promote this culture that treats them like sex objects. 

(pictures taken from Google)

As we always state, we're not saying that advertisements are totally responsible. Women obviously ought to have some level of understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. However, sometimes this behavior is acceptable to them because advertisements do have a great influence on the way sexual objectification is portrayed as  "normal".  

Quote from Irish Feminist’s Network (IFN): 


 Representative: “We’re surrounded by media images for such a large portion of our daily lives, it’s almost impossible to escape from it. We get the majority of our information today through media, be it music, tv, the internet, advertising or magazines, so it really is incredibly important for us as a society to think about the messages we receive from the media critically .On a personal level, I find the phrase ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ to ring true for so many girls and women today. If you repeatedly see women presented as sexual objects and not as leaders in a variety of roles and careers, it can be difficult to aspire to leadership positions as a woman." 



Facebook page for those of you interested in supporting the movement against sexual objectification. 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Object-Women-Not-Sex-Objects/241459022548228