Reflection on media

If I am being completely honest I am still on social media way too much. Because of my excessive use of social media, this has lead me to become a procrastinator. I do not want to be a procrastinator. I hate the stress hmaging on my back constantly. So after watching and consuming the idea of social media made me decide to confront myself with the idea of getting off of social media. Of coarse I am not talking about become cold turkey with it yet it had made me actually do something about it. I took off all the notifications on all my social media so I will not be tempted. I can say that this has worked very much. Also I don’t watch television anymore, not because of this class, but because television just doesn’t amuse me anymore, it’s a bore. So when I do see commercials it is when I watch movies. When I see the commercial I just want to unpack it by using my critical thinking skills. I would like to say that I am more aware of the techniques the advertisers se to attract more customers, especially car companies. They use the appeals very much to get their point across.
    Now I am trying to balance my school work and the media, so far it has been beneficial towards my grades and my procrastination. Yet it isn’t that I want to be completely finished with social media after I’ve been explosed to everything. It’s is just that I don’t have the attention to give it. Although I will keep up on my media literacy because at my age o need to be able to use social media responsibly and to my advantage. Or else they will destroy me. Well not that dramatic, but they will abuse the fact that don’t understand it. Just how they do to old people. Begging an educated consumer helps me saves money and time. So I don’t fall into advertiser’s traps. Also with the Video about girls and how they are seen as sex symbols, and that I should never consider myself imperfect and lesser because of the color of my skin and gender and the shape of my body. I should be judged for my personality not my image. Especially when doing one of my recent media blog about women role models in the early 2000‘s, how that doesn’t mean I don’t have any now, but nevertheless, I should be my own role model and girls should do the same. The blogs have gotten closer with the realization and truths about the media. So just media in general is the same, they use the same techniques and same celebrity endorsements. So if after gaining all of this knowledge about the media and I still get tricked, this is all on me. However I highly doubt that would happen to me.

How woman are degraded

As I said in my last blog, women are used as sex symbols in the media, and when we are talking about the media that includes all platforms ranging from ads to Instagram to music videos to commercials and videos. And women are being degraded on each play form, you see a girl  practically naked on Instagram with men who are well over the ages for 40 liking and commenting sexual things. When I’m watching a music video, all of the girls are wearing bathing suits and are dancing around the singer to promote his video, and guarantee likes and views. This light porn is used everywhere, I wish I could say that it is just that one music video (LINK#1), yet it is used in movies and commercials too. When advertising, let’s say a burger, there this a women eating said burger yet she looks naked, and ordinary objects like fruit are used to cover her boobs and butt,  so it seems like she is walking naked in a farmers market, I know right disgusting. I wish I would be making that commercial up yet I am not, look at LINK#2 and it is a Carl’s Jr.’s burger, where the burger doesn’t even get introduced until the last couple of seconds. Their marketing technique is so unoriginal. This technique has been used hundreds of times with hundreds of the same girl look alike. They all fit the  description of blonde, blue eyes, really big boobs, a slim, skinny waist and a big butt. Not everyone can look like that.
So because of videos such as Carl’s Jr. are setting the standards for girls and their body. I understand that this isn’t as bad as a problem as in the early 2000s where girls were only things with a pretty face. So when men and boys see women being treated like this sex symbol, it makes them think that it is ok for them to do the same. Let me tell you right now that IT ISNT OKAY! Women need to be respected, it so disgusting that 1 in 4 women are in a abusive relationship. This is because the media shows women as objects and it’s okay to use them for your own reasons. ALSO NOT OKAY!
This nation full of teenagers, is degrading women and killing their confidence. Now there are so many self-conscious people in the media just going by in life by posting nude (well practically, come on) pictures on their Instagram with a sexual caption, this is porn, if it’s not I don’t know what is. I am not trying to say that it isn’t their right to post pictures like that, I am trying to say that it’s hard to do that when there are men and boys out there who comment nasty and disgusting things. The degradation of women is more instense now that we have Instagram and Snapchat and so many social platforms, it makes it hard to live a private life. Before it was just in magazines, now it is EVERYWHERE. I can’t scroll on celebrities feed without seeing nude pictures with degrading comments down below. I wonder how they feel as people being brought down. I wonder if they have self esteem issues and they are suffering like the rest of us.

