Obesity has become a very common charactersitic among the American people. With all the food possibilities, fast lifestyle, and large portions, I can see what leads to America's growing lifestyles- pun intended. Yet, the media and advertisers take a different spin on the all- American.
People are seen as fit and healthy when males are extremely cut and muscular while women must be extremely lean and thin. In the modeling industry, it was interesting to observe the differences between males and females and how essential these notions of maleness and femaleness have become embedded to that industry. After being exposed to shows like Tyra Banks's America's Next Top Model, Janice Dickinson's Model Agency, Make Me a Supermodel, there also exists the struggle of dealing with the the such essentialized characteristics of what a model really looks like.
Janice Dickinson is an exceptionally infamous supermodel herself with lots of plastic surgery- it's obvious. With her new recent tv series of starting her modeling agency, we see how intense and specific the weeding out process is when doing castings. She is one to typically favor the body type that most American's don't have- overly muscular, fit, extremely skinny, tall- while still having "the face." Even the models that do pass to "fit" her agency struggle as she pokes and prods at their bodies constantly white threatening to drop them if they don't get their body back on track. She challenges them and like it isn't hard enough already, models begin to turn on each other in realizing this is a battle for the survival of the "fittest" in the ideas of what is the "fittest" body types for her agency. With that the models themselves deal with the pressures of one another in competition for remaining with Janice's Agency. This further creates the tension of believing what the body type must be- something that one is not and must strive for. These exclusionary ideals become a continuous examinatin of what is real versus what is constructed socially. When did "plump and pasty" start to look so bad?? Wasn't that a sign of luxury? I guess this aspect has taken its toll on the food that runs through the American body as a whole.
The social construction and constant interjection of body type when obesity is more common factor in determing the body type of the real American bodies. With social construction battling obesity, it's hard to really see them fighting against each other in a binary. They in themselves are battles that both must be delt with in their own realms before expecting a duel between them. If obesity and social construction doesn't change its ways in America soon, there's always the rise of "body construction." Could that be the two working for and against one another in some sense...
Monday, June 9, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Blog 8 Makeup
Chocolat is a movie that I have never had the desire to see. Johnny Depp is a talented man, but I had no real idea about the plot or storyline for this film. I ended up being pleasantly surprised (as was my girlfriend who loves Johnny Depp and this film, so enjoyed watching it with me under the pretense of “homework”). It put a different spin on chocolate for me, reminding me that it is an aphrodisiac and can be a very sensual thing instead of some forbidden diet item.
As Christopher pointed out in his post, it was a bit strange to have a chocolate sauce covering the chicken at Armande’s birthday celebration. I quickly realized that my favorite dish to get at Mexican restaurants is chicken mole, which is essentially diced chicken breast in a chocolate-tomato-like sauce. It is an acquired taste for sure.
Kevin Thomas’ review for Chocolat (featured in the Los Angeles Times) and his interpretation of the film was strikingly similar to my own. I have not seen many French films, or foreign films for that matter, but he claims that this film is similar to other French films and well adapted from the original novel. I always prefer to read the book before I see the movie in most cases. Here, watching the film has made me want to read the book more, even though I will likely seeing the characters in my mind as they appeared in the movie instead of using my imagination.
Movie Review; 'Chocolat' a Rare Treat That Nourishes the Soul. Kevin Thomas.
Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Dec 15, 2000. pg. F.2
As Christopher pointed out in his post, it was a bit strange to have a chocolate sauce covering the chicken at Armande’s birthday celebration. I quickly realized that my favorite dish to get at Mexican restaurants is chicken mole, which is essentially diced chicken breast in a chocolate-tomato-like sauce. It is an acquired taste for sure.
Kevin Thomas’ review for Chocolat (featured in the Los Angeles Times) and his interpretation of the film was strikingly similar to my own. I have not seen many French films, or foreign films for that matter, but he claims that this film is similar to other French films and well adapted from the original novel. I always prefer to read the book before I see the movie in most cases. Here, watching the film has made me want to read the book more, even though I will likely seeing the characters in my mind as they appeared in the movie instead of using my imagination.
Movie Review; 'Chocolat' a Rare Treat That Nourishes the Soul. Kevin Thomas.
Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Dec 15, 2000. pg. F.2
I don't know if there is a way to simply edit my posts, but here are all the ones I wanted to edit, reposted for your viewing pleasure:
Blog 9
The films and articles that we read for today were honestly disturbing at a bit hard to handle at times. There have been a number of people in my life who have been directly affected by various eating disorders. I am sure many of us watching and reading these materials have either had personal experience with these things or know someone who has. While watching the film Killing Us Softly 3, I initially patted myself on the back for not watching much TV or taking much notice of the advertisements that are happening everywhere around me. Then when the speaker mentioned that everyone thinks that they are immune to the messages and consequences various ads have on our psyche and subconscious. That made me realize that I am likely less of an independent thinker than I believed. I see advertisements in various publications such as The Stranger (Seattle weekly magazine) and What's Up! Music Magazine (local music magazine) for things I often buy and stores I like to shop at, and I wonder how much of that has to do with me viewing some of the same ads week after week in the pages of these magazines.
It was quite disturbing to read out the young lady's teeth rotting out of her head and disintegrating from vomiting so often. I often feel invincible just like she did, and I guess it is a hard realization to know that your body will not regenerate and fix whatever is damaged or goes wrong (although the anatomy of human beings is impressive, the body cannot do everything!).I think one of the reasons that the media continues to push extreme thinness on the consumer is to sort of gloss over the problem and pretend that it is not really happening. It is no secret, with numerous studies done and TV specials and news reports on the increasing size of Americans, yet sometimes it is easier to pretend the problem does not exist by focusing more attention on this "ideal beauty" portrayed in advertisements.
Executive personality traits and eating behavior. Spinella, Marcello; Lyke, Jennifer
Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ, US. International Journal of Neuroscience. Vol 114(1), Jan 2004, pp. 83-93.
The New Yorker in 1950
The first thing that I noticed as I went through the pages of December 1949 – February 1950 New Yorker was the name brands that I recognized. From many of the liquors (which I know we are not commenting on, but still) to the airlines company TWA, Norelco razors, and Rolex watches. Although I am not sure if TWA went bankrupt recently or not, I am fairly certain the rest of these companies are still in business today. Even Abercrombie and Fitch had an ad! With few exceptions, the people featured in the advertisements had big bright smiles and looked absolutely thrilled with whatever the product was they were attempting to sell. The people are mostly cartooned figures usually positioned towards the product (very lifelike) with great interest and/or enjoyment. It looks to me like the typewriter that is being advertised on one page is the greatest thing that has ever to the family and will be life changing. The only advertisement I found that was food related was Kippered Herring, featuring a mother herring bathing her baby herring in the bathtub to show how well cleaned and packaged in the can this brand of herring is. Wow, does mother herring sure look happy about scrubbing her child for your consumption! The message that this ad seems to be putting out is how much Crosse & Blackwell care about your health and safety by taking the time to package the herring in such a way. Every other ad is mostly for tobacco, alcohol, and clothing/perfume. I suppose readers of The New Yorker were more concerned with fashion and things of that nature that what kind of herring they were going to eat for dinner that night.
Ameena Batada, Maia Dock Seitz, Margo G Wootan, Mary Story. American Dietetic
Association. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Chicago: Apr 2008. Vol. 108, Iss. 4; pg. 673
Government Involvement
While watching this film, I felt very frustrated and angry about the way that our government has handled the treatment of family farms throughout the nation, as well as in Canada and Mexico. The information presented made the U.S. seem to be this monster that is set on receiving royalties from everything and everyone they can by patenting organisms and seeds. I think this is just plain wrong. I also feel irritated that so many of the politicians that should be allies for these small family farmers are the same people that are benefiting at their expense, profiting from either part ownership or employment in the very companies that seem to be trying to put these farmers out of business. I feel the same way about Dick Cheney’s involvement with Haliburton. This energy and oil company (and consequently, the vice president) is profiting off the Iraq War after being contracted by the U.S. government to build and maintain military bases in the Middle East through the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
I fully support the alternative foods movement, as we’ve been discussing in class, that encourages buying produce from local farmers at Farmer’s Markets. It builds the community by supporting one another and fights the tide of corporate take over with the food that is delivered to groceries stores (which as they said in the film, travel thousands of miles on average before getting to the consumer). I really had no appetite after watching this, and I am now weary and nervous to eat most things for fear they are likely genetically modified. I don’t know what the long-term consequences would be for me physically, but I do understand how it is affecting people globally now, and that is enough to make me want to change my food choices. I hope in the future that foods will be labeled as being genetically modified so we know what we are eating. But I suppose ignorance is bliss, eh?
