"Creep Shots"

Well, this is disturbing.

I came across this Jezebel article about a high school teacher who was fired for posting candid photos of his underage students online. According to the article, he had been posting the photos on a new subsection of the popular site Reddit, known as /r/creepshots.

Jezebel, of course, is infuriated, and curiosity got the best of me and I decided to check it out for myself. I am just beyond words. Countless photos of women, going about regular chores, on the beach, at the gym, etc. Each photo is taken without the subject's knowledge and posted without permission. The "community" even encourages its 12,000+ members:

"Use stealth, cunning and deviousness to capture the beauty of your unsuspecting, chosen target."

And in response to the recent attention and outrage the community has garnered:

"When you are in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We are no different than paparazzi. Except we celebrate beauty without being paid for it."

Actually, I do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. I have a reasonable expectation that photos of me--my face, my boobs, and my ass--will not be "deviously" captured and posted for the perverts of the internet to enjoy.

This all just leads me back to the quote we wrote on the board on the second or third day of class: Our bodies are not public spaces.

Child Labor and the Social Construction of Childhood

Interesting article by Gwen Sharp, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Nevada State College:

"Today, most people in the U.S. see childhood as a stage distinct from adulthood, and even from adolescence. We think children are more vulnerable and innocent than adults and should be protected from many of the burdens and responsibilities that adult life requires. But as Sidney Mintz explains in Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, '…childhood is not an unchanging biological stage of life but is, rather, a social and cultural construct…Nor is childhood an uncontested concept' (p. viii)."

Click below to read further!
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/09/04/child-labor-and-the-social-construction-of-childhood/

Interesting news story to take a look at

Thought I would share the link to this news story about a high school girl being spanked by her male vice principal as a form of punishment. There are so many things wrong with this situation...it's hard to believe sometimes that this is 2012!

Success and fails at encouraging girls into STEM professions

Scientific American addresses the perils of "Barbifying" science.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, from Brain Pickings, on why science is in our DNA. Why We’re Wired for Science & How Originality Differs in Science vs. Art.

NYT article about the importance of mentoring in STEM professions: "Hundreds of prominent women working in science, technology, engineering and math will become online mentors for college students next month, part of a six-week program to encourage young women to pursue careers in STEM fields."

Online Mentoring Program to Encourage Women in Sciences

Link between boys’ school underachievement and girls’ low self-esteem?

Why Boys Are Inclined to Under-Achieve and Girls Lose Self-Esteem in Early School Years:

Marianne Møllmann, Amnesty International, argues that the two social phenomena are linked.

Interesting topic, one that Philip Lombardo, professor of Psychology at Stanford and leader of the infamous prisoner's experiment from the 1970s, also addresses in a TED talk, "The Demise of Boys?", from March 2011.

Worth checking out!

Interesting How Adult Women dress as Princesses

I was sitting with my friend and she came across this pic.  I thought it was interesting how adult women are dressed like Disney Princesses.  Not only are they dresses like princesses, they are in some ways over sexualized. We briefly touched on how Disney has changed the look of their princesses, here's something else to think about.  Is this what we really want our young girls to look up to?

Class Notes 9/18/12

Roberta Trites: "Disturbing the Universe" 

Importance/meaning of title: making active choices, "disturbing" the world as it is.

-Power: institutional, question in all novels.
-Trifecta: reader, text, and outside world or culture.
-Universal question for adolescence: what is my role in the world?
    -"The Chocolate War": disturbing the universe, rebelling, complicated workings of power
-Adolescence as liminal space: both empowered and disempowered

Themes/elements in most Young Adult literature:
-school
-boys, relationships, parents
-sexuality
-religion
All of these lead to social institutions

-Adolescence is also about how adolescents learn about power, not just rite of passages.
-Trites to change typical approach to Young Adult literature: ideas of power from Althuser, Foucault, Butler, and Lacan.

