Prompt #2 Jackson Hart

There are many things that I grew up watching, playing with, and doing that have helped to shape the idea I have about gender and sexuality. One toy that I can clearly remember spending loads of time with is Hot Wheels. Particularly the track called “Criss, Cross, Crash”. It was all about cool, fast cars going around the track eventually crashing into each other. The crashing, obviously, was the coolest part of the track because what young boy doesn’t love seeing destruction? The commercial advertisement for this track also shows a group of boys playing with the toy and getting excited when the crash happens, which in turn showed me what boys are “supposed to enjoy”.

Another thing that helped to shape my views on gender was playing with little army men. I remember my brother and I would set up huge war scenes with the little figures and eventually have a massive battle between the two sides. While there were different types of soldiers to fight with, not one of them was a female. I remember being surprised at some point in middle school when I found out that I had a cousin going to the army who was a woman because I never once thought that women were even allowed to be in the army. So I just would play with these army men and get excited at, once again the destruction, this time in the form of guns and war.

I feel like in general toys are either meant for boys or girls. After getting assigned this blog prompt I went onto Toys R Us’ website and within their shopping catalog there was a choice to either pick toys for boys or girls. Looking at the boy’s section was a bunch of Nerf Guns and video games and cool looking bikes. Meanwhile the girl’s section was filled with pink toys, princesses, Barbies, and Easy Bake Ovens. Just by looking at the catalog it is possible to see what boys are supposed to play with and what girls are supposed to play with.

Prompt #2: Molly Hopkins

It is difficult for me to remember what shows or movies shaped my first ideas about gender and sexuality, but I would have to say that The Little Mermaid was one of the earliest influences on my ideas of gender and sexuality. Ariel was a very independent young girl who had dreams of her own. She wanted nothing more than to leave where she was and achieve these dreams that everyone around her told her were impossible. Ariel was determined and confident and I think that she is the earliest influence on my idea of gender and sexuality.

In about 7^th grade I began watching Sex and the City. This show is another thing I can remember becoming and influence on my ideas of gender and sexuality. There is a character on this show that I believe every woman can identify with. The four women in this show, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte, are incredibly independent women. Not only did these characters encourage me to be independent, but also their relationship really influenced how I view friendships among women. Their strong bond showed me that my relationship with my friends is extremely valuable and that not all women are emotional and caddy.

How I Met Your Mother is another show that still continues to influence my views of gender and sexuality. The five main characters on this show are all extremely different, but each say something really profound about the gender stereotypes. First there is Marshall, he is a tall and somewhat brawny man, but at the same time he is very emotional and caring. Then there is Ted who is a firm believer in true love and destiny. Barney is a complete player and womanizer. Robin is a very pretty woman, however she is also a very strong, independent, and rough. And the final character is Lily. Lily is a very nurturing and caring woman who seems to hold the group together. This show has characters that both mold and challenge the typical gender stereotypes. How I Met Your Mother has influenced my views of gender and sexuality by confirming and showing me that these stereotypes are not always accurate of both men and women and that I should never feel like I need to conform to them.

Prompt #2 Cameron Dahlin

There aren’t many institutions or media objects that I can think of to define gender and sexuality for myself. The first example I could think of might be the show Everybody Loves Raymond. This was the most popular show I watched growing up. From this show I gained an understanding of what an ideal family and marriage was like. It combined humor with drama while creating a stereotypical family that was always caught up with extended family. The characters in this show embody a lot of different characteristics which I find interesting. Frank (Raymond’s father), embodies a cranky authoritative husband who demands that his wife grants his every wish. This ranges from to stop distracting him from watching TV or to make him a sandwich. Another interesting character would be Robert. Robert is show as a big, burly, tough man who's also a police officer. In reality, Robert is by far the most emotional character in the show.

