Alexandra singer's Blog

Final Cyberbody

alexandrasinger — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:10:33 +0000

I choose to do my paper on the dualism of pro-life vs. pro-choice. Every woman knows that there are two sides to this argument and many know the basics of both arguments and decide to base their standpoint off these basic facts. I wanted to look deeper into each side of this argument and try to find a way to eliminate this dualism to liberate this divide between women who are at either extreme of this argument. Throughout the paper I explained many different reasons that women have for having an abortion. The two main reasons are therapeutic or elective. Therapeutic is when it is dangerous for the mother to have the baby so the doctors have to terminate the pregnancy to keep the mother alive, physically, or mentally healthy. This reason for abortion is very hard to argue against because it is very dangerous for the mother if the baby is born. The other reason which is much more controversial is elective which is when the mother sides to end the pregnancy because she does not feel she is ready to have a child for one reason or another. This reason is what many people think of when they think of this binary and why many people feel they are on the pro-life side.

When looking for personal stories about abortion, many stories are from women who have had abortions earlier in their lives and now that they are older, regret their decisions to have abortions. One personal story I know is that a family friend had two abortions when she was a teenager because she did not feel that she was ready to have children. Then many years later, she got married and had 3 children. After having a family and being stable in her personal life, she realizes that she now regrets having those abortions earlier in life. She is now a big supporter of pro-life standpoint. Also, everyone knows that in the roe v. wade Supreme Court case, Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) won the right to make abortion legal in the United States. Just recently she has announced that she has completely changed her mind and feels that she is responsible “for all the children murdered” since her Supreme Court times. This is a major change in American history because a women who is the poster child for pro-choice publicly says that she regrets her decisions and wishes she would have never choose to go to the Supreme Court to make abortion legal.

When deciding which side of this dualism you believe you are on, you need to think about all the different reasons. Although I understand that many believe it is wrong to kill a child before they even have a fighting chance, it also is not fair to eliminate abortion. If the dualism was to end, and the pro-life side won, it would be illegal for women to get an abortion under any circumstances. However every situation is different and has different reasons for their actions. This dualism should be eliminated because people who are in favor of pro-life have the right to make decisions based on their own beliefs but when a women is put in the situation of deciding weather or not have an abortion, they should be able to take their own personal situations and beliefs and make a decision from that.

week 15

alexandrasinger — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:06:39 +0000

Before reading this weeks lecture I believed that the term erotic simply referred to sex related topics. I was completely unaware that this had to do with anything that is forbidden or new. Lorde explains that erotic means satisfying oneself or anything or being passionate about something you believe in. In our society people think of the word erotic as something to be embarrassed about or hide their eroticism but actually in this weeks readings, the author explains that as women we should embrace our inner eroticism. No one should feel embarrassed or hide from their eroticism because although over time it has come to mean something sexual, it is actually empowering to women.

After realizing the true meaning of eroticism, I decided to ask my roommates what they thought erotic was and the only response i got was awkward stares. This is probably because this topic in our culture is taboo and not talked about openly. After explaining my reasoning for asking, they explained that they have always thought of this as sexual and that erotic sex is for crazy sex-addicted people who like to experiment. After explaining what these articles define erotic as, we talked for a while as to how this definition has turned into todays current beliefs. Although we dont know for sure, we came to the conclusion that in the older days, for women, sex was forbidden and taboo to talk about, so over time this became the known definition of this word.

week 14

alexandrasinger — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:47:10 +0000

i emailed this weeks post to you! )

Week 12

alexandrasinger — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:47:52 +0000

There were two major things I found surprising from this weeks readings that I did not know before. The first is that feminist believe that birth control is a form of oppression. I had never really thought about this before this weeks readings. Previously I had only thought that birth control was a convient way for couples who were not ready to have a family yet, achieve that goal. I was unaware that this could be considered oppression by keeping the women unable to have children until the man is ready. The other thing from this weeks readings that really opened my eye to something new is thinking of disabled people as a minority. In the article, Stolen Bodies Reclaimed Bodies, the author points out that similarly to gay, african american, or any other minority, handicap people are looked down upon. Just because they are unable to walk up some stairs does not make them different from any other person. The section in this article that talked about the hate crimes really shocked me. Priviously I had heard about hate crimes against other minorities but I had not heard about these crimes done to disabled people. The most shocking story to me was about the father who murdered his daughter who had cerebella palsy because he believed he was helping her put her out of her misery. This is unbelievably horrible . People need to be more considerate and less judging. Just because someone does not think the same, look the same, or have the same sexual desires as you, does not make them any less of a person.

Something that is going on in my life this week that relates to this weeks readings is the fact that one of my family’s friends is pregnant and is due this week. Typically the only “normal” way I thought of for her to have this baby is that once she felt her contractions, she would go to the hospital and a doctor would deliver the baby. I was completely shocked to know that having a midwife was, most of the time, just as safe as having the baby in the hospital itself. During discussion during class someone brought up the fact that sometimes doctors feel the need to schedule a se-section and convince the scared, young women that this is the best safest way to have this baby. Unfortunately the women trust the doctor and schedule these very expensive, unnecessary surgeries because they do not know any better. Although sometimes the doctor is right to have this surgery to get the baby out safely, a lot of the time their intentions are not so noble. By scheduling this appointment the doctor knows that it fits into his schedule and the baby has to be born on the doctors schedule not as naturally. Also, these surgeries are much more expensive and the mothers insurance will pay the doctor and the hospital much more money to have a se-section rather than a natural birth. This is very shocking to me because I know that I would trust my doctor and if he said it was in the best interest of my baby, I would probably do it without asking any questions and this scares me.

