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Ryan King

Intersectional Feminism

Film Review

Over time films have shown a common theme of having women assume either love interest roles or subservient roles to men.Having seen so many different films showcasing woman as only being necessary for these kinds of positions people like Alison Bechdel and the fictional Mako Mori have created test to analyze how often that women are actually represented in more diverse roles other than being a tool used by men to achieve a stereotypical goal.These test exist to give directors an idea of what modern consumers want to see, strong independent women who are not constantly fixating over the attention of a man.

Frozen is a popular Disney movie about the relationship between two sisters and and their roads to self acceptance.Many people are very excited about the film because this is the first time in disney history where we see two strong and self sufficient women who do not rely on men to accomplish goals and have their own interesting character arcs.Every other time we are introduced to females with these credentials they are usually portrayed to either be a villain or antagonist character, but Frozen changes that stereotype.Frozen is one of my favorite movies because director Jennifer Lee made sure that the film did more than just pass the Bechdel test.She made sure that everyone watching the movie would be able to see a piece of themselves in one of the main characters.Lee accomplishes this goal by changing the entire narrative of princesses being saved by their Prince Charming,Instead she chooses to have Elsa save Anna with a true act of love rather than just true loves kiss.

3) Create your own anti-gender bias film test, describe the criteria for your test and explain why you believe it is important for a film to meet this criteria. Analyze a different movie that meets the criteria for your test.

The film must have the following to pass the King Test

• Two named people of color

• Who don't feed into stereotypical behavior

For the movie “the Place beyond the Pines” I would say that this movie does pass both the King test and the Bechdel test.This movie is about a thief who steals to support his small family and his partners antics to stay above the law.The movie takes a sudden shift when half way through Ryan Gosling is killed and his estranged girlfriend and son live their lives.the movie gets really interesting when Ryan's son and the cop who accidentally killed him while on the job wind up in the same highschool and start to piece together stories their families have shared with them before realizing that his bestfriends dad killed his dad. I feel like this movie has passed my test because the director takes really interesting measures to make the cast very diverse.Instead of having minorities be the theives in the movie they become more of protagonist aids and still remain very critical to the movie.

A modern day feminist film review

In this socially developing day and age, we find more reasons to dissect the beliefs , cultures and practices that surround us in everyday life, especially in technology. People are more aware than ever of the subliminal messages used in advertising, movies, songs, etc. that embed themselves in our subconscious and shape our perspective and how we interpret situations. A product of these detections is the Mako Mori and Bechdel Tests, where we are forced to look in from, for some, a relatively unfamiliar perspective. Both of these inventions are the result of something, that something being most closely related to the misogyny and toxic masculinity constantly portrayed in the media. More often than not, in American media a woman’s most frequent roles include being obedient, submissive, and important only if they are talking about a man. The Mako Mori method tests the inclusivity of well developed female characters that don’t contribute to a man’s story. The bechdel test follows a similar dynamic, asking whether a work of fiction has at least two women can share dialogue that doesn’t involve the topic of men.

If the question is why these tests must exist, you’ll find that it’s much easier to recover a time you watched a movie that involved men, whose main purpose wasn’t to get a woman’s attention or please them, but in fact the women just happen to be a factor in their story. Take the movie 50/50, for instance. Adam, a middle aged man who prided himself in his health has his life turned around when malignant tumors are found in his spine, docking his mortality rate by 50%. Along with his family, he tries to keep good spirits, even though everyone around him is prepared for the worst. He falls for his therapist, one of the three women represented in the entire movie. Aside from talking about Adam’s doctor, who is notably also male, his therapist and mother don’t discuss anything that isn’t regarding the main character or the supporting male roles. Enough information is given to conclude that this movie doesn’t pass either the mako mori or bechdel test, and it can’t be blamed on the plot of the movie, the year it came out, the actors, etc. It’s a combination of the choices made by the director, audience, and culture of hollywood movies in general.