Another show that really defines gender and sexuality for me would be Modern Family. This show takes 3 very different relationships and intertwines them into one big show. It embraces the ideal husband and wife but also the idea of a gay couple and what appears to be a "gold digger". I really like this show because it opens up for people to see all types of relationships working together as one big family, as well as tackling controversial issues.

Another thing that defined gender and sexuality for me would be 80's pop music. I grew up listening to a lot of this type of music since my mom is from England. These bands included Morrissey, The Cure, Duran Duran, David Bowie, and many other artists. These songs to me are very powerful and emotional love songs and really portray gender and sexuality through their lyrics. These artists are very mysterious about their personalities and love life, which is really intriguing to me.

Blog Post #2 : Casey Reinard

A media object that I feel defines gender and sexuality is the concept of musicals, talking about both the people who watch them and the definitions of gender and sexuality that these musicals portray. For the purpose of this blog, I'll talk about the musical, High School Musical.

Analyzing the people who watch or participate in musicals is an interesting experience. Do you remember back in high school, or maybe even late middle school, when High School Musical made its debut? And yes, I'm talking about the movie/musical with Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens. I remember completely refusing to watch it because personally I saw musicals, even in the form of a movie, as something that only girls would watch, or something that only girls were supposed to watch. Many guys back then, and even still today, feel like the act of watching or actually enjoying a musical is threatening to their masculinity. This stems from our society's idea as to what being male and female entails - that men should look and act in a certain way, or that women should look or act in a certain way. However, despite these ideas that are constantly crammed into our minds, High School Musical presents a different view, one that I honestly see as a much better representation of what being male or female is all about.

Just as well, musicals often involve large groups of people simultaneously breaking out into song and dance while wearing make-up and occasionally-ridiculous attire. This idea, especially because of the notion of a man having to wear make-up, seems counter-cultural. Personally, I don't see why society is rooted so deeply in convincing men and women that they are supposed to act or look a certain way, and that any other idea of being a man or a woman is simply not acceptable. It seems to me that everyone should be and is allowed to be whoever he or she wants to be without the overarching influence of society.

Prompt #2 Jonathan Vignos

As a little kid, everyone has that one movie that they are constantly watching. The one where they can watch it 24/7 and it never gets old. Mine as a little kid was Disney’s 1997 film Hercules. I watched it every day and was in total love with it. Since I was constantly watching the movie, is gave me my first sense of gender and sexuality.

My favorite character of the movie was Hercules. Hercules started off as an outcast because he didn’t fit in with the other kids. He didn’t feel normal and seemed to always screw up things. The kids didn’t seem to like him and nobody wanted to hang with him. Later on in the movie, Hercules becomes a hero that saves the day and everyone praises him. As you can see Hercules is very masculine and I noticed that as a young kid. He had the huge muscles and could break anything by punching it. He was someone I looked up to and wanted to be just like. The one thing that really stood out, which shaped my ideas about gender and sexuality, was the idea of Hercules falling in love. In the movie, Hercules falls in love with a woman named Meg. As a kid I became confused because how could a man so masculine fall in love with a woman. I clearly didn’t think it was possible to be that manly and actually have feelings. I was very young and at that age girls were still annoying to me. It all just seemed so crazy and ridiculous.

The thing I ended up taking from the movie was that maybe you can be very masculine and actually be somewhat feminine. That the idea of falling in love wasn’t just for women, but it was also for men. I saw it as that if someone that strong and manly can do it then it must be fine. It’s something that started shaping my ideas of gender and sexuality