Smith, Ron. “GMO peanuts could improve health.” Southeast Farm Press; 4/9/2008,
Vol. 35 Issue 11, p6-11, 2p. EBSCOhost Research Database. http://web.ebscohost.com.
post 4
After reading The Scavenger’s Guide… I have a new outlook on hunting. It would be difficult for me to kill and butcher an animal myself, but I think I would be far less likely to waste any part of the animal. I would also be less likely to throw away unfinished food if I grew, gathered, harvested, or killed it. Thinking back to eating in the dining halls on campus my Freshman year, I thought very little about the food I was wasting since I did not have to gather it, prepare it, or clean it up. I would feel better killing a wild animal because it is more likely they have a more natural diet than factory farmed animals and I would know directly how it was butchered and what part of the animal I am eating. As for middle and upper class people hunting more for sport, as opposed to those below the poverty line, this is an interesting question. I hate seeing animals heads mounted on people’s walls like trophies. So I suppose I don’t really have an answer to that question. As for Steve Rinella killing so many animals for his mammoth feast, at least it was only once (I hope). He also seemed to be an avid hunter-gatherer with an understanding of wild animals. I’m sure a meal like a 10 oz. filet mignon, potatoes, salad, etc… has a huge impact that I will never see, effecting lots of different things. For the steak to be harvested, possible forests were likely slashed and burned to give them grazing land, completely changing the ecosystem and dynamics of the area. That’s a huge impact!
Thompson, A.K. Postharvest Technology of Fruit and Vegetables. Harlow: Blackwell
Science, 1996.
Trubek, Amy B. Haute cuisine : how the French invented the culinary profession.
Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000
A Modest Proposal?
The work by Jonathan Swift was obviously quite shocking. I knew this article would be about cannibalism, but not about consuming peasant children to control the population in Europe. Wow. Several of Swift’s comments made me pause to reflect. He ends with the statement that he could think of no argument or objection against what he is proposing. Really? Not even one? I have little understanding of the culture in Europe at the time, but it is hard for me to imagine that the public embraced Swift’s ideas and no one would have any objections.
Swift is not just proposing the use of babies for food, which is slightly off-putting, but also using their skin for gentlemen’s boots and women’s gloves. I am sure many animals in the world cannibalize their own kind. I just wonder how many would use the skin or body of the dead animal for any purpose. I also began to wonder in what context would I be able to force myself to eat another human being? If I were starving and stranded on an island, maybe, but I can’t know without being in that situation. The living conditions for the people of Ireland and the United Kingdom would have to be exceedingly terrible for Swift’s ideas to be accepted. He makes one comment about how sad it is that “poor and innocent babes” are sacrificed by abortion and murder by the mother’s of these bastard children, when he is proposing the same thing. An objection to that claim I just made would be he is proposing to use these children to benefit society. Basically, I’m just a little disturbed by the whole idea.
Alive; the story of the Andes survivors. Read, Piers Paul, 1941. Philadelphia,
Lippincott 1974.
PETA and the meat-packing industry
The first thing that I noticed about the DVD “Meet Your Meat” (besides the fact that Alec Baldwin was the narrator) was the creator of the film: PETA. The images were shocking, the effects disturbing and lasting. Just as they were going for I’m sure. The People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) uses questionable ads and shocking comparisons between the meatpacking industry and the Holocaust and extermination of Jews in Europe to get the point across that vegetarianism is evidently where it’s at. After looking into PETA online, I found that there have been several cases of this organization taking pets from various animal shelters and performing euthanasia on the animals by injecting them with something (I don’t know what), leaving them in dumpsters in a pile. They did this with the claim that it was done to be more humane than other methods like a gas chamber for the animals. Unfortunately, the video did not provide any possible ways to combat the meatpacking industry besides becoming a vegetarian. However, there are ways to be a morally and ethically responsible carnivore and/or non-vegan vegetarian. It requires some research and depends on individual communities, but there are local dairy farms based nearby in Lynden providing dairy products from animals who aren’t pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. I felt the same way after reading the article “Hidden Cost of Cheap Chicken.” I wish the author’s encouraged research into farms that do not treat animals in the ways they focused on. The responsibility obviously cannot be entrusted to the major meatpacking distributors in this country, so it must be shifted to the consumer to become informed about what they are eating and to shop accordingly.