The reclamation test

Based on how women are represented and depicted in a majority of these movies, I have decided to test how relevant a female character becomes or how her character diminishes when a male character is eliminated, regardless of if they’re main characters or not. It’s important that this criteria is met, because it shows the audience that a woman’s role doesn’t always have to be temporary or niche. There’s often little diversity in the role of a woman, she only displays a limited number of emotions and concerns, which frequently reflects the actions in the role of a man. To show that a female character can develop freely, without any other permission than the progression of the plot itself, sends a more positive and encouraging message to viewers furthermore changing the way in which they’re influenced by movies.

Lady bloodfight

This movie is about an American woman, Jane, who travels to Hong Kong to fulfill her destiny of becoming a champion in the fight of the “Kumite”, an underground, full-contact martial arts competition for women. The movie focuses on another integral relationship regarding her trainer Shu, who is also a woman. Shu and her rival Wai both compete for the throne by training students like Jane to battle on their behalf.The judges of the competition worry themselves only with the monetary reward the popularity will bring, and therefore allow the fights to be limitless, brutal, and often fatal. Nearing the end of the story, we come to find that Shu and Wei were at each other’s necks for so long because Wei blamed Shu for the death of her brother, which was ruled as a suicide that nobody could wrap their heads around. Jane further investigates, and finds that one of the corrupt judges not only had to do with Wei’s brother’s death, but also the death of her own father, who traveled to Hong Kong many years before to battle in the same competition. Jane brings the man to public confession at the end of the final battle, ending the long-time contention between Shu and Wei and bringing honor to her father. Despite the main character’s motives being in the likeness of men, this information wasn’t relevant until the end of the movie. Up until then, the women trained and fought because they felt it was in their hearts to do so, to teach and learn internal peace and contentedness. Jane’s father, Wei’s brother, and the evil judge had relevance throughout the movie, sure, but they weren’t permanent or centerpieces for less than half of it. The only character that was physically seen was the evil judge, and even then his presence was quickly dismissed. The movie passes the reclamation test with flying colors because of this, because each female character was strong enough on their own, and for a change the male characters were only relevant because of the female’s role.

The Bechdel Test and Mako Mori Test are movie measures to help rate the movie. These exist to help reviewers analyze and understand movies better whenever they watch it.

The Bechdel Test follows in these three categories;

• “It has to have at least two [named] women in it”

• “Who talk to each other”

• “About something besides a man”

The Mako Mori Test follows in these three categories;

• “at least one female character”

• “who gets her own narrative arc”

• “that is not about supporting a man's story”

Kay’s anti-gender movie test follows in these three categories;

• A woman must have a meaningful role within the movie

• Everybody especially men act supportive for the women

• The women shouldn’t have to show her body to still get the audience attention (sex scenes)

Twilight Review:

Overall, Twilight is a movie about a girl named Bella who was high school sophomore moving with her dad to Forks, Washington. However along this move she fell in love with Edward who she later found out that he is a vampire. This movie would obviously have a lot of conflict between her being a human and her boyfriend being a vampire but it did not stop them from loving each other. Throughout the movie, she tries to find herself after she decided to live with her father.

The Bechdel Test:

• It has two women in it who are (Bella and Alice)

• The women talks to each other about vampires

• But it’s always about a man which is Edward (Bella’s Boyfriend)

Rate ⅔

The Mako Mori Test:

• It has a least one woman in it who is (Bella)

• This female character has her narrative arc as to why she moves to Forks with her father from Arizona. Then the movie reaches its climax and resolution after she met Edward.

• The entire movie supports a man which is her boyfriend for being a vampire.

Rate ⅔

My anti-gender movie Test:

• Bella role in this romantic movie is the new girl everyone pays attention to in school since her dad is a cop and she dates Edward whos semi-popular at this High School

• Edward doesn’t seem to support a lot of what she wants because he’s always so in control and dominant towards her. Which turns her on.

• There was a time she was going to have sex with Edward but he wanted to have self control

Rate 1 ½

Fifty Shades of Grey Review:

Fifty Shades of Grey is a movie about a woman graduating from college named Ana Steele who fell in love with a successful business man named Christian Grey. Grey was a dominant sex addict who need proper love and after meeting Ana that is what he found. Ana allowed him to open up about a lot of issues that he was facing in life. However, no matter how much Ana changed his outlook of love he was still in control of her.

