“Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us” Extended Comments

“Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us”  Extended Comments from Giana's Blog


Christensen


 While I was reading the blogs on this article, Giana’s blog was the one that really opened my eyes.  Disney movies are a key example of how woman are stereotyped.  These movies show how woman should act, dress, the role that they should play in society and how what is expected from them.  Young girls watch these movies and see the “fairy tale” unfold and when they are older they see that these happy ending don’t happen that way and they wonder why they are disappointed.  Just like in commercials, you see these beautiful, thin models and this makes young women want to be exactly like them.   These girls end up starving themselves, working out continuously and sometimes they even go under the knife to make themselves look like those models permanently.  Why does the media want women and even men to feel this way about themselves.

While looking at Giana’s blog, she asks the questions of “What exactly is pretty?”  That question can stir up a lot of controversy because what is pretty? Who is pretty?  Sometimes, the models that you see in magazines or on television aren’t even what they look like in person.  When reading more of her blog, she says how a lot of people don’t see what is really inside of the person, instead they just see what is on the outside of them.  My parents always taught me “ never to judge a book by its cover” and that should go for people also.  Being raised with having that in my head at all times that has also been important to me because I would hate it if someone decided to judge me by my looks instead of who I am really am.  In theses movies, you never see someone who is handicapped or who is severely overweight.  In Giana’s blog, she is completely right when saying that the overweight characters in these movies are always the miserable, outspoken, rude characters who no one ends up liking.  Instead they run away from those characters.  This is the same in the society that we all live in.  Sometimes, people are taught all of these ugly traits when they are younger and they can never outgrow those ugly feelings toward others. 

At the end of Giana’s blog, she ties in what Linda Christensen says to her students.   She has them look at all of these characters and asks them to really look at them physically and as a character.  At the end of looking at these characters, they all see what the teacher is talking about. I feel that this is something at all teachers should do when they are teaching their students about judging and what the side effects of some of these characters can do.