14. The Naked Truth

When we look at the advertisements which take place on the tv, billboards and magazines, we see that there is a general concept, nudity. It is obvious that "sex sells", but there are naked people almost in every advertisement, even the product has no connection with nudity. For example, if this is an underwear advert, it is very natural the models to be naked, but I cannot understand why there is a naked man in a vodka advertisement.

I am not criticising it, if I were in advertising business, I would also use the most advantageous way but I just cannot understand why it is so effective on the audience.

For example, there is a campaign in Australia which aims to protect the lambs and create an awareness. They say that sheeps suffer during their transportation and they get killed wildly and in a very painful way and they ask for people's support. This is a very beneficial campaign for animal rights but I cannot understand again, why there is a naked woman next to the sheep, on the poster of campaign.

13. The Full Monty Presentation

Last week we have watched the presentation of the second group; "The Full Monty". I saw the disadvantage of being the first group as my group is. I think showing the last scene of the movie was a very creative idea and I thought why couldn't I think that before my presentation :). I enjoyed the presentation although I had not seen the movie, because the group members were very enjoyable and friendly.

I decided to watch the movie after the class, becuse the topic has also attracted my attention. As I watched the films and read the texts about gender, I had thought that "beauty" is not important only for women, also for men. The film showed me that there are also men, who care about their appearence as much as women and it is not only women who make money by using it.

12. Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry is a film by Kimberly Peirce, which tells the story of a lesbian girl, Brandon(Teena) who keeps her real sex as a secret. She introduces her as Brandon, wears and acts like boys, hide her breasts, puts on a fake penis and make everyone believe that she is a boy, because she knows how diffucult it would be when people know about her being a lesbian. She falls in love with a girl, Lana, who has a tough boyfriend. Then people find out that Brandon is not a boy and Lana's boyfriend beats and rapes Brandon, which is the most dramatic scene of the movie.

The film becomes more dramatic when we think that this movie is based on a true story. When I watched this movie, I realized that we live in a very insensitive and cruel world, noone respects noones sexual choices and gays are always forced to be shamed of themselves. People become victims of their own choices and be insulted in lots of ways. For example, in a scene of the movie, Lana's mother mentions Brandon as "it". Because for her, she is not a girl and a boy either, so she does not deserve to be called like other "normal" people.

11. Ideal Woman

There is an "ideal woman" created by media and women's desire on looking like that woman can sometimes cause big problems. For example, I read a story about a woman, who had always been overweight in her whole life. She gets married and starts living with her mother-in-law. Her husbands family always tries to make her lose weight, takes away her meals in front of her and tells her that a woman cannot be like her and if she does not lose weight, her husband will go to other women. These insulting actions of them make her miserable and she makes an unhealthy diet, which turned into blumia in 2 years. Now, she is still trying to be healthy as she used to be.

This created ideal women are only 5% of the whole women, but on TV, the percentage of those women are about 100%, which makes the other women think like they are the only one who is not "perfect". Of course this being perfect is also an issue, which is determined by the tv. For example about 40 years ago, the film stars were all a bit overweight and all women were trying to be like them. But now, we see that especially in advertisements that woman are unhappy when they are fat and do not enjoy life, but as they lose weight, they have fun again and be happy. Especially in the advertisements of diet products, we see that the key of happiness is being beautiful.

10. Practice Presentation

Last, week we did our practice presentations, which was my 2. experience. Comparing to the one I did in high school, the audience was looking more interested, which had a motivating effect on me. Their taking notes made me feel like I was an important person and strengthened my self-confidence. :)

When we took the feedback, I agreed all the "negative facts" except the one about the font and color of the texts in the slideshow. I had really worked hard in adapting the text's colour with the dominant colour of the images. :)

What I did not like about myself was being too nervous. I forgot half of the things I had to say and had diffuculties in making correct sentences, although I did not have any in writing the same ones.

If I were the one to grade, my mark would be 65/100.

9. An Online Tragedy

Voyeurism is one of the methods of attracking attention, even if it has horrible results, and sometimes we can describe that kind of voyeurism as a serious psychological illness, like a 19-year-old boy from Florida has. The mentioned boy keeps on saying she will commit suicide but noone thinks he is serious till that day. First he writes a suicide note and then he commits suicide while 1500 people's online watching.

According to the article I read about this case, the ceo of the mentioned website, Michael Seibel tells that they have absolute rules about these kinds of cases and they have removed the video immediately, but here comes to mind if it is possible any of the charged people like an admin not to realize such a big occasion happenning, or could not they prevent him to do it online on their website after his suicide note?

8. Tv: The Plug-In Drug

Last week, we made a presentation about Marie Winn's article, Tv: The Plug-In Drug. I had to tell about her ideas, which I mostly disagreed.

I think, her description of the factors which harmed the American family structure was really sexist. She says that "working moms" are one of these factors. Why are "working dads" out of subject? Is the woman more responsible on the child, or is the man more talented in making money?

Another thing is about the "horrible" results of having a television at home. It is obviously true that the family members do not interact as much as the old days without tv, but sometimes it can be fun to watch something with your family, or just watching a movie together.

Her point of view is very strict and this attitude of her makes her tv scandal more ironic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotto)