Miss America:More Than a Beauty Queen?-Shindle

While I was looking for pictures of beauty queens on Google, the only pictures I found were with beauty queens in nice clothes with make-up on. This is the exact stereotype that most people give for beauty queens: they are just beautiful women dressed up nicely. Everyone forgets that they are not just trying to win to be known as beautiful women, they also are trying to win a scholarship and to be looked up to as a good role model or leader in a community. They have also been known to donate money and speak at schools and in communities about some of the issues the world faces these days like AIDS/HIV or different cancers. As Kate Shindle says "The contestants who go to Atlantic City each year are intelligent, capable women who have something to say." (616) This quote is very important and although all the media and news reporters show is the beauty and maybe the talent in the show, we never see the interviews the contestants go through to get on to the show where they talk about their personal political views and platform issues.
Kate Shindle personally said "I helped raise an estimated $20 million to $30 million for HIV/AIDS organizations worldwide." (614) Kate proves to the world that beauty queens do think about others and don't just focus on their beauty or how good they look in a bathing suit. This whole article reminds me of the movie called Miss Congeniality because an undercover cop (Sandra Bullock) goes into the pageant thinking she is going to go through hell being with the stereotype she gives the contestants in the pageant. She gets to know the girls, and she comes to find them to be some of the most intelligent and goal striving women she has ever met. That just comes to prove that stereotypes should never stop you from meeting people, because you may come to find they are the most wonderful people you will ever meet.

One Nation, Slightly Divisible-Brooks

David Brooks explained the differences between people of Red America, who are like country folk, and people of Blue America, who are like the city people. "People in Blue America, which is my part of America, tend to live around big cities on the coasts. People in Red America tend to live on farms or in small towns or small cities far away from the coasts."(582) Most people have stereotypes of both types of people which saddens me because our world is based so much on how people look and not on the actual person. "many of them are racist and homophobic, and when you see them at highway rest stops, they're often really fat and their clothes are too tight."(583) This stereotype is terrible and people look at this and do not give one person they think is like this a chance to prove them wrong. Although yes I have stereotyped in the past and I'm not saying it makes you a bad person, all I want to say is people must give people a chance and not just judge them on the way they look. I give people a chance to prove me right and wrong and that is the difference between me and those who discriminatory and do not get to know people before they shut them out. "Some of the biggest differences between Red and Blue America show up on statistical tables. Ethnic diversity is one." (585) This was very interesting to me but I could see why this is because Red America tends to be small towns and not much of a spouse to choose from and in Blues America you have many different people with different races and ethnicity's to choose from. Yes we are different, but we are still people of the same homeland. "In the days immediately following September 11 the evidence seemed clear that despite our differences, we are still a united people. American flags flew everywhere..." (587) In reading this, I realized that just to unite people from different places in the same country, a disaster has to happen and that is a little sad. This article reminded me of the other article we read called "A Cafeteria Nation" where the world is like a cafeteria in high school and everyone has their own cliques. Another big reason many are divided is because there are haves and have-nots that both may discriminate against the other. This is the main reason there is such division in this country and I think if this was not true, our world would be a better place. "In Red America the self is small." "In Blue America the self is more commonly large." These two statements sum up why they are so different and I completely agree in most cases. We are all American citizens, which we all have in common, and thats why we are and should always be a united nation.

The Way We Wish We Were-Coontz

Throughout Stephanie Coontz's whole article, she brings up some very good points that make you step back and look at the traditional family in a different light. The traditional families that the students in her class thought up were exactly the family I would have thought up, but in my eyes this is very unlikely and I do not think the perfect traditional family was ever alive and going strong their whole lives. Also the whole women are stay at home moms who devote their time to the housework and children is a very hard thing to do these days now that things have become more expensive and jobs harder to find. There is technology now to help the mother with the housework and cooking now that she is working in more cases. "Within the home, prior to the diffusion of household technology at the end of the century, house cleaning and food preparation remained mammoth tasks."(679) Many say that industrialization was one reason the traditional family is hard to come by these days. "Contrary to the popular myth that industrialization destroyed "traditonal" extended families, this high point occurred between 1850 and 1855, during the most intensive period of early industrialization."(680) One thing that I personally do not believe just because the traditional family is non-existent anymore is that families are not as close. "A related myth is that modern Americans have lost touch with extended-kinship networks or have let parent-child bonds lapse."(683) Yes both parents work now and yes families do not spend as much time as a so called "traditional" family would, but that does not mean that the bonds between family members do not exist and they are just their to support eachother if needed. I am close with all of my close family members and although we do not eat at the dinner table every night like we used to and do not talk about our days, does not mean the bond isn't there between me and my family members. I know that my parents do not have the chance to spend as much time with us as they would like but our relationships are still the same. "The percentage of women who say they would prefer to stay home with their children if they could afford to do so rose from 33 percent in 1986 to 56 percent in 1990." This shows that for most it is not the parents fault that their children do not get their full attention all day, they are out there raising the money they need to survive and that is just they way it is. "parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than did parents in 1965." I believe that the perfect traditoinal family would not function right in this day and age and I personally would not want to be part of a traditional family because to me they seem boring.