Althuser: Hegemony imbedded in this Ideological State Apparatus
can see his ideas in school: what you are learning- how to be successful in life

Foucault: Power as action- something you do, not something you have.
Power is everywhere, not just possessed by individuals

Butler: Relies heavily on Foucault (power more of a process)
Creates subject and subordinates subject

Lacan: "Assomption" - individual power and recognition of social forces that require them to change- based on their role in society.
Struggle between external and internal forces that compete to empower/repress individual power  

Mary Pipher: "Reviving Ophelia" 
-Reaches wider audience - not solely academics
-From 1994 but doesn't feel that dated. Written during the 90's- time of deregulation of children's TV; media's large effect on children and girls

As you read...
What are you getting from this book?
What are you giving to this book?  

Ideas from this section:
-Girls pulling away from parents and toward their peers.
-Weight issues- perfection, influence of media, pop culture
-Creation of "false selves"

Naomi Wolf's 'Vagina': No Carnations, Please, We're Goddesses

Read Katha Pollit's commentary on Naomi Wolf's 'Vagina': No Carnations, Please, We're Goddesses

According to Pollit, "In [Wolf's] loopy new book, the celebrity feminist acknowledges that every woman is sexually unique, but then she argues that they're all the same--i.e., just like her." Please comment if you discover other reviews of Wolf's latest!

Buying Into Sexy as follow-up to Reviving Ophelia

-->

As follow-up to today’s (Tuesday 9/18) class discussion, I encourage you to see the documentary Buying Into Sexy (2007), which is available on reserve at the Denison Library (and is only 24 minutes long). We will be addressing this documentary in class on October 2. Anyone interested in facilitating on it should see the documentary and get back to be before the slot to facilitate is taken by someone else! Also, there is this embedded link  to the national Canadian news website, which offers an interesting overview of the film's topic for you to peruse.

Hi Class! I cannot attend class today so here are some of my thoughts from today’s readings:

1. I did some research on empowering tween magazines, but American Girl, Girl's Life, and Discovery Girls were the three "best" options. I said "best" in quotations because all these magazines are very mainstream and focus primarily on appearance. I could not find a 2012 version of Sassy anywhere. 
2. As well, Reviving Ophelia was very thought-provoking. One question I had was why Lori may be able to survive adolescence without any major emotional scars, while other girls completely lose themselves during these teen years? Is it really a matter of privilege and financial resources?
3. A point of confusion for me in Disturbing the Universe is how does postmodernism (the theory that denies any universal claims about human beings) connect to the idea of Young Adult literature in Trites’ piece?

Have a nice class!

Canada, Eh?

"Shameless strives to practice and develop an inclusive feminism. We understand that many of the obstacles faced by young women and trans youth lie at the intersection of different forms of oppression, based on race, class, ability, immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As a grassroots magazine, we are committed to supporting and empowering young writers, editors, designers and artists, especially those from communities that are underrepresented in the mainstream media."

http://www.shamelessmag.com/about/

The starriest YA and children's books of 2012 so far

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/shelftalker/?p=8891

'New Adult' --latest publishing marketing term

Broadly Speaking: Would you read novels aimed at 'new adults'? The latest publishing buzz is 'new adult' fiction, a new term for readers aged 14 to 35. Do you buy into it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/10/new-adult-fiction

 

Interesting New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults

New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults
More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. According to a new study, fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 -- nicknamed YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44. Accounting for 28% of sales, these adults aren’t just purchasing for others -- when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78% of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading. The insights are courtesy of Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing biannual study from Bowker Market Research that explores the changing nature of publishing for kids.

