Social Media and Body Image Microtheme Brainstorming

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      When you log onto social media, turn on a TV, or flip through a magazine, what do you see? In my experience, I always see models with perfect bodies advertising anything and everything, articles about losing weight, and segments about thigh gap work outs or how to get a "Beyonce booty".
    All these things may seem harmless, or more so the norm in today's society, but is it hurting people, specifically young girls body images? On Instagram there's thousands of posts under #bodygoals or #thinspiration. These are all people wishing they had some other body, and hating their own.
    Seeing perfect models advertising everything from Versace to Carl's Junior's hamburgers can hurt girls self image. If they never see someone like them on TV or on a magazine, they can start to get self conscious. Seeing pictures of thigh gaps and articles about how to lose weight fast or get the "six pack you've always dreamed of". What if you've never dreamed of a six pack? Should you dream of a six pack? All these types of things can negatively effect the sense of confidence you have with your body. If society constantly is constantly putting out the same image of what's 'beautiful' and what's 'in' that can't help girls with their body issues.

       I know this can be true because I've fallen victim to shaming my own body. I'd follow Victoria Secret models on Instagram and just feel sad and beat myself up over not having a body like them. I'd see people on magazines, and read their articles and would look at my stomach and frown, knowing there was a layer of fat that was concealing my abs. I'd want a bigger thigh gap, smaller arms, and a butt that didn't cast me in stereotypical 'flat white girl' realm of butts. I learned to hate my body before I loved it. I taught myself to point out my flaws before my strengths. If it happens to me, I'm sure it happens to other girls as well. While some people may say it's the person's fault for looking at those types of pictures, it's not so black and white. It's hard to learn to love your body when certain types are constantly shamed in our society, especially on social media. #Thinspiration might be doing more harm than good to girls everywhere.

Summary

 

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My main experiences with summaries were just single paragraphs, summing up the movie, book, or article I read or saw then jumping right into analytic commentary. Summaries are not as easy as you think, especially when the purpose of one is to be your whole paper. There needs to be detail, but not including every little thing that happened in the film. You need to be able to word the summary professionally, so you avoid sounding like a teenage girl telling a story about the drama going on with her BFF Jill "And then this happened... and this happened..... and this happened". It's very easy to make your summary emulate a sports caster football play by play, or like you're rewriting the script of the film on paper. Especially since documentaries might be hard to understand if the background knowledge isn't there, or if the film uses large vocabulary and technical terms.  I do think summary are a very valuable skill to have. It can help in professional life during meetings and such. Being able to pull out the important information and focus on that can really help people when in the work place. 

Coming from a heap of chemistry and biology classes, the summary writing was kind of difficult for me. I've always been taught to make detailed notes and make loads of observations. While this helped me in taking notes for the summary, it didn't help when I had to sift through a whole page of notes just to write the darn thing. In science it's all about the details and the observations. That's also true for summaries to an extent, but for summaries it's more of the main picture big big details.

Documentary Reflection

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I. Love. Documentaries. Most of what I watch on Netflix are documentaries. I'm always looking for new and interesting educational flick that I can watch grab some snacks and cuddle up in bed. Call me a nerd, but documentaries are my favorite kind of films to watch. It's always been hard for me to sit through a "regular" movie. I don't even really like going to the movies and shelling out cash for a sub par movie.Any movies I see I never end up loving, or I find myself thinking that I wasted two hours I'll never get back. I never feel that way with a documentary. Maybe it's because documentaries tend to be less deceiving than "normal" movies, meaning you're never really 100% positive how an action movie or rom-com is going to pan out. At least if I've watched a documentary I know I've learned something, while if I don't like a movie I've wasted upwards of two hours of my life.

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I'm assuming my love for documentaries comes from never ending and most likely eternal curiosity. I've always been a curious little thing. I was always the kid who liked to going to school and wanted books about animals and science for Christmas.  I just liked knowing things. Ever since I've been a little kid, I've been asking questions my mom couldn't answer and by the time she flipped through our stash of encyclopedias and found out how horseshoe crabs swim, I've thought of three more questions to ask. Documentaries satisfy my curiosity, with mounds of knowledge at the tap of my keyboard. I can find out about literally anything I want to without having to read a dry text book. I like knowing things, and documentaries let me know things.

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I don't believe people who say they don't like documentaries. I think they just haven't found one that they liked. When someone says "documentary" people usually shiver as they think back to grade school when the teacher would role out a TV cart and put on a film about the American Revolution narrated by some British guy (but I also think you're lying if you say you didn't like it when Bill Nye the Science Guy played on those TVs). There's a documentaries for everyone. Sports, science, food, religion, travel, biographies, animals, fashion, the list goes on and on. Some of the best, most interesting movies I've seen have been documentaries. One of my favorites is about a company putting American men in content with Ukrainian and Russian women in what's called a modern mail order bride company. I've seen one about people whose lives have been consumed by a game called Second Life, Blackfish about the whales, AIDS victims in different countries, veganism, the list goes on. I challenge those who hate documentaries to watch one that a lines with their interests, and see if they still hate documentaries.

Social Media Stereotypes

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If social media was a high school, call it "Internet Academy", every platform would be a stereotype straight out of a John Hughes 80s movie. Facebook would the popular guy on campus who everyone knows, or at least has heard of. Twitter would be the loud mouth debate team captain who never knew when to stop talking, Instagram would be the 'self absorbed' rich girl who is so into herself she's always snapping a picture of her perfectly done up face. Tumblr would be the hipster kid who listens to bands you've never heard of and is always wearing a beanie even in 90 degree weather because that's his aesthetic. Sounds like the typical kids in high school who you pass in the hall, but are what the kids are stereotyped as, what they really are, or do they have more levels to them than meets the eye?
Is there anything wrong with these archetypes that social media are placed under? No, there's not. There's nothing wrong with social media having niche markets. On the contrary, I think a lot of society is too focused on the stereotypes they put the platforms under than accepting them for what they really are. People are too busy saying "Instagram is for rich kids taking selfies" "Twitter is only for people who need to share everything about their life to make it look interesting" and "Tumblr is only for the hipster snobs". After falling victim to believing all these stereotypes, I'd always join with some skepticism.
Once you join the different medias and do some digging beyond the surface, you find the stereotypes aren't as prominent as you thought. If you want a feed filled with selfies or life updates, you can get that no problem. However, you can find amazing photographers on Instagram, world travelers on Twitter, and scientific articles and political movement information on Tumblr. It's not as one dimensional and flat as people think. There are
communities within the platforms, there's something for everybody, but you never hear about that. All that's reported on is the "selfie generation" or oversharing of our lives.
I think if we want to overcome these stereotypes society just needs to dive in head first and sift through the pictures, updates, and tweets until they find a sub-community they can feel  comfortable in. If you like who you're following or what you're seeing the stereotype fades away.