Project Reflection
For the majority of my life I’ve been in pretty good shape and been able to eat whatever I want. This is probably because I’ve always been pretty active and healthy. The beginning of this year was the very first time I started realizing different affects depending on what I ate. I think its because everything was finally catching up to me! I gained about 10 pounds last summer and was very upset. I just started paying more attention to what I was putting inside of me. I also realized how good food is and how hard it is to stop when everything is so yummy! This project was perfect because it showed me all of the processing behind a lot of the foods that I eat.
For our rhetorical piece of this project, my partner and I focused on how media affects peoples lives. I connected to this part of the project very well. I have always been influenced by the media and all of the beautiful women on magazines. How can anybody not be influenced by it? We are surrounded by all of these unrealistic expectations and its hard not to get down on yourself about it. While talking to somebody about my project, he asked me, “Well how do you get from the shattered canvas to the heart breaking out of the adds?” It was hard answering this question because I’m not sure if I’ve gotten there. I’m not sure most people have. The important part that I took away from this project was to love yourself and be proud of who YOU are, not the models around us.
For our rhetorical piece of this project, my partner and I focused on how media affects peoples lives. I connected to this part of the project very well. I have always been influenced by the media and all of the beautiful women on magazines. How can anybody not be influenced by it? We are surrounded by all of these unrealistic expectations and its hard not to get down on yourself about it. While talking to somebody about my project, he asked me, “Well how do you get from the shattered canvas to the heart breaking out of the adds?” It was hard answering this question because I’m not sure if I’ve gotten there. I’m not sure most people have. The important part that I took away from this project was to love yourself and be proud of who YOU are, not the models around us.
Says Who?
I see the ads,
The intimidating models.
Looking at them,
Their perfect bodies.
I read,
“This will make you skinny,”
“10 foods to make you lose weight.”
“Get in shape now”
My body has bulges.
I’m overwhelmed with my imperfection.
My heart is smothered in these ads,
Hidden under these convincing words.
The social standards are unreachable,
My self image,
Shattered.
I’m not good enough,
I’m not pretty enough,
Why can’t I look like her?
The broken glass is cutting my heart,
Piercing my mind,
Deeply wounding.
How to integrate all my flaws?
I need to be whole,
To make myself satisfied.
To realize,
I’m beautiful.
Inside and out.
It’s time,
To break through these ads,
To find myself.
To repair my self image,
To mend the broken glass.
I am good enough
And I’ll learn to love myself,
Even if I don’t look like her.
I am beautiful.
The intimidating models.
Looking at them,
Their perfect bodies.
I read,
“This will make you skinny,”
“10 foods to make you lose weight.”
“Get in shape now”
My body has bulges.
I’m overwhelmed with my imperfection.
My heart is smothered in these ads,
Hidden under these convincing words.
The social standards are unreachable,
My self image,
Shattered.
I’m not good enough,
I’m not pretty enough,
Why can’t I look like her?
The broken glass is cutting my heart,
Piercing my mind,
Deeply wounding.
How to integrate all my flaws?
I need to be whole,
To make myself satisfied.
To realize,
I’m beautiful.
Inside and out.
It’s time,
To break through these ads,
To find myself.
To repair my self image,
To mend the broken glass.
I am good enough
And I’ll learn to love myself,
Even if I don’t look like her.
I am beautiful.
Don’t Eat Those Adds (Get it?)
Throughout our society, women are pressured to have a perfect body. This immense expectation is extremely dangerous. From the time of being a little girl and playing with flawless Barbie dolls, to the time we are old enough to look at “perfect girls” in a magazine, society pressures us women in every way to look beautiful. Because of this, anorexia and bulimia play a huge role in teenagers, models, and woman’s everyday lives: as many as 10 million woman and girls suffer from anorexia and/or bulimia in the United States alone. We females have forgotten to appreciate our internal beauty and to celebrate our unique features.