Buehr, Walter. Meat from ranch to table, written and illustrated by Walter Buehr. New York, Morrow, 1956.Wilson 4E-Children's CollectionTS1955 .B8 1956 Yeager, Mary. Competition and regulation: the development of oligopoly in the meat packing industry. Greenwich, Conn. : Jai Press, c1981.Haggard 3 -BooksHD9415 .Y4
Effects of Culture
I have grown up in American pop culture and have done a minimal amount of traveling through Canada and Mexico. These are countries that are not all that foreign to most of us, neighboring the United States to the North and the South. Due to my lack of travel, I have had little experience with what other cultures might see as acceptable foods to eat versus the perceptions and diet that I have grown up with. For the most part, I do not view my eating habits as being all that different from those around the United States. In Western Washington, we likely eat more salmon and seafood than some part of the country that is land locked like Kansas or New Mexico. There are regional differences, but I do not find them to be all that different from my daily diet. In the U.S., we have taken elements of different cultures and adopted them as our own from immigrants throughout much of the 21st century. Reflecting on the definition of a culture, I find myself at a loss. I use the word often without much thought to how I would define it. Perhaps it is a group of people who share anything from common heritage, interests, and/or traditions. There is much more to a culture than that, but these are the first things that come to mind. If most of my friends were vegetarians, that is a sort of culture that would likely influence my eating habits and change them based on that culture.
Ethical sourcing in the global food system, edited by Stephanie Barrientos and Catherine Dolan. Sterling, VA : Earthscan, 2006.
Location in library: Haggard 3 -Books HD9000.5 .E85 2006
Increasing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2005.Location in library: Wilson 4W -Books SH329.S53 I53 2005
The films and articles that we read for today were honestly disturbing at a bit hard to handle at times. There have been a number of people in my life who have been directly affected by various eating disorders. I am sure many of us watching and reading these materials have either had personal experience with these things or know someone who has. While watching the film Killing Us Softly 3, I initially patted myself on the back for not watching much TV or taking much notice of the advertisements that are happening everywhere around me. Then when the speaker mentioned that everyone thinks that they are immune to the messages and consequences various ads have on our psyche and subconscious. That made me realize that I am likely less of an independent thinker than I believed. I see advertisements in various publications such as The Stranger (Seattle weekly magazine) and What's Up! Music Magazine (local music magazine) for things I often buy and stores I like to shop at, and I wonder how much of that has to do with me viewing some of the same ads week after week in the pages of these magazines.
It was quite disturbing to read out the young lady's teeth rotting out of her head and disintegrating from vomiting so often. I often feel invincible just like she did, and I guess it is a hard realization to know that your body will not regenerate and fix whatever is damaged or goes wrong (although the anatomy of human beings is impressive, the body cannot do everything!).I think one of the reasons that the media continues to push extreme thinness on the consumer is to sort of gloss over the problem and pretend that it is not really happening. It is no secret, with numerous studies done and TV specials and news reports on the increasing size of Americans, yet sometimes it is easier to pretend the problem does not exist by focusing more attention on this "ideal beauty" portrayed in advertisements.
Executive personality traits and eating behavior. Spinella, Marcello; Lyke, Jennifer
Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ, US. International Journal of Neuroscience. Vol 114(1), Jan 2004, pp. 83-93.
The New Yorker in 1950
The first thing that I noticed as I went through the pages of December 1949 – February 1950 New Yorker was the name brands that I recognized. From many of the liquors (which I know we are not commenting on, but still) to the airlines company TWA, Norelco razors, and Rolex watches. Although I am not sure if TWA went bankrupt recently or not, I am fairly certain the rest of these companies are still in business today. Even Abercrombie and Fitch had an ad! With few exceptions, the people featured in the advertisements had big bright smiles and looked absolutely thrilled with whatever the product was they were attempting to sell. The people are mostly cartooned figures usually positioned towards the product (very lifelike) with great interest and/or enjoyment. It looks to me like the typewriter that is being advertised on one page is the greatest thing that has ever to the family and will be life changing. The only advertisement I found that was food related was Kippered Herring, featuring a mother herring bathing her baby herring in the bathtub to show how well cleaned and packaged in the can this brand of herring is. Wow, does mother herring sure look happy about scrubbing her child for your consumption! The message that this ad seems to be putting out is how much Crosse & Blackwell care about your health and safety by taking the time to package the herring in such a way. Every other ad is mostly for tobacco, alcohol, and clothing/perfume. I suppose readers of The New Yorker were more concerned with fashion and things of that nature that what kind of herring they were going to eat for dinner that night.