Class Notes 9/11/12

• Class next Thursday will be combined with Dr. Pierce in Higley
• Class discussion began with everyone’s discussion questions from the Valdivia and Bettivia reading “Girl Culture: We Must Continue to Revisit It”
• P. 40 – bounds of class – choice rhetoric linked to financial resources
• P. 24 – description of vacation – link between theory and “trashy magazines” – can you still be a feminist? What is the place of popular culture?
•  Link to hierarchy within academia of what is valued
• P. 25 – the dominant voice in the article will be mothers’ – for “strategic” reasons – what does this mean?
• P. 30-32 – Did others in the class feel a gender bias from teachers in high school?
• Catholic school girl/boy separation (uniforms, lunch lines, etc.)
• Lines – separating girls and boys – what would Foucault say? Does that just teach them categories that they wouldn’t already divide into?
• Uniform debates – what’s the real purpose? Just to identify which school you go to?
• How significant are the timeline disparities between her daughter’s entrance into high school and our own
•  P. 31 – Daughter’s comment about their “secret” lives – brings up research methodology questions
• P. 28 – Does a feminist mother create a different type of daughter?
• How previous generations’ experiences shape our own worlds and what we know
•  P. 28 – race simplified and usually problematized – “normal” girlhood is white
• P. 32 – “her outspokenness is coded as lesbian” – something that we DON’T see changing from then to now
• “Angry” feminist stereotype – “Hysterical” rather than “passionate” which men are described as instead
• P. 26 – Feminist scholarship originally overlooked girls and now we’re turning back to them.
• Why are we examining girls? Only when there’s something wrong (ex: Honey Boo Boo)?
• P. 33 – “both too much and too little” – the good info’s there, ut how do you get it? “The more promising stuff does not last” – why is Disney still so much of monopoly.
• Dawson’s Creek – girls have major problems, but boys seem stable – telling girls they need boys to ground them?
• Compare with Gilmore Girls
•  P. 33 – “Chick flicks” – loved by some guys (ex: gay guy friend). Is “Chick flick” an instruction to consumer? What about it being “openly ironic”?
• Feeling left out because you don’t know a cultural reference? This shows the link between media and our identities
• True Blood v. L Word v. Foreign Films
• Ghana – interest there in American style and stores (and are interested in boys who wear the right brands)
• Adolescence -- balance between belonging and individualizing
•  P. 32 – adolescents prioritize the social -- importance/emphasis on gossip (prioritization of certain types of knowledge)
• Gender ranking – boys at DU not admitting to the shows they watch
• Do we hide behind the “irony” of watching certain things
• Link between gender equality and the policing of gender distinctions. If gender were natural, we wouldn’t have to police it.
• The new “My Little Pony” show that guys like to watch – “Bronies” – reversing the gender hierarchy or using it to raise the show up?
•  Connection to internet?
• Do the “bronies” make up excuses – about the animators, etc. to justify it?
• Is it okay for them to watch because there’s a designated category for them?
• Does Cat need an excuse for watching girly shows like Pretty Little Liars (i.e. the girls are pretty)?
• Fathers regulating their sons playing with girl toys
•  Blog “Pink is for boys”
• German father wearing skirts
• Angelina Jolie’s daughter, Chaz Bono
• Feminist focus on making girls like boys, rather than also making boys like girls – is androgyny better?
• Free to be…you and me episode about a boy wanting a doll and his grandma says he should have one because it is important to have good fathers
• Role of parents in being flexible about what and who their kids want to be
• Using “gay” as an insult between men and boys
• Naturalization of gender stereotypes – masculine men = heterosexual, etc.
• Commercial “real women sweat” – female bodies normally not expected to have functions, just be pretty
• Cleaning product and tampon commercials
•  Friend who had to quit sports because Mom wouldn’t let her use a tampon
• Are tampons stigmatized as slutty?
• Hiding our sanitary products – bc of androcentrism?
•  “porn for women” vs. “porn for new moms” (men holding mops) vs. romance novels
• Pictures of Girlhood reading
• Economics and privileged – girls with resources targeted as consumers – access to choices
• Confident consumers v. confident girls
•  Having $ v. having self-esteem
• What is available to consume – makeup?
•  Links to weight loss to be able to buy certain clothes
• Links between self-esteem (body image) and self-esteem (academics) – is there a mental divide, or are they as straight correlated as the literature says?
• Impact of location (Denison v. NYC)
•  P. 10 – “other means of survival” – girls turning to male approval? Girls doing things to get the needed funds for the consumer goods
•  “girl power” is a very restricted realm of power. How much choice do we really have? Is it just coke v. pepsi? Shouldn’t power be something much broader?
• Working within the system even as the system doesn’t work for htem – ducks look calm, but feet are paddling (presenting a normal façade while struggling under the surface)
•  For next time: Mean Girls – girls as target of inquiry of part of conversation?

