Advertising

I think in Killing Us Softly the speaker makes a lot of good points about advertising.  Advertising has a dramatic effect on how people view themselves and their bodies.  It especially affects younger girls who at this age see a girl in an advertisement and think that is the way she has to look.  All the advertisements with the tiny models can have a negative effect on young girls and women's self-esteem.  Women cannot feel good about themselves when they are constantly being compared to women in advertisements.  Women are always striving for a body that is many times unachievable or unrealistic for them.  Women are doing this because of what they are constantly seeing on a daily basis and that is advertisements with models who are extremely skinny with large breast.  Only a select few people can achieve the body of the women in advertisements.  The ad below is just one example of how they use a women's body to try to sell a product.  In this ad they are trying to sell a type of body wash and use a very skinny model with larger breast to try to do this because they know it will attract people to their product.

Impatient America

Today in America everyone is so impatient and doesn't want to wait for anything.  I believe people in America are overweight because no one wants to wait and are so impatient.  Because everyone is always so busy and its always go go go, its easy for people to just stop quickly somewhere like McDonald's to grab something to eat.  So many people like to go through drive thru's because its convenient and they don't have to take anymore time out of their day to cook a healthy meal.  I'm not really sure on this problem can be fixed, besides people have to learn how to manage their time and make time for things that matter more.  Also people in America must learn to be patient and stop trying to fit so many things in one day.

Popular music...Women & Sexiness

Todays popular music is all about misogyny, matrtialism, and murder. In most hip-hop music it refers to women as being bitches and disrespects women.  In music videos the women are always extremly skinny and beautiful.  You never see bigger or not so good looking women in a music video.  Younger girls may look at these videos and think this is the only way to look and try to look like the women on the videos.  I believe music videos is one of the sources that make younger girls feel so inscure about there bodies and go to dramatic lengths to be more like the women they see in videos.  Also the way women are refered to as, like bitches, younger girls may watch this and think that is okay when a man refers to them in that kind of manner.  I believe that popular music can suggest a lot of bad things and people can take them as a good thing and try to work towards what they see and hear in poular music. 

Hip-hop vs. Country

Hip-hop and country music are two very different genres.  Over the years the meaning of hip-hops songs has went from positive to negative.  There is a shock value and hip-hop is a lot about insulting other rappers.  Also hip-hop focuses on misogyny, materialism, and murder.  When listing to hip-hop songs its usually very hard to understand some of the lyrics.  Country on the other hand is very easy for regular people to relate to.  Country focuses on the present time and authenticity.  Country music is literally easy to understand and just by listing to it one time a person can know the words and what the song is about. Country is flexible meaning it can change shape and it is also reflexive meaning it comes from the listeners and being original is not prized.  Hip-hop and country music really don't have a lot of similarities but one thing they do have in common is they each tell some kind of story.  I believe they have very few similarities and are two very different genres. 

Culture Media

Popular culture media has become a large part of our lives in today's society.  It has been discussed if popular culture media is making us smarter, stupider, nicer, meaner, healthier, unhealthier, gentler, and more aggressive.  For me its hard to choose just one that I believe is the strongest in modern society as a result of popular culture media, but if I had to choose one I would choose nicer.  Popular culture media helps open a persons horizon by being able to communicate easier with other people.  For example facebook allows people to communicate with many different people by the chat, writing on someones wall, sharing videos, sharing pictures, and many more things.  I believe this helps people stay in touch with family and friends.  Also another big thing that popular culture media makes us nicer is by cell phones.  This is because cell phones allows people to communicate anywhere at anytime with anyone.  I believe these are a few examples of how popular culture media makes us nicer. 

Pornography in American society

Over the years pronography is not as fround upon as it was in past years.  The porn has taken a hit in the last couple of years though because of the internet.  Costumers are no longer going out and buying videos because they can go on the internet and get everything they want for free and without anyone knowing what they are doing.  I dont believe anyone really benefits from pornography besides the people getting paid for it.  In a way it harms society because it can get in the hands of children and which should not be watching something like that. 

Beauty

There were a lot of good arguments made in our reading.  Our popular culture focuses way to much on appearance and beauty.  Its unhealthy how much our popular culture focuses on beauty.  When competing for a job against someone who has the same  credentials, the more beautiful person will most likely get the job, because of how much our society focuses on beauty.  Our popular culture only focuses on one type of beauty and this type of beauty is usually unattainable to the average person.