Ameena Batada, Maia Dock Seitz, Margo G Wootan, Mary Story. American Dietetic
Association. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Chicago: Apr 2008. Vol. 108, Iss. 4; pg. 673
Government Involvement
While watching this film, I felt very frustrated and angry about the way that our government has handled the treatment of family farms throughout the nation, as well as in Canada and Mexico. The information presented made the U.S. seem to be this monster that is set on receiving royalties from everything and everyone they can by patenting organisms and seeds. I think this is just plain wrong. I also feel irritated that so many of the politicians that should be allies for these small family farmers are the same people that are benefiting at their expense, profiting from either part ownership or employment in the very companies that seem to be trying to put these farmers out of business. I feel the same way about Dick Cheney’s involvement with Haliburton. This energy and oil company (and consequently, the vice president) is profiting off the Iraq War after being contracted by the U.S. government to build and maintain military bases in the Middle East through the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program.
I fully support the alternative foods movement, as we’ve been discussing in class, that encourages buying produce from local farmers at Farmer’s Markets. It builds the community by supporting one another and fights the tide of corporate take over with the food that is delivered to groceries stores (which as they said in the film, travel thousands of miles on average before getting to the consumer). I really had no appetite after watching this, and I am now weary and nervous to eat most things for fear they are likely genetically modified. I don’t know what the long-term consequences would be for me physically, but I do understand how it is affecting people globally now, and that is enough to make me want to change my food choices. I hope in the future that foods will be labeled as being genetically modified so we know what we are eating. But I suppose ignorance is bliss, eh?
Smith, Ron. “GMO peanuts could improve health.” Southeast Farm Press; 4/9/2008,
Vol. 35 Issue 11, p6-11, 2p. EBSCOhost Research Database. http://web.ebscohost.com.
post 4
After reading The Scavenger’s Guide… I have a new outlook on hunting. It would be difficult for me to kill and butcher an animal myself, but I think I would be far less likely to waste any part of the animal. I would also be less likely to throw away unfinished food if I grew, gathered, harvested, or killed it. Thinking back to eating in the dining halls on campus my Freshman year, I thought very little about the food I was wasting since I did not have to gather it, prepare it, or clean it up. I would feel better killing a wild animal because it is more likely they have a more natural diet than factory farmed animals and I would know directly how it was butchered and what part of the animal I am eating. As for middle and upper class people hunting more for sport, as opposed to those below the poverty line, this is an interesting question. I hate seeing animals heads mounted on people’s walls like trophies. So I suppose I don’t really have an answer to that question. As for Steve Rinella killing so many animals for his mammoth feast, at least it was only once (I hope). He also seemed to be an avid hunter-gatherer with an understanding of wild animals. I’m sure a meal like a 10 oz. filet mignon, potatoes, salad, etc… has a huge impact that I will never see, effecting lots of different things. For the steak to be harvested, possible forests were likely slashed and burned to give them grazing land, completely changing the ecosystem and dynamics of the area. That’s a huge impact!
Thompson, A.K. Postharvest Technology of Fruit and Vegetables. Harlow: Blackwell
Science, 1996.
Trubek, Amy B. Haute cuisine : how the French invented the culinary profession.
Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000
A Modest Proposal?
The work by Jonathan Swift was obviously quite shocking. I knew this article would be about cannibalism, but not about consuming peasant children to control the population in Europe. Wow. Several of Swift’s comments made me pause to reflect. He ends with the statement that he could think of no argument or objection against what he is proposing. Really? Not even one? I have little understanding of the culture in Europe at the time, but it is hard for me to imagine that the public embraced Swift’s ideas and no one would have any objections.