Might Girl quotes JK Rowling on raising daughters....

From A Mighty Girl

From "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling on raising daughters: "I've got two daughters who have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny - a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly I would rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls."

Her reference to "Stupid Girls" is to pop singer Pink's single by the same name which Rowling described as "the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness." To learn more about this single or to preview it, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/stupid-girls

For books for Mighty Girls about body image issues, visit http://www.amightygirl.com/books/personal-development/life-challenges?cat=378

"I want to write a column next week for The Times about how I think we need to impose a world moratorium on having opinions on shit that women do for a month. Whenever something happens to a woman anywhere, everyone's gotta have a fucking opinion on it, like the new CEO of Yahoo!, and suddenly every feminist writer I know is being rung up by newspapers going "What's your opinion on this? Was she betraying the sisterhood by getting pregnant? What does this mean, what does this mean?” It's someone who got a job, if it was a man, we wouldn't be bothering about it. Every woman is seen as emblematic of like, two and a half million other women. It's horrible pressure, that's why women fuck up more than anything else. So maybe just for a month, unless it's a massive emergency, you know? Unless like, Diane Sawyer turns into a weird vampire, we should just not have opinions on anything women do for a month and let's just see if sales of Xanax and white wine have gone down by the end of the month."
-Caitlin Moran (author of How To Be A Woman)

The clarifying conversation that needs to be had...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nico-lang/trampires-why-the-slut-sh_b_1850940.html


"For any girl growing up who pays attention to the media, it's a terrifying time to understand what it means to be a girl in society."

This is an interesting read about the ramifications of internalizing shame and of considering a particular facet of our culture (that of "bullying, slut-shaming, and rhetorical violence against women") to be the "norm."

Doing Things that Scare You

As I was reflecting on our class discussion yesterday about Mary Bentley's "Body of Evidence" and her offering of three models of alternative models of empowerment for and to girls (critical lenses, safe spaces, and voice lessons), I read this entry from one of my favorite bloggers, Karen Walrond. I really like how Walrond exorts us, similarly to Bentley, to "challenge the silence in [our] own psyches and become examples of courage" (Bentley 220):
http://www.chookooloonks.com/blog/focusing-and-daring-greatly

The models and examples of everyday empowerment are out there. We need to find, share and follow!
Happy weekend to you all,
Dr. Gillespie

Republicans, Get in my Vagina

Funny and true video with celebrities speaking out about their bodies and the government!

Class Notes: 9/4/12

Readings: Barrie Thorne, "Re-Visioning Women and Social Change" and "'Childhood': Changing and Dissonant Meanings"

Goals:

• Using the OED definitions we looked up ("girl," "boy," "adolescent," "teenager") and Thorne's "Dissonant Meanings," explore more deeply the history of the idea of "childhood." How has gender played a role in its history?
• Explain Thorne's claim that "childhood is constituted as both a set of institutional arrangements and a powerful and emotionally charged set of ideas."
• Using "Re-Visioning Women," draw connections between the feminist fight for female equality and the way we perceive children in society.

OED Definitions

Boy: male child; immature male; derogatory term for "servant"

- Notes: There was no mention of women in any of the definitions; the origins and definitions of the word weighted heavily on social status and class

Girl: young, unmarried woman; maidservant

- Notes: Marital status plays a big role in the idea of a "girl." As Katie asked, does this mean that being unmarried is immature? There were always many mentions of men (in relation to women) in the definitions.

Adolescent: one going through puberty

- Notes: The word comes from the Spanish verb doler, meaning "to hurt."

Teen: one whose age ends in "-teen"

- Notes: This is a very new word, being coined in the 1940s. The first recorded use of the word was in Popular Science magazine.

