#minimedia

ARE YOU READY KIDS?! 🦜🫧

Today in our society nearly every space we move in is filled with advertisements. Specifically New York City is faced with overwhelming amounts of advertisement that we as a society consume daily. A New York Times article called Posters on Teenage Pregnancy Draw Fire was published just a month ago focusing on a controversy between the Mayor’s office and Planned Parenthood of New York City. What “drew the fire” was a new campaign of ads targeted at teenage pregnancy. Throughout the article both of their opinions are exchanged but here are two quotes that caught my attention!

Haydee Morales, vice president for education and training at Planned Parenthood of New York City says,

“Hurting and shaming communities is not what’s going to bring teen pregnancy rates down.”

Vs.

Mayor’s office says,

“Send a strong message that teen pregnancy has consequences — and those consequences are extremely negative, life-altering and most often disproportionately borne by young women.”

As the two quotes express two very opposing opinions, I thoroughly agree with Haydee Morales. I find that the ads are just reinforcing the negative stereotypes of teenage parents. The ads are simply expressing that if you become a teenage parent your life will automatically suck becoming broke, uneducated and single. Hurting and shaming any human being is never a positive way to a solution anyways, especially since there are teen parents out there who have gained an education, earned money and found/stayed with their partner to live and support the child. It is sad that the ads are putting all teen parents into this one category, making them believe that their lives will just become full of negative consequences.

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Being the younger sibling out of my brother and I, I have always wanted to do and be given everything he did (because that would only make it fair) OBVIOUSLY! I will never forget when Santa brought my brother and I two gaming chairs and a Nintendo 64 system. Rocking in our chairs playing for hours on end, the game we would always put in first was Mario Kart. The first thing you do when you log into the game is choose what character you want to be out of the 8 selections. Me being a young white, blonde, blue-eyed girl I bet you couldn’t even guess what character I ALWAYS had to be.

10 years later I am shaking my head to my actions in the past…yes I was always Princess Peach.

Why I use the expression “shaking my head” is for many reasons. First of all, Princess Peach falls perfectly into the hegemonic group. If you have never seen Princess Peach before she is white, blonde, and blue-eyed...and to top it off she is a princess! Princess Peach is a character in many Super Mario Brothers games but is 9 times out of 10 the character that is seen as weaker and vulnerable and is suppose to be saved by the male. Even though royalty and white usually links with power, it is unfortunate Princess Peach’s role is constantly seen as helpless.

I started searching for more Princess Peach games online. Hoping to find some sort of badass Princess Peach to B.S you with a quality reason why I chose her character 10 years ago other than the truthful reason…but the first game I came across was this…Princess Peach Dress Up. The name of the game explains itself. I don’t even know where to begin!!

1. Whitewashing – Princess Peach could not get any whiter, her eyes are crystal blue, and you can only choose her hair color to be a blonde or light brown color.

2. Male power fantasies! Even though it is on a girl’s site, this still shows how video games are marketed typically to young, straight, boys and men…you dress and undress Princess Peach…come on now people.

3. Extremely hegemonic and sexist, as it claims to be a game for girls where the whole page is blinding with pink. These girls are once again not encouraged to be creative, simply just focusing on appearance.

4. How the industry works – less than 10% of game designers are women. CLEARLY.

So now that the Princess Peach character couldn’t be portrayed any worse, video games have found a way to dehumanize, encourage hegemonic powers, whitewash and inspire male fantasy powers throughout our only female character to choose from in the Mario 64 series. Evidently this is extremely problematic and things need to change. Whether it starts from the industries, or the people playing these games, or even society as a whole, realization and change needs to happen. 

S/O to Kate Pietrasik!!

Throughout the 80’s advertising for kids became very hegemonic specifying boys toys between girls toys. Not only was the actual toy defined as a boys or girls toy, there were two colors that were defined specifically for a boy or a girl. This takes us all the way back to when we were babies. When a baby girl is born the color pink already surrounds her. The same process happens when a baby boy is born, the color blue would surround him. Whether it is clothing, gifts, or balloons, the colors pink and blue instantly define the baby’s gender right when they are born.