Swift is not just proposing the use of babies for food, which is slightly off-putting, but also using their skin for gentlemen’s boots and women’s gloves. I am sure many animals in the world cannibalize their own kind. I just wonder how many would use the skin or body of the dead animal for any purpose. I also began to wonder in what context would I be able to force myself to eat another human being? If I were starving and stranded on an island, maybe, but I can’t know without being in that situation. The living conditions for the people of Ireland and the United Kingdom would have to be exceedingly terrible for Swift’s ideas to be accepted. He makes one comment about how sad it is that “poor and innocent babes” are sacrificed by abortion and murder by the mother’s of these bastard children, when he is proposing the same thing. An objection to that claim I just made would be he is proposing to use these children to benefit society. Basically, I’m just a little disturbed by the whole idea.
Alive; the story of the Andes survivors. Read, Piers Paul, 1941. Philadelphia,
Lippincott 1974.
PETA and the meat-packing industry
The first thing that I noticed about the DVD “Meet Your Meat” (besides the fact that Alec Baldwin was the narrator) was the creator of the film: PETA. The images were shocking, the effects disturbing and lasting. Just as they were going for I’m sure. The People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) uses questionable ads and shocking comparisons between the meatpacking industry and the Holocaust and extermination of Jews in Europe to get the point across that vegetarianism is evidently where it’s at. After looking into PETA online, I found that there have been several cases of this organization taking pets from various animal shelters and performing euthanasia on the animals by injecting them with something (I don’t know what), leaving them in dumpsters in a pile. They did this with the claim that it was done to be more humane than other methods like a gas chamber for the animals. Unfortunately, the video did not provide any possible ways to combat the meatpacking industry besides becoming a vegetarian. However, there are ways to be a morally and ethically responsible carnivore and/or non-vegan vegetarian. It requires some research and depends on individual communities, but there are local dairy farms based nearby in Lynden providing dairy products from animals who aren’t pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. I felt the same way after reading the article “Hidden Cost of Cheap Chicken.” I wish the author’s encouraged research into farms that do not treat animals in the ways they focused on. The responsibility obviously cannot be entrusted to the major meatpacking distributors in this country, so it must be shifted to the consumer to become informed about what they are eating and to shop accordingly.
Buehr, Walter. Meat from ranch to table, written and illustrated by Walter Buehr. New York, Morrow, 1956.Wilson 4E-Children's CollectionTS1955 .B8 1956 Yeager, Mary. Competition and regulation: the development of oligopoly in the meat packing industry. Greenwich, Conn. : Jai Press, c1981.Haggard 3 -BooksHD9415 .Y4
Effects of Culture
I have grown up in American pop culture and have done a minimal amount of traveling through Canada and Mexico. These are countries that are not all that foreign to most of us, neighboring the United States to the North and the South. Due to my lack of travel, I have had little experience with what other cultures might see as acceptable foods to eat versus the perceptions and diet that I have grown up with. For the most part, I do not view my eating habits as being all that different from those around the United States. In Western Washington, we likely eat more salmon and seafood than some part of the country that is land locked like Kansas or New Mexico. There are regional differences, but I do not find them to be all that different from my daily diet. In the U.S., we have taken elements of different cultures and adopted them as our own from immigrants throughout much of the 21st century. Reflecting on the definition of a culture, I find myself at a loss. I use the word often without much thought to how I would define it. Perhaps it is a group of people who share anything from common heritage, interests, and/or traditions. There is much more to a culture than that, but these are the first things that come to mind. If most of my friends were vegetarians, that is a sort of culture that would likely influence my eating habits and change them based on that culture.
Ethical sourcing in the global food system, edited by Stephanie Barrientos and Catherine Dolan. Sterling, VA : Earthscan, 2006.