Things to think about:

• According to "Dissonant Meanings," the first instance of "childhood" being recognized as a stage were only applied to aristocratic boys. The distinction arose when education and schooling became available to the upper classes.
• Many adolescents and teens are seen as needing to be "protected" from the inherit pain of their age group.

A Close Reading of "Dissonant Meanings"

Introduction

• Childhood was once thought of as a "bounded state," something which could be "taken away"
• Thinking of childhood as "a thing you own" leads to "dichotomous thinking and glosses ambiguity, ideological struggle, cultural variation, and historical transformation" (p.19)

The Shifting and Ambiguous Terrain of Age Categories

• The Industrial Revolution led to an increased need for literacy, which led to the increase in education; age-segregated schools, therefore, became a main factor in establishing "childhood"
• A few decades later, the Progressive Period saw the idea of childhood becoming more pronounced
• Viviana Zelizer described this movement as the change from an "economically useful" to an "economically useless, but emotionally priceless child"
• Today, "childhood" is still debated and inconsistent
• The United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child officially states anyone from birth to age 18 is a child; however, there are discrepancies: the states of Arizona now insists that life (and therefore childhood) begins two weeks before conception, while children as young as 13 can be tried as adults in a court of law

Learning, Media, and the Contested Meanings of "Childhood"

• There is a general idea that children are "losing their childhoods," yet these notions presuppose that there was at one time such a thing as the "perfect childhood"
• Marketing uses age compression to expand their demographic, hence the idea of "tweens" and children generally "growing up to fast"

Media Threats to the Boundaries of Childhood

• There is always a "new evil" in the media that is "threatening" children (comic books to hippie culture to the internet)
• Thorne says, "The expansion of children's social relations into virtual space has taken place during a period when the embodied spatial range of children has dramatically contracted."
• As Kate questioned, does this mean that the media and "virtual space" is the new way of gaining autonomy (whereas before it may have been found in the "spatial range" children were once able to explore)?

Reworking the Meanings of "Child" and "Childhood"

• Tobias Hecht stated that claimed that impoverished children were not "without a childhood," simply that they had a different kind of childhood (such as Cat's example of the children growing up in Mexico)
• The UNCRC's official negotiation (signed by every country except Somalia and the United States) stated that all children have a right to protection, provision, and participation

Conclusion

• We must resist binary thinking and consider the assumptions that can be drawn from the language used to describe childhood
• Childhood is nostalgia; we never truly have childhood when we are children because we cannot comprehend and understand it

"Re-Visioning Women"

Overview

• Men have used a "childish" view of women to subvert them over the years
• Today, women are no longer seen as being in a separate sphere, so why do we still view children as being the same way?

You Play Ball Like a Girl

I have an issue with the word Girl. I have an issue with it because, no matter how old I get I still am constantly referred to as a girl. When will I become a woman? When I was little I was a girl, when I was 15 I was a girl, and now that I am 20 I am still called a girl. However, its more the image I get with the word that annoys me. I picture Ham Porter in Sandlot shouting, “You play ball like a girl!” As everyone stands around in shock, tacking in how offensive the comment was. What is wrong with the term girl? It’s socially stigmatized as being less than being a boy.

            Automatically when you think of girl you see pink, dresses and flowers. When you think boy you see trucks, dirt and blue. This is because our society is ingrained with stereotypes. Unfortunately, girls get the short end of the stick. Our stereotypes are princesses and damsels in distress, while boys are the knights in shining armor.  Why can’t girls save the day and defeat the dragon? Because, our society tells us we are weaker than boys. When you are born you are either a girl in a pink blanket or a boy in a blue one. How can we see anything else when we hear girl when it is ingrained in our minds from birth?  I am sick of being called a girl, because I am not one. I am a woman, and if we want to go into detail I am a strong woman, not a weak girl. I play ball like a woman, and I play well.