Our art we’ve created show that there is beauty in every single one of us. To show this, we have painted three different canvases along with setting up a mirror. The first canvas we created has a very dark feel to it. We did this by painting the background a dark grey/black. The reason we decided that these colors would be appropriate is because society’s pressure on us women has become a very dark and depressing cloud. On top of the background we have drawn a bleeding human heart. The reason for this was because this is affecting the way many of us feel inside and is eventually tearing at our hearts and not making us as confident as we should be. Starting at the top of the canvas and raining down on the heart, we have created a collage of different women that are shown to be perfect in magazines. Along with the pictures of women, in the collage, there are also many ads that we see every day that make us feel like we aren’t good enough or we aren’t eating right, or the “top 10 ways to get fit.” We decided to make this collage because this is what us women are surrounded by every time we pick up a magazine. This eventually creates a chasm inside and is deeply wounding.
Canvas number two is a drawing of a heart with shattered pieces of mirror covering most of it. We wanted a shattered mirror to portray a shattered heart and shattered self. To give the feeling of devastation, we wrote statements of self-deprecation. Including quotes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ and ‘I’m not pretty enough.’ When we pick up a magazine and read the ads, we feel defeated. These ads are shattering our self-esteem and we are forgetting to love ourselves.
It is hard to remember to love yourself when surrounded by ageless, perfect models, the “fastest ways to get skinny,” and a society that has unrealistic expectations. To portray we are all beautiful, even if we don’t look like the images in the magazine, the third canvas we’ve created is a human heart breaking through all of the ads. This canvas is meant to illuminate our real selves. To embody our imperfections and know we are more than skin deep. It is our heart that must shine; it is our heart that must heal.
The mirror is for YOU to look at yourself and appreciate who you are: flaws and all. Learn to love yourself because you are unique and beautiful in your own way. Love that person in the mirror. Let your heart throb.
Our art we’ve created show that there is beauty in every single one of us. To show this, we have painted three different canvases along with setting up a mirror. The first canvas we created has a very dark feel to it. We did this by painting the background a dark grey/black. The reason we decided that these colors would be appropriate is because society’s pressure on us women has become a very dark and depressing cloud. On top of the background we have drawn a bleeding human heart. The reason for this was because this is affecting the way many of us feel inside and is eventually tearing at our hearts and not making us as confident as we should be. Starting at the top of the canvas and raining down on the heart, we have created a collage of different women that are shown to be perfect in magazines. Along with the pictures of women, in the collage, there are also many ads that we see every day that make us feel like we aren’t good enough or we aren’t eating right, or the “top 10 ways to get fit.” We decided to make this collage because this is what us women are surrounded by every time we pick up a magazine. This eventually creates a chasm inside and is deeply wounding.
Canvas number two is a drawing of a heart with shattered pieces of mirror covering most of it. We wanted a shattered mirror to portray a shattered heart and shattered self. To give the feeling of devastation, we wrote statements of self-deprecation. Including quotes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ and ‘I’m not pretty enough.’ When we pick up a magazine and read the ads, we feel defeated. These ads are shattering our self-esteem and we are forgetting to love ourselves.
It is hard to remember to love yourself when surrounded by ageless, perfect models, the “fastest ways to get skinny,” and a society that has unrealistic expectations. To portray we are all beautiful, even if we don’t look like the images in the magazine, the third canvas we’ve created is a human heart breaking through all of the ads. This canvas is meant to illuminate our real selves. To embody our imperfections and know we are more than skin deep. It is our heart that must shine; it is our heart that must heal.
The mirror is for YOU to look at yourself and appreciate who you are: flaws and all. Learn to love yourself because you are unique and beautiful in your own way. Love that person in the mirror. Let your heart throb.
Voyage in Between
The first lash,
Stabbing pain,
Suffering, like a bull being speared but not dying.
My raw flesh drenched in blood
Repetitive strikes
Each time, I become less aware.
My vision blurs with each fall of the whip,
I can see the color red.