The Bechdel Test:

• It has to have at least two women in the movie whose names are; anastasia steele who’s the character Christian Grey “girlfriend” and her Ana’s roommate Kate Kavanaugh who’s a reporter for the school’s newspaper

• Who have an extreme sexual relationship with each other

• Mostly everything was all about him throughout the movie

Rate ⅔

The Mako Mori Test:

• The one female main character which is Ana.

• She doesn’t gets her own narrative arc because in the movie we as the reviewers what it was like growing up like her boyfriend.

• This is about supporting a man's story by his success and background of his life.

Rate ⅓

My anti-gender movie Test:

• Ana doesn’t have too much of a meaningful role other than being Christian’s girlfriend.

• Christian supported her as she was graduating in college.

• The majority of the movie included Ana and Christian sex scenes which caught the audience attention.

Rate ⅓

Hidden Figures Review:

This movie is about African-American women who worked for NASA in the 1960’s. During that period, it was very hard for women to find a job that is mostly qualified for men. In addition, these women were African-American so of course it was harder for them to get the exact job that they deserve working with NASA. An African-American woman named Katherine Johnson was the smartest mathematician within the entire company. However, with her abilities to solve equations she helped NASA stop their racist views towards the African-American community. This entire movie allowed the Caucasians (especially men) have more respect towards African-American people because of her hard work.

The Bechdel Test:

• It has two women in it who are Katherine Johnson and Mary Jackson

• The women talks to each other about mathematical calculations

• The majority of the the movie was about space

Rate 3/3

The Mako Mori Test:

• It has a least one woman in it who is Katherine

• This female character has her narrative arc as to how she help figure out the proper calculations to orbit a spaceship around Earth. As a result, it was a success.

• The entire movie supports an the first African-American women working for NASA resolving a critical issue in space for the country.

Rate 3/3

My anti-gender movie Test:

• Katherine was one of the many African-American women to play a role as a brave woman working with a lot of men trying to get the first man to reach the moon.

• Once, she proved how accurate  her calculations was to the person in charge of NASA everyone respected and supported her work.

• There wasn’t a sex scene going on throughout the entire movie to get more audience to watch this. Instead this movie was a good movie by actually demonstrating history that was never told about African-American women in the 1960’s working for NASA.

Rate 3/3

Conclusion:

Twilight and Fifty Shade of Grey is a romantic movie that include the women’s lovers to be in control of everything that they do. However, Hidden Figures is about an African-American woman changing the mindset of Caucasian men and women underestimating intelligent smart african-American women like herself. While Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey get their high rating from the sex scenes and romantic drama Hidden Figures got the high rating from seeing a woman making history with science. How come we can not have people play roles like this in any genre of movie to get the best rating? With or without sex scenes, sexism, and homophobic insults throughout the movie?

Sites:

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Mako_Mori_test

https://bechdeltest.com/

A little while back I posted a blog post about fraternities and their problems, but I have done more research and interviewed a few people, and I have updates. I interviewed two people, one who is director of fraternity and sorority affairs at a college that I will not mention for anonymity reasons. The other was Jake Sisco, the assistant director of admission at Wellesley University, and was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity at MSU. With my new information I am back with a second blog post explaining everything that I have learned since my first post.

In my first post I stated that fraternity brothers aren’t real brothers, and that fraternities should be shut down. I also stated that my neighbor was hazed, so it was pretty obvious that at that time that I had some bias against fraternities. Since then, I have put my biases to the side, and tried to look for some of the good aspects of greek life, rather than focusing on the bad things about fraternities. Of course, I will include bad things, because fraternities aren’t all good or bad.