LINK #1

LINK #2

Missrepresentation

The lack of women “role models” in the early 2000s brings me to wonder how did so many women who went through that time survived from the Media and became so empowering today. Girls were brought up to think that you need to have a waist of 25” and a size D for boobs. So when they realized ( realized meaning that they were told ) that they didn’t have a skiing waist, they immediately thought that they aren’t enough and they have to do something about it. It isn’t their fault that society taught them through the media that you must have the ideal body, but with no brains  because don’t be a smartass. Women in this time had no role models growing up, so they looked to the media to see what they should look up to. And what they didn’t see is independent, successful women. They saw girls and women being used as sex symbols in movies, commercials, and television. This lead to women being self-conscious about their body. According to the “Miss representation”, “78% of women by 17 are unhappy with their body”. How are so many people unhappy with their body? Well the media had told them that their body should look like Britney Spears. When in reality only Spears can look like Britney Spears. So when girls try to look like the Midrift of their time they pack on a pound of makeup on their faces and wear clothes that reveal way too much for their age.  They do this because they were brought up to be sex symbols. When women are in movies and commercials they are portrayed as these sex symbols, not a women. Their sole purpose is for the men’s body, and they exploit so many people that audition just so they can be “famous”.
To me all of this infuriates me and makes me disgusted. It also makes me sad, to think of so many girls that struggle with eating disorders and health issues just because they want to look the complete opposite of who they really are. Most get plastic surgery or Botox to look the way they want. This makes girls think that it is ok to alter your body for a man’s desire. Because they were taught that the only want to make it big isn’t by going to college and becoming a congresswoman, it is by becoming thinner to be recognized and getting double D’s. Yet not have too much sex and date too many guys! Oh no, that means she’s a slut!!!... no that’s not what that’s FREAKIN MEANS! That means she is confident with her body, HER BODY, not someone else’s body. It’s because she owns herself, just like the other Million women out there.
Without these role models like I have today, girls struggled to become successful. This is why only “17% of the Congress is Women” only...seventeen...percent. >:(. So that means the other 83% is male. The United States is so far from other countries who have had a women for president.
I wish I could say that women back women up, yet the media turned some women on each other and uses “catfight” as a headline. Women degrade one another, and it is so much harder coming from a women that you are fat.
Now it is 2019 and we are so far from the 2000s yet we aren’t barely scratching the surface to put an end to women being sex symbols. Women are coming out as being raped in the 90s in 2018. These huge rallies for women are becoming more likely to overcome their problems then they were in 2005. 2019 is a whole other chapter of a book written by women this time.

Can you Identify the techniques your favorite brands are using?

All brands have different techniques that they use in order to get their consumers to buy their goods. Some brands will for instance do need to nurture as a way to get you to buy their stuff. Some of the  brands that I like definitely use the circular reasoning technique. However a lot more of the brands that I like use autonomy. I know that a lot of the brands that I like are also liked by a lot of other teens around my age. Because teens are always finding ways to try and stand out using this technique would be the best idea. I for sure always want to stand out or have something bring on that catches everyones eye. Also I know that brands are able to make a lot more money with this technique because there are always gonna be teens, especially teens that want to stand out.
For these reasons if I were to ever create a product I would try to sell it to kids using this technique

Frontline Making cents out of teens:Merchants of cool

In the class video we watched earlier this week they showed teens who were being marketed to through aspects I had not yet know about before.  However there was one thing that especially caught my eye and made me more intrigued in the video. In the video there was discussion about
"feedback loop". This is when companies or brands change to the way they see people dressing or acting and will try and have the same aspects as those people. After watching the video aspect I was really able to notice  some of the brands that I like using the same kind of technique to try and get me to buy their stuff. When brands do this they are able to insure that people will buy their stuff because they are producing the stuff that is in or popular at the time. This technique is very smart but does not last long because once consumers know that companies have caught on they stop liking it.

Sicko Mode

Travis Scott is the 27 year old rapper from Houston, Texas that is soon to have 6 of his own Nike pairs of shoes. The first pair released back in 2017. Since then he has re-released the Air Force 1s that he has and made 4 other pairs of shoes.  One of those pairs was released in 2018. Another one released on May 11, 2019 with two pairs still not yet released but set to release later this year. I was unfortunate to not be able to get a pair of the retro Jordan 1s which retailed for $175.  If I were able to get a pair of these shoes, then I would have been very happy with myself and would definitely have resold them. I would have sold them because On Stockx these shoes are going for more than $1000 and I would have been able to make more than $800 off of just one pair. These shoes even sold for $3000 back in March when there were less of these shoes available. What made it so hard to get a pair of these shoes was the fact that they only made 20,000 of them and many other people like myself wanted these shoes like I did. But now I plan on trying to cop the next pair of Travis Scott shoes that are set to release later this month.

Class video

In class on Friday we watched a video about how certain brands are able to keep up to date and even set trends. One way that they did this was by creating focus groups with "popular" people and asked them a whole bunch of questions about what was popular and what things are cool and what aren't. I thought that this want that effective of a method because this isn't always true and it is hard to get the true opinion of everyone. Another way that these brands were finding out what was in was by paying a $10,000 monthly membership to a website that claims to have the common trends before the people even realize it. What the website did was show pictures of random people with a common sense of style and put those photos on their website for the brands to see. I think that this is crazy for these brands to pay so much money, but yet again when these brands create a product based off this they make a lot of money