Blog #2 Matthew York

When I think about gender and sexuality as a whole, one object of media that influenced me greatly was Grand Theft Auto, which was a video game that I played when I was a kid. While several were made and more are being made today, the main plot of the game hasn't changed. The game consisted of you as the main character with the overall goal to become successful and do whatever it takes to be rich and famous. While this may seem harmless, it also meant that to become successful, you have to step on everyone in your way. These games did a terrible job of portraying woman in a positive sense and made no attempt at censorship. Every other cutscene consisted of you throwing or abusing some woman in the game. If you weren't abusing them, you were having sex with them and then later abusing them. The game treated woman like eye candy that had no purpose but to look good. Even the loading screens depicted half naked woman. This led me to believe that women were objects and demanded no respect. While I quickly learned that this wasn't true, when I was

playing the game, I was conditioned to harm and abuse woman like it was commonplace. I looked up the trailer for the new Grand Theft Auto and just as I expected, you still play a womanizer. I was recently playing one of the newer versions of the game and as it loaded in, this picture (left) was the only thing on my screen as I waited to play. That was the first thing I was supposed to remember about this game, which was a little bit upsetting. Games that aim towards defacing woman and stretching the reality of everyday situations are becoming fewer but it only takes one game (or series of games) to affect someone's opinion of gender diversity or other topic. I know growing up, this game could've affected my sense of respect towards woman. While it didn't end up changing my perspective, I only hope that it doesn't affect our nation's youth.

Davis Haug Prompt #2

When looking at media that defines gender or sexuality, one thing that affected me and that I would read when I was a little kid was magazines. Magazines definitely portray women in them dramatically different. Recently, magazines have been a big part of our way to keep us up with what is going on in the media and who are the current and upcoming stars. As well as telling about what is going on in our society, magazines also tend to have many advertisements in them for the viewer to see as they are reading the magazine.

Whenever you see the magazines such as People, Playboy, and The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, the first thing that sticks out is the how the women are portrayed in the magazines. In mostly all of these magazines, the women are wearing basically no clothing, are beautiful, tend to be in a classy place, and are trying to look as sexy as possible. This is how I thought all women were like. These women are shown to us as a symbol of sex rather more than anything else, because of companies wanting to grab the attention of the viewer. The companies with advertisements in the magazines think that they can get more viewers to buy what their advertising if they put in a half naked good-looking lady in them instead of something of a different nature. This portrays women as objects in our society rather than a real whole human being, however it does work, and definitely made me look at the advertisement as a young kid. Sometimes I would go to my mom and ask her if we could buy what the picture was advertising just because it had a beautiful lady in it.

However, I believe that portraying women like this puts a lot of pressure on young women today in our society and makes young men think of women differently. This sends a message to young women telling them what is attractive and what is not attractive. It also puts pressure on them explaining that being sexually attractive and sexually active is profound. If our celebrities who everyone looks up to can act like this, than why shouldn’t young girls be able to act like this. I think that the media can use different images and ideas to sell their advertisements instead of naked women.

Prompt #2 Pei Chien Wu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00V6rN6DTlA&feature=related

When I was younger, I watched several different kinds of Japanese Anime with my brothers. My brothers and I always spent time together at night and waited for dinner to be cooked. Since I have three younger brothers and there was only one television in our house, I had no right to decide what I really wanted to watch (usually movies), and it became a tradition in my family. Therefore, I got used to watch whatever they want, and the first anime popped in my mind was Dragon Ball. it was highly popular in my childhood; all the boys watched it at home and discussed it on the other day with classmate. And the story was actually from a series of Japanese Manga and was about different adventures of the protagonist, Goku experienced throughout his childhood to adulthood. As other animated films or cartoon, there were also several bad guys or monsters that the protagonist and other characters need to beat, however, the main characters (son and grandson and friends of Goku) were actually males. Maybe because of the Asian culture, females in the Dragon Ball were always the ones beloved and protected and waiting males to be back home. I think this is how Dragon Ball influenced me about how I value gender when I was younger that males are supposed to be strong and overcome everything and females are supposed to stay at home taking care of ev

erything.