In my first blog post I explained the reasons behind why I think fraternities are bad, what is bad about them, and why they should be shut down. I used evidence from Timothy Piazza death related to fraternity hazing that happened a year ago. Seems very well backed up right? Well all of the things that I said in that post were true, but the internet has a way of doing things where it filters all of the most popular things to pop up first, and the most popular things are usually bad things about fraternities, which casts a negative stereotype over fraternities. In this post I will be speaking the truth about fraternities to the best of my ability.

http://www.ttujournalism.net/classes/j4370/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/12/HazingInUS.jpeg

Chart for hazing in the U.S. Shows how many people are hazed per year, deaths, and who realizes that they are being hazed when it is happening.

As I stated in my first blog post fraternities were created to get the rich kids away from the poor kids, that is true, but fraternities were created a while ago, and that has evolved, now fraternities welcome people based on how dedicated they are to greek life, and as both of my interviewees told me, hazing happens a lot, but most fraternities see initiation as a celebration of new members, rather than a test or a “haze”.  In fact, Jake told me that the worst thing his fraternity ever did to initiate people was make them solve a puzzle in the dark, which is not very bad compared to the other things that have happened during an initiation to a fraternity.

https://images.complex.com/complex/images/c_limit,w_604/fl_lossy,pg_1,q_auto/s6lzwdmrf7puawqg23xx/fraternity

Initiation to a fraternity

I asked Jake and the other person I interviewed to tell me what happens in order to prevent anything bad happening in a fraternity, and what is done as a punishment to the people in a fraternity. They told me that fraternities can be monitored, they can be dry fraternities, meaning that alcohol is not prohibited, and a few more things that you would expect. A way to stop bad things from happening again, was an “actions have consequences” approach, where depending on how bad something was, there would be punishments from “no parties for the rest of the year”, to expelliation from the fraternity or the school, or for things like the Timothy Piazza case that I talked about in my first post, there can be criminal charges against the other fraternity members. This shows to be careful when in a fraternity and to be careful when looking for a fraternity to join. From these two interviews I can take away that bad things happen because of fraternities, but fraternities are not all bad, as most of them unite people, and show brotherhood, my wise words would be to be careful with what kind of fraternity you are joining.

Ethan Friedman

Original Research

Over the past month, I have been researching the minimum wage issues in Pennsylvania. I’ve conducted surveys among teenagers in Philadelphia. Throughout my research, I’ve discovered many different perspectives on the issue and have come to a conclusion.

When working on issues regarding money, it is important to take other factors into account, such as location, opportunity, and sources of income. When I conducted a survey with students in Philadelphia, I found out that 1 in every 9 students only lives with 1 adult figure.

Source: Google Forms: Original Research Survey

When you only have one source of income which is that adult’s job, it is very difficult to support a family. The population of Pennsylvania is approximately 12.81 million people according to the United States Census Bureau.  That means that about 1.4 million families in Pennsylvania are ran by a single parent. There is clearly a problem in the system if 11% of families can’t afford to live.

Part of being a teenager is spending time with your friends. Whether it be going out for lunch or going ice skating, most activities cost money. According to my survey, most students are unemployed.

This is important because the ability to become a social person, you need to have the opportunity to interact with people. The money would have to come from family.

A majority of students don’t receive money at all from their parents, so that will tie into the future once they do need to get a job and live on their own, they won’t have the skills that they would have had from socializing.

It isn’t ethical for a system to take place where 11% of families are treated unfairly and have no way out. Not every kid who grows up in a minimum wage will have the drive to be a scholarship worthey student. Their families can’t afford college like other families can. The same cycle continues because nobody without a degree can get a well paying job. The system needs a change.

Annotated Bibliography: here

Films go through different types of test to see what content is included in the film. The two test that I will be analyzing is the Bechdel test and Mako Mori test. The Bechdel Test is a test that portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping. The Mako Mori test is a media test that analyzes a film to see If they have at least one female character that gets her own Narrative and does not support a man’s story. The two films that I will be analyzing are Frozen and The Hunger games.