Week 8

alexandrasinger — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:26:07 +0000

Week 8 readings were about advertising and how the media has objectified women’s bodies. In the movie we watched during class, we saw how advertisers takes the image of women’s bodies and transform it to sell almost anything, from perfume, to beer, to skateboards. By doing this they are turning women’s bodies into commodities. Commodity are objects that can be bought or sold. It is completely demeaning to women to take their bodies and transform them into something that you can buy or sell. Before reading this weeks articles I had no idea how much advertising influenced our lives. I knew that I saw ads on tv and in magazines but I never realized that I was seeing advertising on average 3,000 ads per day. Weather I am aware of these ads or not they are influencing my life dramatically. Kilbourne states that “advertising is one of the main things that influences our values, beliefs, and behaviors” (67). Now that I think about it, advertising does influence my daily decisions wheather I notice it or not. A good advertiser, advertises not only the product itself but the style of life that comes with buying this product and how much happier the consumer will be if they buy this product. If you are watching a tv ad with a abnormally skinny women in 7 Jeans, the next time you go to buy jeans you will subconsciously want these 7 jeans because you feel that you will look extra skinny from that advertisement.

Obviously from these reading we know that image-based advertising is all around us everyday, even when we don’t notice them. In my college life I notice it even more. I am a Marketing major and currently enrolled in a marketing class. It is actually quite amusing to me how contradictory this weeks readings are to my marketing class. I understand both sides and actually feel very grateful to see both sides to this issue. In my marketing class we are learning how to market to consumers for the best intrest of our company to make a profit. Many times if the competitor is marketing a product a certain way and making a profit, it is necessary to do the same things to get this product. I understand that it may be degrading to women to have their bodies objectified but from the marketing point-of-view, if that is what it takes to sell a pair of jeans, then that is what the marketing team needs to do. I do not know which side of this issue I agree with mostly. Before this weeks readings I didn’t think very much about how these images objectify women, I just saw how they sold the product. I think there is a thin line between right and wrong. Sometimes these images are necessary to sell a product as long as you don’t push it to far. I guess sometimes it is just hard to see where to draw that line between right and wrong and what is necessary or going overboard.

Fantasies of Femininity

alexandrasinger — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:56:13 +0000

This is the first week of readings that I really agreed with the writer about the harms an influence fashion has on everyone. Although I had never thought about how when a fashion magazine advises girls to focus on their good features and ignore their bad, they are really doing just as much harm as before. By telling young girls this, although they might be trying to help, they are actually reminding these readers that they do have bad features. Although “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” society puts an intense amount of pressure on everyone to look, dress, and even act a certain way. When people try to “rebel” from this image, they are looked at as different and weird. This desire to look “perfect” can be scary and dangerous. Some girls go to immense lengths to look like the women on television and in magazines and end up physically and mentally hurting themselves because of it.

I think that this weeks readings are involved drastically in everyone’s life all the time. One of my roommates recently showed me a video on youtube.com where there is a very “average” looking woman who sits down in front of a screen and when the movie begins you see a fast-forward version of this women get completely made up by hair, makeup, ect. Then as the movie continues you see how this picture is then taken and edited by photo-shop to the point where they change her actual features, from the length of her neck to how wide her eyes are opened. By the end of all of this, the women on the screen looks like a completely different person all together, and the movie is ended by them showing you the “new women” on a billboard add. This just proves Ussher’s point about young girls striving to look like certain models, when the majority of the time that is not even how the model really looks in real life.

Here is the link to the movie I was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r31cXWt_ndA

Week 6 readings

alexandrasinger — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:38:45 +0000

In this weeks readings I was very surprised to learn that the majority of the lesbian community does not accept the bisexual community. In the readings it mentioned that (although not speaking for the entire lesbian community) that most lesbians think that bisexuals are just in a transitional phase and can not decide whether they are straight or gay. Since I had never been previously informed on this topic, I assumed that the whole LGBT community was accepting of one another since the majority of them had gone through similar obstacles in their lives. Whether these hurdles be coming out to their friends or dealing with others in their social life. Also the fact that the gay community believes that bisexualism is just a cop out to admitting that they either are gay or straight, but many bisexuals believe they just love who they love no matter if they are man or women. “I do not exclude who I choose to love, emotionally and/or sexually, by virtue of the person’s sex” (209).

This week I spoke to my aunt on the phone who lives in Philadelphia. She was married to her husband for over 10 years and had two children with him when she fell in love with this women she worked with. Her and her husband got divorced and she began dating her new girlfriend. When I was talking to her she mentioned to me that although at this point in her life she loves her girlfriend, she still admits that she was in love with her husband for those 10 years and has no regrets for being in a heterosexual relationship. She tells me that although she is in a homosexual relationship now, she could see herself loving a man again if the right man comes along. I really admire this honesty because although she considers herself a lesbian right now, she does not want to put a label on it and admits that she is bisexual and has no control over who she loves whether it be man or women.