Hot blood drips down my face,
I imagine it is my sweat
As I work in the hot field,
As I farm and chase my son around the rich and fertile land,
The land from where I was taken.
How much time has passed?
Looking back on my family,
Feels as if I am remembering a distant, sparkling dream.
Far beyond my fingertips
Like a single star in a black night sky.
As the waves hit the side of the boat
I remember where I am.
Chains hanging heavy at my throat and ankles
My body is weighed to the cold ship.
A blank, starless horizon envelops me.
On my way to an unknown world.
A pale man tugged at my shackles
Pushing me down to the bilge.
Back to the stench of rot and taste of brine,
The sight of my dispirited, once strong, fellow captives
Fills my heart with sadness and defeat.
No matter how far I retreat below the deck,
I cannot escape the screams of above.
The sound of torture,
As the men brutalize
And force themselves upon the women.
My limbs ache
From the wild discomfort of the heavy binds and limited space.
Smell of waste all around me
There was no fresh air to cleanse my lungs.
I observe the weak,
As their souls float away and their bodies remain.
Just as a flower perishes when it is dry and thirsty,
Lifeless, colorless.
Each day my spirit recedes,
I barely remember the chants of my village,
The songs and drumrolls we once danced to.
I question how I am still alive
And whether or not I still carry the desire for life.
Through a crack in the hull,
I see land upon the horizon,
A place I have never been.
I fear my future will be spent
In chains, scared,
Obeying the vicious pale men who have no heart.
The land that stands before me is strange and foreign,
And I do not believe I will find prosperity there.
Every inkling of hope escapes my body,
As I realize this is only the beginning.
Understanding the Truth
From the start, children are raised not to lie or change stories but to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. This is hard to do especially if they are not being told the right stories or being lied to. History is a hard subject to teach because you want to tell the right stories but not if it makes your country seem less patriotic or fair, right? Why would we include the awful deeds our country committed? Well because children are being taught lies. Telling false stories to support out famous quote, “America the home of the free and land of the brave.” The children of the United States of America are being misinformed on what really happened in our history.
During the eight years of school before high school one would think the textbooks or teachers would mention or give an idea of what really happened in our history but they don’t. In Re-examining the Revolution, Ray Raphael gives an example, “Not one of the elementary or middle school texts even mentions the genocidal Sullivan campaign, one of the largest military offensives of the war, which burned Iroquois villages and destroyed every orchard and farm in its path to deny food to Indians.” The only reason not to include these descriptions is that maybe the audience is too young? Or it is easier to omit? Or is this too graphically ugly? Maybe they want to protect the innocence of children but should it be at the expense of truth?
One of the big issues with the distortion of history is that plenty of people want to believe these ‘wonderful stories with happy endings.’ Re-examining the Revolution, by Ray Raphael also includes, “Not one current textbook chronicles the first overthrow of the British rule. How strange that the story of any revolution can be told without at least a mention of the initial overthrow of political and military authority. This is the damage of mythmaking-real history gets lost, much of it is very important.” To think that a history book could tell a story with out even mentioning basically the first win. Why? Because it is more important that we don’t talk about when we were defeated but when we triumphed.
People want heroes. Who doesn’t want somebody to look up to? It’s just a matter of who one looks up to and why. On page 36 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen claims, “For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. The inner struggles disappear and they become goody-goody, not merely good.” People want real heroes, not somebody just made up to be one. People do make mistakes and this is a well known fact so why not include the details to what got them to their major victory? It isn’t always that the textbooks are portraying somebody for who they aren’t, it is that they are not including the details that pain everybody. If the stories were told to gain a greater understanding of how it happened not how great the person is, it would be more realistic.
History is an important topic. It is about our past and our ancestors, it is not something to be messed with. When textbooks are written, they should be written with a truthful narrative not a blind one. Mentioning the bad is for the greater good and understanding. These warming tales do not cut it and we need to stop spoon feeding the people of America the wrong information.