Location in library: Haggard 3 -Books HD9000.5 .E85 2006
Increasing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2005.Location in library: Wilson 4W -Books SH329.S53 I53 2005
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Blog 8_Chocolat
Originally I had gone to blockbuster with the intention of renting Like Water for Chocolate but unfortunately they did not have it. I then thought Babette Feast would be interesting, but they did not have that either. I was left with no other choice to watch Chocolat. But I am so glad that I ended up watching it. The move was fantastic and Judi Dench did such a great job. It took me a bit to get into the movie, but after the first few scenes I was hooked. The power that chocolate is portrayed as having is very interesting because sometimes I forget just how much power food holds, especially desserts. Chocolate is so sweet, tempting, and easy to indulge in that the symbolism used in “chocolat” being sinful made sense. Vianne made such divine treats and customers were addicted after one bite. This happens to me all the time. I say, “just one bite”, and then I end up finishing the whole thing, whatever it is I may be eating. Food has a way of captivating me and it takes control of me. Just the other night I was out eating appetizers and as full as I was, they just tasted so good, I kept eating and eventually finished them. The other major part of the movie I loved was the connection between food, family, and shared memories. The feast for Armande’s birthday was absolutely exquisite. The preparation of food that went into the celebration was intense and it was through this feast that they were sharing laughter and good times, and then eventually even going to the boat for dessert. Whenever I think about large family gatherings or time spent with friends, there is always eating involved. Food and dessert is prepared and it really is the host of the party. Analyzing the movie through the perspective of food, it really does a good job of using food and desserts symbolically for power, family, and friends.
Shugart, Helene A. "Sumptous Texts: Consuming 'Otherness' in the Food Film Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25.1 (2008): 68-90.
This is an interesting article because it is recognizing the prominence of food playing a role in films, chocolat being one of them. I thought this quote below summed up a lot of what our course has been about. Looking at food as much more than simply food but connecting it with human emotion.
"Specifically, I contend that these films offer food as a rhetorical device through which discourses of privilege are reconciled with and restabilised against contemporary practices of desire and consumption, especially (and increasingly) for and of the "other".
Shugart, Helene A. "Sumptous Texts: Consuming 'Otherness' in the Food Film Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25.1 (2008): 68-90.
This is an interesting article because it is recognizing the prominence of food playing a role in films, chocolat being one of them. I thought this quote below summed up a lot of what our course has been about. Looking at food as much more than simply food but connecting it with human emotion.
"Specifically, I contend that these films offer food as a rhetorical device through which discourses of privilege are reconciled with and restabilised against contemporary practices of desire and consumption, especially (and increasingly) for and of the "other".
Monday, June 2, 2008
Blog 9_Media&Thinness
I think that our culture struggles greatly with obesity because everything has turned into convenience. Living in America, it’s often easy to seek out, the “fast, cheap, and easy.” Many of us like to go through the drive-through, and like to find the closest parking spot, etc. I am definitely guilty of this as well. We are living in such a fast paced society that the convenient way of life is what we know and with the rising cost of living it is hard to spend time focusing on “healthy living.” Stress and lack of sleep can often lead to weight gain as well, and many people experience both on a daily basis. It’s interesting because although our society has this struggle with obesity, the images we see of beauty and perfection are the polar opposite. Covers of girls on magazines, actors and actresses on tv, models on the runway, more commonly than not, are portrayed as having an “ideal” body. They are fit, tall, have a big smile, and white teeth. The media focuses on sending messages of what beauty is through touched up images using computers, which is easy to forget. The part in Killing us softly 3 when Jean Kilbourne discussed how women are becoming objectified was really eye-opening for me. I never thought about it like that but she raised a good point about how women’s bodies are used as beer bottles, and plastic surgery is encouraged. When we are immersed with these images in radio, tv, magazines, it is hard to ignore. The media is very influential and when adolescents are exposed to the “beauty” in the media it is not surprising that they will go to extreme measures in an effort to achieve that size 0 waist, or the large breasts, and the plump limps. Reading Evelyn Lau’s article was extremely sad because so many people go through this battle with food. It reminded me of the power that food can have. It almost made me mad that we have set our society up to make people feel like they aren’t thin enough, or they are too thin, not tall enough, and not physically fit. Reading about her family blaming her for the diet they started and her mom’s obvious disapproval was heartbreaking. However the mother may have been doing it out of love in some strange way. The whole issue of weight and physical appearance is somewhat sensitive but some cultures are quite blunt and it’s no different when it comes to physical appearance. It’s funny because my friend and I were having a conversation about how family will comment on things like weight gain, etc. We had both experienced aunts and uncles telling us things about the way we look. I’ve learned through the good and the bad that it’s all about confidence. You really have to love yourself in order to accept or at least get through both criticism and compliments. If you are unhappy with yourself, the things people say good or bad often mean nothing. Although this is so much easier said and done. Things like the reluctant hero magazine talked about in the Body image video were great because it can be inspiring for young girls. It is vital to have positive outlets for people to see that the beauty in ads do not exist without electronically enhancing images.