The First Film that I will be analyzing is “The Hunger Games.” The Hunger Games is a film that released on March 23, 2012. This Movie follows a female main character named Katniss Everdeen. This movie takes place in the capital of Panem. The movie is about a survival game that has 12 districts and two teenagers are selected from each district. All the citizens have to watch as the teens fight until only one remains. Katniss has little to rely on other than her hunting skills and sharp instincts in an arena where she must weigh survival against love. This movie fails the Bechdel test because it doesn’t really portray women in a sexual way. It does pass the Mako Mori test because It has a female main character that doesn’t support a man’s story.

The next film that I will be talking about is Frozen. Frozen is an animated film that was created in 2013. The story follows two sisters named Anna and Elsa. Anna must find her sister Elsa because she stormed out of a party. While Anna was searching for her sister, she comes across a Snowman named Olaf and a man named Kristoff. They decide to work together to try and find Elsa. This Movie Fails the Bechdel test because it doesn’t portray women in a sexual way. But it does pass the Mako Mori test because It has a female main character that doesn’t support a man’s story.

The name of my test is called the Love denial test. In order to pass this test, there has to be a female that’s the main protagonist and that female must not fall in love with a male. The hunger games and Frozen both fail this test. The Hunger games fails this test because Katniss is the Female main protagonist in her film, but she falls in love with a guy named Peeta. Frozen passes the test because Anna is the Female main protagonist in her film, but she falls in love with a guy named Kristoff.

Hello readers, if you’ve read my previous post on cigarettes the you’ll know that i’ve put in many hours of research proving to you how bad cigarettes and smoking is. I’ve also been trying to convince you to stop smoking if you already was or to not smoke. If you haven’t read that post here . In that document you can see all of the research I have conducted online and summed up based on the different websites I visited. In there contains facts on lung cancer, chemicals in cigarettes and much more but I wanted more. I wanted to get deeper research and a more human answer not just from online. So what i’ve done over these past weeks is interview 2 doctors asking them questions about smoking and its effects on the human body and why they think it’s so addicting. I also interviewed a dentist who happens to be my friends dad to talk about cigarettes effects on oral health. Here is the interview with a MD. Basically what he talked about in the interview and went over five different questions that I asked him over a period of around 10 minutes and gave me good, thoughtful answers that were very detailed.

The Bechdel Test and Mako Mori Test are tests that measure the gender diversity and/or treatment in movies. The Bechdel test consists of three questions for any chosen movie:  (1) Does it have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man? If the answer isn’t yes to all three questions, the movie doesn’t pass the test. This test mainly focuses on whether or not the female characters within the movie have senses of self and value their individuality apart from the men in their lives. The other test, the Mako Mori test, also asks three simple questions of a movie: (1) Does it have at least one female character; (2) who gets her own narrative arc; (3) that is not about supporting a man’s story? Like the Bechdel test, the movie must pass all three questions in order to pass the test. This test is a measure of whether or not the movie lends its female characters the development and narrative that the male characters receive. These two tests test whether or not a movie displays gender diversity and whether or not it portrays women well enough. They both help us get a gauge on whether or not a movie includes strong women that have lives outside of the male characters. Meeting the criteria that these tests demand is important so that impressionable young (and older) women get to see strong role models in movies to show them that they’re capable and have potential.