During the eight years of school before high school one would think the textbooks or teachers would mention or give an idea of what really happened in our history but they don’t. In Re-examining the Revolution, Ray Raphael gives an example, “Not one of the elementary or middle school texts even mentions the genocidal Sullivan campaign, one of the largest military offensives of the war, which burned Iroquois villages and destroyed every orchard and farm in its path to deny food to Indians.” The only reason not to include these descriptions is that maybe the audience is too young? Or it is easier to omit? Or is this too graphically ugly? Maybe they want to protect the innocence of children but should it be at the expense of truth?
One of the big issues with the distortion of history is that plenty of people want to believe these ‘wonderful stories with happy endings.’ Re-examining the Revolution, by Ray Raphael also includes, “Not one current textbook chronicles the first overthrow of the British rule. How strange that the story of any revolution can be told without at least a mention of the initial overthrow of political and military authority. This is the damage of mythmaking-real history gets lost, much of it is very important.” To think that a history book could tell a story with out even mentioning basically the first win. Why? Because it is more important that we don’t talk about when we were defeated but when we triumphed.
People want heroes. Who doesn’t want somebody to look up to? It’s just a matter of who one looks up to and why. On page 36 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen claims, “For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. The inner struggles disappear and they become goody-goody, not merely good.” People want real heroes, not somebody just made up to be one. People do make mistakes and this is a well known fact so why not include the details to what got them to their major victory? It isn’t always that the textbooks are portraying somebody for who they aren’t, it is that they are not including the details that pain everybody. If the stories were told to gain a greater understanding of how it happened not how great the person is, it would be more realistic.
History is an important topic. It is about our past and our ancestors, it is not something to be messed with. When textbooks are written, they should be written with a truthful narrative not a blind one. Mentioning the bad is for the greater good and understanding. These warming tales do not cut it and we need to stop spoon feeding the people of America the wrong information.
Crash.
Watching the film crash was VERY eye opening and I really enjoyed it because it focused on more than just one issue. It didn’t just define the problems between blacks and whites, it focused on many more races then just those. . I definitely had seen some movies like this and so this wasn’t completely news to me. Being somebody who has skipped around from town to town as a child I have had different insights on how people look up to people and how some look down on others. Especially living in El Paso, Texas on the border, anybody who was white seemed to have an attitude that they were the superior race because a lot of the people that were darker skinned had the lesser jobs.
Accessories I have noticed matter a lot on America. If you own nice clothes, nice jewelry or a nice car you feel better then the person who is wearing sweats. That is why owning these things matter so much to us. When I was coming home from Bolivia this summer I was wearing, an alpaca sweater, chacos and my Bolivian pants of many different colors. Walking through that Miami airport I felt like I had many eyes looking down upon me, judging me, all because of my clothes. While I was traveling this summer I learned a saying, “Aunque la mona se viste de ceda, mona se queda.” It means that you are what you are! We are who we are! It isn’t what we own or what we look like. You have just got to be yourself!
Racism is a smart thing to realize and better understand because it has been present for the longest time. It has gotten so much better and we still have so many improvements to make about it. Just being aware of how you look at somebody or how you are judging them in your heads is a start. If we are more conscious of how we treat other people and focus less on being the best of the best we could all work together and live together without feeling superiority towards anybody.
Accessories I have noticed matter a lot on America. If you own nice clothes, nice jewelry or a nice car you feel better then the person who is wearing sweats. That is why owning these things matter so much to us. When I was coming home from Bolivia this summer I was wearing, an alpaca sweater, chacos and my Bolivian pants of many different colors. Walking through that Miami airport I felt like I had many eyes looking down upon me, judging me, all because of my clothes. While I was traveling this summer I learned a saying, “Aunque la mona se viste de ceda, mona se queda.” It means that you are what you are! We are who we are! It isn’t what we own or what we look like. You have just got to be yourself!