Googling Girls

Google,while always useful for answering queries can be quite alarming in the way it is capable of showing us some of the most common interests internet users seem to have.  After searching "girls" in google I came up with links to sites about the HBO show "Girls", two links to a band called "Girls", a link to the magazine FHM (which looks like a cross between Maxim and Playboy from the brief look at their homepage), a link to Maxim, a link to gogirlsgames.com (which advertises make-up games and dress up games specifically), a link to "sexy videos of hot women, hot lesbians, and celebrity girls" on spike.com, and (the last link on the first page) a link to girlsinc.org which (finally) aims to "inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold."

In my mind, only having one out of ten links on the first page of search results be a page of empowerment and support for girls is a pretty pathetic showing. To me it shows that our society doesn't tend to see "girls" or "girlhood" as something that is important enough to provide legitimate information on. These results also show a tendency to mis-name women as girls. The show "Girls" is about 20-something year old women, and the women who appear in FHM, Maxim, and Spike are all women, most definitely not girls. It shows that for some reason society has a strange relationship with being a woman/being womanly. Those words seem to bring forth thought of age or matronly-ness that is undesirable in our society. It might also show a kind of fear of the power and strength that is held in being a woman that is absent in being a girl. Girls are much more easily trivialized I think than women, and this too helps to keep women subordinate, even in language. Another important point is that apart from the one pro-girl link at the end and the game site, non of these results are actually aimed at girls or women specifically, and indeed some of them are aimed specifically at men. Even the game site is providing entertainment based on stereotypically girly activities such as make-up, dress-up, cooking, makeovers, etc.

"Girls" vs. "Girl" ?

A Google search of the word “girls” certainly yields interesting results. The love-it-or-hate-it HBO series Girls takes up the first few entries; the skimpily clothed “girls” of FHM, Maxim, and Spike trail after. Then comes a frilly, animated site with simple and fun online games for “girls,” followed by a website that supports “girls” and empowers them with its various resources. This succession of entries is somewhat alarming to me; according to this particular search, in any case, there is no popular way to define the term “girls” in today’s virtual society.  A number of the sites in this search depict “girls” that I would better describe as women, and often sexualized women at that. So is there a moment when “girls” become “women”? What sort of bridge, if any, need be crossed to move from one group to another? Or is the line between the two so blurred that membership is a matter of subjectivity? The virtual world seems to harbor confusion on this front, as the evidence shows.

While I certainly relate to many of the issues that the 20-something year old characters of Girls face, I cringe when my brother collectively refers to my sister and me as “the girls.” In considering “girls,” I generally think back to my adolescent years; websites along the lines of the latter two listed above seem to be accurate reflections of this time period. FHM, Maxim, and Spike certainly don’t fit into my particular image. At the same time, however, I still have trouble referring to myself as a woman. For a variety of reasons, both personal and otherwise, the term “woman” doesn’t seem to be a perfect fit for me at this moment in time. So while the virtual world does seem to provide extraordinarily broad, varied depictions of “girls,” it also seems that my own inner turmoil—my inability to exclusively identity—echoes this. Britney said it best when she belted out “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”…

Interestingly, a Google search of the word “girl”—a search requiring the negation of a single letter, “s”—yields much different results. Aha! This search provides more uniform material, more familiar territory. This particular Google entry produces an online skateboarding catalog, a Wikipedia definition, links to Girl Scouts of the USA and American Girl, and various comic book sites. On the first page alone! These types of websites align with things that I perceive as being definitively related to “girls.” Though it is unsettling to dwell upon how manipulative and difficult search engines can be, I do find solace in the fact that a fairly uniform, clean idea of what a “girl” is—and what she needs—does exist out there. It seems that the definitions of  “girls” and of “women” are indeed still polarized…you just have to know what to type. 