The first movie I’ll be reviewing is called Ratatouille. Ratatouille is a well-plotted Pixar movie about a talented rat who loves to cook. Remy the rat is born into a rat colony surrounded by other rats that have no appreciation for divine cuisine. Remy feels like an outsider. He’s pressured to live his life a certain way. He has dreams to become a chef, but his family doesn’t approve at all. He’s pressured to live his life the “rat” way and eat trash instead of cooking. One day, Remy’s rat colony invades a Paris townhome. They get chased away and into the sewers by an old woman. In the panic, Remy gets separated from his family and ends up alone in the sewer. While trying to find his way out, he comes across a window above an extremely fancy French restaurant, which he learns is the restaurant of his late idol, Auguste Gusteau. Remy sees a garbage boy, Linguini, ruining a soup from the window, so he scurries in to fix the soup. The soup ends up getting served and the guests love it. Linguini confronts Remy, making a deal with him that he’ll let Remy cook as long as he gets the credit and Remy hides. Remy ends up hiding underneath Linguini’s chef hat and pulling his hair to control his hands and cook. After they begin to cook together, Linguini realizes that he has control of the restaurant since he’s Gusteau’s son, and he takes the restaurant as his own, kicking out the current owner. Then, a renowned food critic announces he’ll be coming to the restaurant to review it. With the help of his rat friends, Remy cooks Ratatouille for the food critic and he ends up loving the dish. They reveal to the food critic that Remy was the one who cooked his meal. The food critic builds Remy and Linguini their very own restaurant and they both pursue their careers together. As much as I enjoy Ratatouille and remember it fondly from my childhood, it in fact does not pass the Bechdel test. There are two named women in the movie, Collette and Renata. Collette is a chef from Gusteau’s restaurant and Renata is Linguini’s mother, but the two never speak. I think this movie could have passed the Bechdel test by adding another female chef to work alongside Collette. This would have provided a lot of non-man conversation between the two. Ratatouille, however, does pass the Mako Mori test. Collette is a female character who gets her own narrative arc. She grows as a chef and at the end of the movie she gets to work an upgraded main position in a new restaurant.

I made a test that is going to measure the LGBT diversity in movies. My test will consist of two questions: (1) Does the movie have at least 1 canonically LGBT+ person? and (2) Is the movie about said person’s sexuality? An important note about my test is that to pass it, the answer to the first question must be yes and the answer to the second question must be no. I think having diversity within sexualities in movies is very important because it provides role models and exemplars for LGBT youth. I added the second question because I think while sexuality can be as important and unimportant to someone’s sense of self as they want, it’s important to recognize that there’s more to a person than just their sexuality. The movie I chose that passes my test is The Way He Looks. The Way He Looks is a Portuguese Netflix movie about a blind Brazilian boy named Leonardo. Leonardo’s daily life is very simple but difficult as a blind teenager. Every day, his best friend, Giovanna, walks him to and from school. One day, a new boy named Gabriel shows up to Leo’s class. Giovanna and Leo befriend him rather quickly. Soon, Leo takes a romantic liking to Gabriel, and they become closer with time. Gabriel becomes very helpful in assisting Leo considering his disability and protects him from bullies that pick on him for being blind. Eventually, Leo can’t hold back anymore confesses his love for Gabriel to Giovanna, who supports him and encourages Gabriel to go confront Leo. This confrontation results in the start of a relationship. This movie has in fact two canonically LGBT characters (who are both Brazilian which is a bonus for diversity). While this movie is advertised as a romance movie, it mainly focuses on navigating adolescence and love while having a disability. This movie includes two LGBT characters and it isn’t a movie solely about sexuality.

Justine Koffi

Ms.Giknis

English 9

18 March 2018

There’s a Way To Change

For this portion of my You and The World Project, I was meant to do a survey, interview, or  a field observation. I planned to have an interview with the communications director at the G.E.M.S program. I mentioned them in my last post, click here for it. I planned to have my interview Monday afternoon, during advisory, but it had to be rescheduled for the next day. The same thing kept happening until thursday which was the last day I had the time to conduct the interview. I forgot about the interview which was my fault. Overall, there was fault on both sides which resulting in me not having the interview I needed for this part of the project. Instead, I decided to further my research.

For my first post, I looked into the statistics. I found some horrible facts about the children we are losing to this industry and how much they are suffering on a daily. Can you believe that some kids are sold 5-6 times a day? Vulnerable children are targeted, ages 11-17 all the time and they are put into this horrendous life. Since I found very interesting information about the general industry of child sex trafficking, for the second post, I decided to look into some specific stories of women who were sold into the sex industry as children. I found some more surprising information.