Rothstein, Stephen, G. "Reflux and Vocal Disorders in Singers with Bulimia” Journal Of Voice. 12.1 (1998): 89-90
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Media
Every ad you see today usually has a person that is good looking and seems “perfect” trying to sell a product. All of the ads in the movie Killing Us Softly showed people using their sex appeal to sell their products. These kind of ads are seen everywhere today because statistics show that sex sells. With the technology we have today every ad is airbrushed and cut and pasted to make them look perfect so what people are striving for is impossible. As I have been writing I have the TV playing in the background and every commercial has shown good looking people trying to sell a product and every other commercial is advertising a diet supplement or workout equipment. I mean I’m all for working out and being healthy, but I think it’s crazy when people strive for perfection. In America today people are increasingly getting larger and larger and because obesity is a large issue going on in our culture the media shows extremely thin people hoping to make the public strive to be thin. Also if they show obese people in advertising nobody will buy the products especially if it is for a food place. I learned a lot about bulimia and anorexia from the article An Insatiable Emptiness it really is a disease, something you can get addicted to I think that this is also true for people that overeat that it’s something they get can get addicted to and become obese.
Shea, Maureen E. and Pritchard, Mary E. "Is self-esteem the primary predictor of disordered eating?" Personality and Individual Differences. Vol 42 (8) June 2007 pp. 1527-1537. PsycINFO. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 1 June 2008.
Shea, Maureen E. and Pritchard, Mary E. "Is self-esteem the primary predictor of disordered eating?" Personality and Individual Differences. Vol 42 (8) June 2007 pp. 1527-1537. PsycINFO. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 1 June 2008.
Welcome to America My Friends
I will admit, the films and articles were hard to get through. They reveal a reality that no one really wants to face or wants to see. They tell nothing but the disturbing truth about our society. The percentage of people in the United States that are currently dieting at any given time is sickening. But take a hard look at the world we live in. It's a consumer society and a vicious cycle. We are all consumed in TV (which is primarily nothing but one big world of advertisement), we are surrounded by fast food and disgusting food. People wonder why Americans are all obese? I have to laugh, it's not that hard to figure out. Look at our food culture, or lack there of. It consists of TV dinners, fast food, grease, fat and sugar.
We really are, killing ourselves slowly.
We eat food unlike any other country in the world, and portions not even comparable to any other country in the world. Of course everyone is fat in America and what a perfect set up for the economy. Keep people fat and self-conscious about themselves, continue brainwashing them with the unrealistic body image they must attain, and the materialistic life they must have, and there will be money flowing from every direction. Hollywood rules our entire existence.
"Look at how skinny she is, she has a perfect body. I want that body."
"Look at how many cars he drives, and how many houses he has, and all the women he's got dangling off him. I wanna be like that."
The result?
A fat, self-conscious and depressed society, that will buy and buy and buy all the products for diets, beauty, workouts, clothes...anything...to get them closer to what they see on TV.
And people wonder why most girls between the ages of 12-25 have some type of eating disorder? Why they have selfesteems that are as low as the ground?
Is it not the most obvious thing in the world?????
Because they turn the TV on everyday and are forced to stare at what they "wish they could be and what they wish they could have."
That's why.
As long as America stays fat, as long as the entertainment and advertising industries rule our lives, nothing will change. They want women to feel fat and ugly. If you're a man, they want you to feel poor and scrawny. Then you will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your life time on diet pills, gym memberships, beauty products, makeup, expensive clothes and anything else they can brainwash you into thinking that you need. Guys will spend money on weights to pump, a nice car to impress the ladies, materialistic things and trendy clothes.
Welcome to America my friends.
The land of "I wish" and the land of "I want."
But can never have.
A good read:
Davis, Caroline and Lori Scott-Robertson. "A psychological comparison of females with anorexia nervosa and competitive male bodybuilders: Body shape ideals in the extreme." Eating Behaviors 1 (2000): 33-46.
(The title of the article should be underlined, but my computer wont do it for some reason and the 2nd and 3rd line indented inward)
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