Racism is a smart thing to realize and better understand because it has been present for the longest time. It has gotten so much better and we still have so many improvements to make about it. Just being aware of how you look at somebody or how you are judging them in your heads is a start. If we are more conscious of how we treat other people and focus less on being the best of the best we could all work together and live together without feeling superiority towards anybody.
Who are our Heroes?
Christopher Columbus, a Spaniard had a lot of courage or as he would say, ‘cojones’ for traveling the seas and going to great lengths to discover the Americas. Because of this, he is portrayed to be a great hero. A hero is a man of distinguished courage, noble qualities and brave deeds. Every year on October 12th we celebrate the day he came upon an island in the Bahamas… The enormous feats of crossing unchartered waters to arrive to a new continent in Columbus’s case involved a massacre of the land and people. Are these the acts of a hero?
As the sailors on the Nina, La Pinta, y La Santa Maria approached the island the locals, the Arawak Indians greeted them. “The Arawak’s lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears.” This was not good enough for Columbus. He did not want their crops, he wanted gold. He took some of them as prisoners aboard ship and insisted that they show him where the gold was. On the way back to Spain they took Indians as prisoners but as the weather turned cold they began to die off. This was only the beginning of their disintegration. Columbus presented his conquered lands as a beautiful miracle with ‘great mines of gold’s and other metals.’ Columbus promised the King and Queen “as much gold as they needed and as many slaves as they asked.” He exaggerated greatly and because of this he received seventeen ships to return. “The aim was clear; slaves and gold.” Is this kind of greed and dishonesty part of being a noble crusader?
Columbus ordered the Arawak Indians that were only fourteen years old needed to find an amount of gold in a highly difficult deadline of three months. If they found the specific amount they were given a necklace to hang around their neck. Identifying them with a necklace made it easier for Columbus and his men to rule. If they were seen without a necklace, Columbus or his men would cut off one of their limbs and let them bleed to death. The Indians tried to put together an army but they had no chance against the Spaniards and their tools made of iron. “In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.” Columbus took advantage of his authority and weapons. Heroism and courage are not the slaughtering of people.
These are the acts of a villain yet Columbus is considered a great hero in our history. What if noble acts included an exchange of learning about weapons and agriculture between all cultures? What if distinguished courage meant going out of your way to respect differences? Perhaps as a nation we would be celebrating different accomplishments from other ‘heroes.
As the sailors on the Nina, La Pinta, y La Santa Maria approached the island the locals, the Arawak Indians greeted them. “The Arawak’s lived in village communes, had a developed agriculture of corn, yams, cassava. They had no iron, but they wore tiny gold ornaments in their ears.” This was not good enough for Columbus. He did not want their crops, he wanted gold. He took some of them as prisoners aboard ship and insisted that they show him where the gold was. On the way back to Spain they took Indians as prisoners but as the weather turned cold they began to die off. This was only the beginning of their disintegration. Columbus presented his conquered lands as a beautiful miracle with ‘great mines of gold’s and other metals.’ Columbus promised the King and Queen “as much gold as they needed and as many slaves as they asked.” He exaggerated greatly and because of this he received seventeen ships to return. “The aim was clear; slaves and gold.” Is this kind of greed and dishonesty part of being a noble crusader?
Columbus ordered the Arawak Indians that were only fourteen years old needed to find an amount of gold in a highly difficult deadline of three months. If they found the specific amount they were given a necklace to hang around their neck. Identifying them with a necklace made it easier for Columbus and his men to rule. If they were seen without a necklace, Columbus or his men would cut off one of their limbs and let them bleed to death. The Indians tried to put together an army but they had no chance against the Spaniards and their tools made of iron. “In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.” Columbus took advantage of his authority and weapons. Heroism and courage are not the slaughtering of people.
These are the acts of a villain yet Columbus is considered a great hero in our history. What if noble acts included an exchange of learning about weapons and agriculture between all cultures? What if distinguished courage meant going out of your way to respect differences? Perhaps as a nation we would be celebrating different accomplishments from other ‘heroes.