First, I found the site Human Trafficking Survivor. The girl in the account said she was raped about 43,200 times, which I found hard to believe until I really read and thought about it. Karla, the woman bravely speaking out about her past, said she was abused since she was five by a close relative. She felt rejected by her mother, and the overall dynamic of her family was dysfunctional. When she was twelve, she was pursued by a man who spoke nice and had a fast car that she liked. They spoke, and exchanged numbers. He started talking to her as a friend and Karla was excited. They met up again and he brought a different red car that she liked a lot. From there, she recalls seeing red flags everywhere. She was convinced to go stay with him since her mom locked her out one night. The next couple months, he shows her kindness and gave her everything she wasn’t getting at home. He then started telling her about the pimping business and how she must act and speak for her to get money for him. He explained the positions to her and how much money she must earn. "I started at 10 a.m. and finished at midnight. We were in Guadalajara for a week. Do the math. Twenty per day for a week. Some men would laugh at me because I was crying. I had to close my eyes so that that I wouldn't see what they were doing to me, so that I wouldn't feel anything," Karla says. They moved to other cities where she was still expected to see about 20 men a day, seven days a week. There was even a day she thought she would escape her unfortunate circumstances when a police officer came in to one hotel known for prostitution. Instead, the officer forced them to do things too. Karla got pregnant at 15 years old and gave birth to a girl. The baby girl was now threatened if Karla didn’t fulfill her duties as a prostitute. She was rescued in 2008 during an anti-trafficking operation. She was 16 at the time. She is now 23 and a speaker and advocate against sex trafficking. She says,  "These minors are being abducted, lured, and yanked away from their families. Don't just listen to me. You need to learn about what happened to me and take the blindfold off your eyes." I think it’s very important to letr Karla’s story sink in and reflect on it. Just as I said in my first post, vulnerable children are being pursued by predators and being taken away from their homes. It’s important to take into account that this could happen to anyone and that we should be doing more as a community to speak out and try to prevent it.

In addition, Karla’s story was fascinating to me, especially the part about the corrupt police officers, so I started to look into the police involvement in child sex trafficking. I looked into this article about police help with the issue at hand. From this post, I found that a lot of the time, police arrest sex trafficking  victims on a prostitution charge in which they are threatened to be prosecuted, which obviously isn’t working very well. The girls, who are victims, are held accountable for their circumstances instead of the people who are actually the problem which doesn’t seem fair to me. They don’t seem to take into account that the girls need help. They just see a crime that someone has to pay for.

In conclusion, although I wasn’t able to conduct the interview, I found some more shocking facts about the sex trafficking industry.

My research began with deciding who I wanted to interview. I didn’t have any names but I knew that I wanted to interview someone who knew about pesticides, someone who knew about animal welfare, and someone who knew about the environmental impact of both. Who I ended up interviewing was a Regional Pesticide Expert for the EPA, a Hub Manager for the PASA, and the manager of an Animal Welfare Approved slaughterhouse. Each and every one of these contacts shined a different light on the broad topic of agriculture. The light was positive, negative and sometimes just neutral, but still always educational and informative. Yes, industrial farming and agriculture are two very broad topics, so to be able to interview everyone I wanted to was not exactly a reasonable feat - especially as a high school student. But that just made the information I learned even more valuable.

My first contact was Mr. John Butler, a Regional Pesticide Expert for the Environmental Protection Agency. Before my conversation with him, I believed that pesticidal use - while significantly more restricted than in the past - was still generally unmonitored and extreme environmental damage was a common occurrence. During my conversation with him I learned extensive information on the processes that farmers have to go through in order to be authorized for pesticide use. Not only do they have to receive a pesticide license - which requires rigorous tests and constant inspections - but they also have to follow strict codes on worker safety, amounts of chemicals used, and disposal of said chemicals. In fact in 2017 alone, there were around 41,000 inspections in the Mid-Atlantic region with extremely rare cases of violations - the majority of which were met with a monetary penalty. And while a monetary penalty may not seem like a very influential punishment, in the already risky business of agriculture any loss of money can be immensely detrimental to a farmer.

[Below are the notes I took during our conversation.]