Give Me My Title Or Walk Away - WOMAN

I was extremely hesitant about Google searching the term "girls" especially since I shouldn't because of the fact that I am a "girl." No. Pause. I am a Woman. I refuse to be mentioned or referred to as a 'girl' because I am no longer 5 years old and any man (or female) that refers to me as a girl should acknowledge that being downgraded to a mere child when you are a Women in her 20's (referencing to me, of course) deserves the title/acknowledgement of the person they have become. Also, I say all of this in the most serious tone ever because it definitely has happened and of course, I do correct people because it is the right thing to do. I am probably overreacting but think about it; every girl has been through the phase of innocence. As a child (girl), I considered myself to be confused, naive and at times, taken advantage of. People fail to give people their titles of what their becoming because isn't that the whole reason why we have stages within life? Men tend to downgrade a woman's title in some cases by believing that the world we've been growing up in is strictly theirs. The term "girls" appears on Google by the typical female stereotypes that appear in the mind of a male. I click on search and TV shows that have a famous actress appears OR the "hottest" girls you want to know about is there within a click of a button. What about the images? Of course, the fantasy of "girls" having girl on girl action or how other people refer to it as LESBIANS. Where are the successful, educated woman at in these pictures? All I see are half naked woman, kissing and posing in sensual ways with alcohol. This search just demonstrates how women are devalued by the media and by men. 

Class Notes (The Study of Childhood)

Here are the note main points from Fridays class: August 31, 2012. If anyone would like a copy of the notes, I typed them up and can send them through email.

1.  Based on infant mortality decreasing and wealth increasing, childhood became its own distinct category, something more focused on. 
2. Religion, economics and education are the fields that affected the notion of childhood concepts.
3. Hobbes believed that human traits were inherited. 
4. DNA research and other modern day research has now made Hobbes more respected with support from the scientific community. 
5. We’re not predisposed to any kind of language. 
6. Children imitate what we say. Babies recognize modulation.
7. Gendered languages are hard to differentiate versus gender neutral languages.
8. Gendered languages are hard to differentiate versus gender neutral languages.

Girlhood Search & Similar Searches

Before I hit enter, I looked at the similar searches that appeared in the drop bar. This is what came up:

girlhood
girlhood Journey
girlhood studies
girlhood home companion
girlhood home magazine
girlhood journey books
girlhood journey dolls
girlhood documentary summary
girlhood of shakespeare's heroines
girlhood definition

You would think the definition of girlhood would be somewhere towards the top. Or, I would. What these similar searches show is the majority of what people search for, and find when researching this topic. It also shows how much control search engine programmers have over our access to information. The first five answers that come up on google are a documentary synopsis on Girlhood, the documentary purchase on amazon, free dictionary's definition of girlhood, Girlhood Studies by Berghahn books and another Girlhood documentary review by Rotten Tomatoes. I have never seen this Girlhood documentary, but from what I gather in the information is that it casts a light on girls in juvenile prison. From the information I gather, I feel as thought the director is trying to show the girlhood that American society used to know as girlhood is not so in the twenty-first century. The status of girls in our society has changed.

Aside from the documentary there is an online journal dedicated to the discussion of girlhood. This makes me well, happy, knowing that there are people active about the topic. It gives me some type of hope for this world.

Girls Vs. Women

The first link that came up when I googled girls was the new HBO series entitled "Girls".  Something that's interesting about this series is that the characters that are in this series are females in the 20's.  I'm not sure about you, but I believe females in their 20's are considered women rather then girls.  This link alone has got me thinking what makes the difference between a girl and a woman?  As I stroll farther down links that include a boys music band called Girls comes up.  Then there's the Maxim page, that features "hot girls" (the ultimate guys guide) when clicking on this link female's are dressed in bikinis, and posing seductively.  Interesting how they say "the ultimate GUYS guide" as opposed to "the ultimate BOYS guide".
Females are continuously being seen as a sex object, through the internet, media, and other ways.  Since I have seen what google has brought up the term girls to be, it made me want to google boys. The very first link for boys is the wiki definition of boys. Interesting how the term "boys" is explained, and clarified.  Two links down is boys and puberty, WOW no surprise there.  Food for thought: how can we get passed social media, previous portrayal of females, and other pre and current influences on what girls are, so that they can be empowered?