Since my Mom and I categorize myself as being a shopaholic, I spent sometime focusing on the gendering of children’s clothing. Having Google as my sidekick I started off there. “Unisex clothes for kids” is what I typed in and many sites appeared! The first link I clicked on was the Kohl’s catalogue. With it being a chain of American department stores, I was bound to find some good stuff! Nope. There were 0 products for unisex children’s clothes. Ok, so I clicked on another large chain of American department stores called JC Penny. “Shop Boys” and “Shop Girls” was what I read. This was very disappointing to me. Yes some other stores claimed to sell unisex clothing, but the girls were still dressed in soft colors and princesses, and the boys were dressed in blue and camouflage, with slogans such as, “This is My House”.

Clicking on over ten more different links I finally came across a clothing line that caught my attention. “Tootsa MacGinty” I read. This is a clothing line in the UK specifically designed for children, having all of their clothing unisex (other than some dresses)! Living in such an influential society, advertisement aimed at the youth can be looked at as somewhat dangerous. It just sets the stage on how children shape and think about what is expected for their adulthood. Throughout the video the designer Kate Pietrasik expresses the purpose of her clothing line. She explains that she is trying to trend gender-neutral products, where things became less stereotyped, less segregated and pinks and blues were NOT dominating the market. Uh. FABULOUS IDEA!! The colors, patters, graphics and motifs is what Kate puts her focus towards. Without having to explain more philosophy behind this gender-neutral clothing line, at the end of the day our society is still juggling with the subject of stereotypes. Boys and girls should just be able to wear and play with whatever they like, not because our society specifies boys or girls with certain colors/products.  

Although this brand is being designed and sold throughout the UK, it is still an amazing idea and a wonderful change. Making a difference has to start somewhere. Hopefully our society will be able to break this stereotype and embrace our children’s childhood to the fullest no matter what gender they are.

The funny women duo! Everyone knows these two women, if you know one, you know the other. They complete each other in their funniness and people love them together. Does it help that they are both "pretty"? Yes, I'm sure it does. But these women are more than that and they have caught America's attention. 

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the Golden Globes; one of Hollywood's biggest events of the year. This is a huge step for women in comedy. These two women showed all of America that women are funny. Not only that, they didn't have to be grotesque. They were genuinely funny and work so well together that people loved watched and loved laughing along.

Weddings typically bring happiness and the beauty out in women today in our society, but if one small thing goes wrong…BEWARE. Anywhere you go you are bound to find the one and only “bridezilla” that will let loose if you ruin her special day. From the dress to the decorations to the topper of the cake, women care about every little detail in their weddings. This special day counts as the most important day of their lives. This can be portrayed in the movie Brides Wars where two best friends, Emma and Liv, aren’t able to even share the same wedding without conflict, envy and problems.

Bride Wars is about two childhood best friends whose weddings are scheduled for the same day on accident. Neither of the women agree to change the date which leads them to sabotaging the others wedding. Some pranks that were exchanged by the two brides was when Emma messed around with Liv’s hair dye that turned all of her hair blue, or when Liv switched Emma’s spray tan bottle with a bright orange color. The two brides made it clear that neither of them would ever compromise. The actions these women are making demonstrate how the “bridezilla” is always underneath that beautiful veil no matter whose wedding your celebrating.

Perfection is what all women are looking for on their wedding day. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about weddings is white dresses, table settings, the ring, decorations, the cake, beauty and purity. The things listed above were some of the things Emma and Liv were also dealing with in order to have their perfect wedding. When one tries to have a perfect wedding the word cheap or inexpensive can never be used. In our society today, perfection within a wedding comes from spending tremendous amounts of money for societies approval for this one day. By watching the movie Bride Wars one can see the stress, jealousy and anxiety that weddings bring to a certain person on a day that is suppose to be her special day. When it comes to the end of the day, bridezilla never comes out on top and we should stick to weddings that make us happy, not our society happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6lyNj7wS9M