The Media and Women

As you can see, this blog post won't contain an actual picture, but rather a video. More specifically, a short video that demonstrates the way that Photoshop distorts the image of women in our media. Give it a look:

We are living in an era where every single flaw in a photograph or a video can be erased by Photoshop, which has created an unrealistic expectation of what beauty and perfection entail. Girls in the third grade have started wearing makeup, and eating disorders are rampant. Despite the numerous campaigns that attempt to show this distortion to the public and encourage young women to feel beautiful (such as Idea 9 and the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty), the warped female image can be seen all over commercials, billboards and magazines. The media and its control over what constitutes perfection has had enormous effects on our culture.

One such effect was brought up recently by a female news anchor who was called fat in an email by a viewer. She described that adults like this man are perpetually worsening and spreading this problem to the next generation. When one believes in the unreal images that the media feeds us and rejects anything different by calling someone fat or ugly, the younger generation watches and learns, and in turn, they spread the rejection of those who do not fit the media's false image. There seems to be no way out of this trap other than leading by example. If we reject these fake images, bringing their effects to light through proposals like Idea 9, and promote the appreciation of real beauty through campaigns like the Dove Campaign, then perhaps we can change things for the next generation.

As the news anchor describes in her video (link above), no one can know anything about her just by seeing her image on a TV screen. The fact that a man passed judgement on her as a person just because of her weight is unsettling, and attacks like this based solely on image must be fought against. There does, however, seem to be a movement towards the support of real beauty, as told by the news anchor through the amount of support that she has received since discussing the contents of the email. This is a movement that must be continued, and it must focus on looking past an image. We must shake the media's control of how we view and judge other human beings.




Video source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4i8Ok7Z6kM

#Jeans

I recently discussed an article in one of my classes about a comment that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made regarding Iran. The comment was made during an interview with BBC Persian when Netanyahu attempted to get the Iranian public to oppose Iran's leaders and their nuclear program. He stated that, “If the people of Iran were free, they could wear jeans, listen to Western music and have free elections,” to which young Iranians on Twitter reacted immediately. Their indignant remarks spanned from comments questioning Netanyahu's intelligence to photos demonstrating how very wrong Netanyahu was. Here is one of the images mentioned in the article: 

 The man by the Twitter handle of Sallar sat in his home somewhere in Iran, probably wearing jeans, and tweeted this picture. This photo could've been taken by anyone anywhere in the world, be it in the United States, Israel or Iran. The world community has become so similar in so many ways, and still there seem to be walls built around our sections of the world that keep us from seeing any other nation for what they actually are. Despite the widespread outrage in response to Netanyahu's comment, I'm almost certain that somebody (or likely a large number of people throughout the world) agreed with him and the way he thinks Iranians live their lives. Despite the tyranny of their government, the people of Iran do, in fact, wear jeans and listen to Western music. This is just hidden by the image we have created of Iran, among many other Islamic nations throughout the Middle East. It makes us sure that their nations are dark and robotic.

Our image of Iran and other parts of the Middle East is outdated. In a region so plagued by conflict, it is difficult to imagine people living normal lives and coming home to listen to pop or rock and roll, but these people really do exist, as we can see from the image above. How can we work to build bridges between nations and improve communication to end conflict when we don't even understand the countries that are constantly in the news? With media coverage often discussing conflict, nuclear weapons and warfare, it is easy to assume Iran is a "bad" place. Even Netanyahu, prime minister of a nation much closer to Iran than the United States, seems to hold this distorted image of the nation. But behind conflict and government lie real human beings who have families and wear jeans and listen to Western music, just like us. In order to find the humanity in another culture, we must learn to look past the images that media and our society provide.

Image source:

https://twitter.com/sallar/status/386814675285184512