Crimes against Humanity-Churchill

Throughout this whole article, I was very ashamed and angry that people don't think certain things can be very degrading and are oblivious as to how it makes others feel. "Churchill's essay is a hard one for me to read percisely because it makes these stereotypes visible to me in unusual and decidedly in-your-face ways." (537) I personally do not think I have ever thought of team names as stereotyping or degrading until I read this essay. This essay truly opened my eyes on how stereotypical our world is and how we can be so ignorant. Professional sports teams have names like the Atlanta Braves or the Cleveland Indians and they also have mascots and gestures that show the stereotypical indian to be. This to me is wrong and when Churchill said the American Indian Movement leader Russell Means compared the practice to contemporary Germans naming their soccer teams the "Jews," "Hebrews," and "Yids" it opened my eyes to how hurtful it can be to Indians. (537) When Churchill reported that the major newspapers and television networks stated this as "no big deal" I thought of them as heartless and racist. The essay became a little sarcastic to prove his point when Churchill said all the demeaning and hurtful names to call different races as professional sports teams and then said "Now, don't go getting 'overly sensitive' out there. None of this is demeaning or insulting, at least not when it's being done to Indians." (538) I thought he proved his point right in this part of the essay and I think he would have won his argument right here. He said all the hurtful names of every race for every professional team and I don't think that anyone could counter this. In the Nuremberg Precedents, I think Julius Streicher got what he deserved because he instigated the genocide of the Jews. He dehumanized Jews by depicting them in a extraordinary derogatory fashion in cartoons and other images which helped in the German public to hate them. "Understand that the treatment of Indians in American popular culture is not 'cute' or 'amusing' or just 'good clean fun." I believe him after reading this essay and I will try not to depict Indians as savage or inhuman in anyway.

A Letter to America - Atwood

Margaret Atwood discusses the negatives America has brought onto itself. "She is no longer sure what America stands for."(5) She writes "America" a letter about her concerns on the problems and trust she has in America. First she explains the different positives about America like the story of the "city upon a hill" or the different ways America was portrayed in movies as standing for freedom, honesty, and justice. Near the end of the letter she explains her disappointment on how America is gutting the constitution by allowing anyone in. Also America allows for mail, some of our most personal things, to be spied on. (5) She asks America "When did you get so scared? You didn't used to be easily frightened" (5) This whole letter by Atwood proves to me that America is not what it used to be or seemed to be and I completely agree. I do not think we have total freedom like we are supposed to have. I mean I know we can't have a good running government and society without rules and regulations, but sometimes I think the government takes a little too much freedom from us. This letter to America tells what most think of America now and how it is not what it seems to be to most people around the world.

Arranging a Marriage in India-Nanda

Nanda throughout this article is having a hard time helping her Indian friend's son a wife. At first she thought that arranging marriages for your children was wrong because they wouldn't know their spouse's on a personal level. But once she heard her friends reasons for choosing for her son, she kind of understood and wanted to help. Throughout helping, she found that it was not as easy being matchmaker for someone in India as it was in America. You had many things to look at like class, the familie's background, how well educated, and many more things. Nanda found someone that she thought would be good but the mother of the son said they had way too many siblings and they wouldn't be able to afford a glorious wedding and a big wedding gift. To me this was ridiculous and I thought to myself, using my own opinions and beliefs, that a marriage should not be about a families financial standing or how well the wedding can be put on, it should be about the love between the two people. In India Love is the product of marriage and in America Marriage is the product of love. This quote was said in class today and I totally agreed that this article proves that is the way the Indians think. The children of the family can focus more on their lives and living them than on marriage because they have arranged marriages by their parents. Overall I thought the article was good and I can now see why some cultures have arranged marriages. Ethnocentrism is the perfect word to describe this article because Nanda went into this situation with her own values and opinions and judged their culture based on them. But she soon realized, as did I reading this article, that they do not arrange them just to be mean or cruel, they do it so they can insure their children the best lives with the best spouse and family.

Shakespeare in the Bush-Bohannan

First of all, Bohannan went to West Africa because she was an anthropologist. She lived with an African tribe and was asked to be told the story of Hamlet. While telling the story, she was stopped constantly because the tribesmen did not understand certain things. They did not believe in ghosts and said it must have been an omen or zombie. Another thing they didn't understand was why the mother of Hamlet took two years to remarry. In their culture you had to have a husband to hoe the farms. "Two years is too long," "Who will hoe your farms for you while you have no husband?" If you were chief, or the head of everything, in the African tribe's culture, the chief had more than one wife, so they did not understand why Hamlet nor his brother had more than one wife. At the end of the article, the old man of the tribe told her that she had told the end of Hamlet wrong which was very funny to me since they did not know the story and weren't the one's telling it. He told her how the end of the story went and put his own beliefs and values behind it. All these misunderstandings to me is because we all use our own opinions and beliefs to understand things. Bohannan did get a little upset and annoyed that she was being interrupted, but she did understand that where they came from, things were done and looked upon differently than in America. There are universal truths, but many are not exactly the same. One universal truth is respecting your elders. Although in some cultures it is more valued and respected than in other cultures, I think all cultures have some sort of this. In America, respecting our elders is told by many, but we do not respect them as much as other cultures like India's or African's do.