The other interesting thing was, when I was in the elementary school, I found no difficulties discussing all the plots, figures and different cool styles or pattern of Gong Fu with classmate no matter girls and boys. We all enjoyed the anime a lot. After elementary school, I went to five-year-college directly and since it was a Language College, most of the students are female. There were only eights males students out of 45 in my class. On the first few weeks, students were active in building up relationship with each other and I found myself have difficulty chatting with “girls.” I know it may sounds ridiculous, but since I lived in the dorm when I studied junior high school and had got used to live without television, all the comics, novels, tv shows or cartoons I read and watched were all introduced by my three younger brothers. I even have never had a Barbie before! All I had were cars, robots and Lego. I realized at the age of 15 that there were actually something different about preference between males and females. That was the second time that I learned about gender from Dragon Ball.

Now I’m grown and I clearly know that it is totally okay for a girl to be fond of “boyish cartoons” instead of Sailor Moon (a Japanese cartoon which is also highly popular for girls.) and, I am really appreciate that I know several “boy’s” stuff so that I can also share same topic chatting with my male friends.

Prompt #2: Chanel Lambert

My understanding of sexuality and gender came with maturity that was heavily influenced by my unconventional family dynamic, movies, and magazines. As a child, I did not explicitly give any thought to gender and sexuality. I simply understood that some people were girls and some were boys and as far as sexual identification, I didn’t really categorize who liked who. I was an interesting child. I had two gay uncles and my best friend from preschool, Gina, told me she was a boy the first day I met her. I didn’t really care about these things until I became older and was able to see that maybe the way I raised was not the norm or maybe it was the fact that I had been in a Catholic school since kindergarten. Although I was raised to have an indifferent opinion, most of my thoughts were shaped by what I was reading, watching, and observing around me.
When I think about gender or sexuality the first thing that comes to mind is the TV show, Sex and the City, during the early years around seasons 1 or 2. I started watching the show on the WB after school in the fifth grade. I was addicted to the wayward Carrie Bradshaw and her band of loyal companions. The show, although hilarious and quirky, actually tackles some very big issues like sexuality, femininity, friendships, and relationships. Looking back now, I realize what an impact this show had on my opinions about society and interactions between genders.
I was always envious of the way Carrie seemed to attract the most interesting people; she was so striking and smart that people just flocked to her. Carrie became my idol and her advice was held above all. I adopted her progressive thinking and trendy styles as my own. I assumed to be liked as a female you had to fashionable, smart, and open-minded. Along with Carrie’s fabulousness came her insecurity and doubt. She was very critical of her body image and the way others viewed her. She often relied on her friends’ opinions of her especially Stanford, her stylish gay friend. This created a very odd image to femininity. She also created a very unusual sexual guide. She slept with many people, had harmful relationships, and had difficulty committing.

While I still believe Carrie is fabulous, she skews healthy perceptions of a woman. Maybe she is just an exaggerated figure created to contrast those more conservative females that were hesitant to accept the future in blurred gender lines and sexuality.

prompt #2 Lamaya Davis

The Maury show is one of many shows that define gender and/or sexuality for me. The many episodes on Maury when a young girl have come on there talking about how many times they have had sex a and how many men that she have done it with all for fun is what defines gender and sexuality for me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRdJ49ItMnc&noredirect=1&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D6%26ved%3D0CEMQFjAF%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253DKRdJ49ItMnc%26ei%3D_aAdT4H0J6fhsQK91pzmCw%26usg%3DAFQjCNGogD2mLvXsCo07r8NMa261A06NqA&has_verified=1  This defines it for me because it’s showing that women are seen as a sex objects for men and that it’s ok if men go out and do the same thing without any consequences, dirty looks, or derogative names from society.  This show says that it’s not okay for younger girls to do so but it says nothing about older women who the same thing as said before nor does it say anything about the many men who may do the same thing or the men that has done it with the young girls on the show. It displays to the public and myself that it is accepted for women and men to do these things but only the women are seen in society as “hoes”, “whores”, “easy” and more. Whereas men are seen as “playas”, “studs”, and take pride in how many “notches” under their belt. Other Maury shows show the same thing the only difference is the women are older and pregnant or have kids and don’t know who they “baby daddy” are. This demonstrates that women are still seen as sex objects to men even when it may be a possibility that this woman may be carrying his child. I say women are seen that way because you may have people who come on there testing 10 or so different men. If a person turns out to be the father of the child the case of them taking care of it is 50/50. This is because some men who find out that it is their child step up and become part of the baby’s life but there are also some who just leave the woman to take care of the child herself. That alone shows that men are able to do whatever they want and choose not to take care of the results of their actions whereas women have to take on their part and the males. Child support also illustrates that men can still get away with not taking their part. The Maury show is one of many shows that define gender and/or sexuality for me. The many episodes on Maury when a young girl have come on there talking about how many times they have had sex a and how many men that she have done it with all for fun is what defines gender and sexuality for me. This defines it for me because it’s showing that women are seen as a sex objects for men and that it’s ok if men go out and do the same thing without any consequences, dirty looks, or derogative names from society.  This show says that it’s not okay for younger girls to do so but it says nothing about older women who the same thing as said before nor does it say anything about the many men who may do the same thing or the men that has done it with the young girls on the show. It displays to the public and myself that it is accepted for women and men to do these things but only the women are seen in society as “hoes”, “whores”, “easy” and more. Whereas men are seen as “playas”, “studs”, and take pride in how many “notches” under their belt. Other Maury shows show the same thing the only difference is the women are older and pregnant or have kids and don’t know who they “baby daddy” are. This demonstrates that women are still seen as sex objects to men even when it may be a possibility that this woman may be carrying his child. I say women are seen that way because you may have people who come on there testing 10 or so different men. If a person turns out to be the father of the child the case of them taking care of it is 50/50. This is because some men who find out that it is their child step up and become part of the baby’s life but there are also some who just leave the woman to take care of the child herself. That alone shows that men are able to do whatever they want and choose not to take care of the results of their actions whereas women have to take on their part and the males. Child support also illustrates that men can still get away with not taking their part.  Yes, it helps and can be considered as a punishment but money that is taken from your pay check does not substitute for a father in a child’s life. Those examples are what define gender and sexuality for me.        

Prompt #2: Lauren Schneider

In Paramount Picture’s movie Mean Girls, released in 2004, gender and sexuality play a big role. In the movie, sexuality is most often seen in a main character, Damian, who is gay. Also, it can be seen in Janis, who is rumored to be a lesbian. Both Janice and Damian are outcasts at their school because of their sexual orientations.

Regina George, “queen bee” of the high school, tells Cady not to hang out with Janice because she believes she is a lesbian. Cady then begins to hide her friendship with Janis in order to stay friends with Regina. The sexual orientations of both Janis and Damian are shown to viewers as “not normal” and make them to be social outcasts. No one wants to be friends with him or her because they are gay and lesbian. This gives viewers the belief that being gay/lesbian is not okay.

Along with sexuality being a big issue in the movie, gender and feminism is also greatly portrayed. Regina George is seen as the “queen bee” of the high school. Her friends are known as the “Plastics”, a group known as the most popular girls in school. Everyone wants to know Regina and her friends and be just like them. They are shown to be perfect. Their hair is always done, they have the best clothes, and the perfect boyfriends.

In the movie, there are many times that show girls trying to become friends with and be like Regina and the “Plastics”. For example, when Janis cuts and tries to sabotage Regina’s tank top, the rest of the girl’s in the school do the same thing the next day. Girls go on to say how if they saw Regina wearing something, they went out and bought it to wear the next day. This clip shows how the other girls at school saw Regina as being absolutely perfect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J9T91r0p0E

This idea of Regina and the “Plastics” being immaculate and flawless shows young girls how they should want to look and act if they want to be popular. The ideas of sexuality and gender are wrongly portrayed to society in the movie Mean Girls.