Now I would be lying if I said I had done thorough research before my second interview. A tired baked potato of a human being I was barely awake as I typed my questions and so I cannot complain when at first I was disappointed as my second contact also seemed to be focused on pesticides. However as I talked with them, I quickly realized that while at the EPA Mr. Butler focused on the procedures and rules following pesticide use, this contact’s organization worked to educate and support small farmers when it came to sustainable agriculture - and that included making sure their workers were wearing proper safety protection when working with pesticides.

I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat at this point so I’ll just tell you. My second contact was Mr. Aaron de Long from the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. The P.A.S.A. is an organization of farmers, for farmers. They work to provide educational opportunities for smaller farming operations in order to make sustainable farming and planting more accessible to them. Farmers communicate techniques and resources with one another all while working together to create a sustainable and profitable agricultural community. As a former farmer and the current Delaware Valley Hub Manager for P.A.S.A, Mr. de Long manages programming for and with dairy farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania. A helpful and friendly resource, we discussed the programs he runs, one of which is a push for grass-based dairy farming.

[Below are the notes I took during our conversation.]

I’m sure you’re confused at this point. You’re going, “Wait a second. All cows eat grass - why would there need to be a specification for grass-based dairy farming?” Hold on to your brain because I’m about to blow your mind.

Yes - all cows eat grass. However, that does not mean they are all fed grass. Unless it says so on the label, the majority of bovine produce is sourced from grain-fed cattle. Grain-feeding cattle is not uncommon, but it is also not natural, not healthy for the animal and not healthy for the environment. Don’t forget that cows produce milk and also eventually become the burger on your plate, which means that whatever unhealthy life the cow lived is now becoming your life - you are what you eat.

In fact, only 2 to 3% of cattle are actually grass-fed while the rest are confined to feed-lots and fed grain and corn.

During his interview, Mr. de Long mentioned a few other resources that I could contact and later continued to be a helpful resource by giving me the contact information of a Ms. Helen Kollar - McArthur.

Ms. Helen Kollar-McArthur is the manager of Rising Spring Meat Company. RSMC’s official mission statement is “to provide high quality meat processing services to local farmers in Pennsylvania.” My first question was, why do local farmers need high quality processing services? It turns out that, in the agriculture industry, the process of turning cattle into meat is fraught with cases of butchers keeping portions of meat for themselves or even returning the wrong meat to their customer. As a way to combat that and create a more trustworthy business, RSMC has a unique identification system that tracks an animal throughout the entire process and ensures that all parts of the product are returned to the farmer. And, although it may seem unlikely at first glance, RSMC is a slaughterhouse that is extremely conscious of the welfare of their animals. According to Ms. Kollar-McArthur, they RSMC is Animal Welfare Approved as are the majority of the farmers that they work with.

Now all of this information I had to learn through extensive interviews, online research, and face-to-face encounters with individual passionate about industrial farming. If it was so difficult for me to find even basic information on my own issue - I could not help but wonder how an ordinary individual viewed my issue. So, I created a survey. And while I have only received 22 responses so far, they are all so varied in opinion and levels of knowledge they tell a story I could never research.

For each of my questions (the majority of which were multiple-choice), my options for responses were usually based on a scale of complete care and knowledge to no interest and no knowledge. Usually I received a combination of the two. However the most interesting question was my open-ended one that asked “If so, what do you know about them (pesticides and GMOs)? Please feel free to answer in as much detail as possible.” Some were adamant that pesticides were not harmful - they were over-exaggerated and were in fact completely safe. Some insisted that all pesticides were harmful and said that they tried to avoid them as much as possible. And many of them just said “Idk.”

One grows when they finally see reality. I have done a lot of research and have been  coming up with my solution to better make the situation for the homeless. Through my research I have seen things that have given me a whole different perspective of how I see the homeless now since my Slate Blog #1. In Slate Blog #1 I talked mostly focused on the misconceptions about homeless people. How they are seen as lazy, drug addicts, and people who take advantage of their situation. I focused only on how they were viewed, treated, and reasons why they were in the situation they were in. Never did I focus on how their life was like before they came into the situation they are in. I never mentioned the true definition of homelessness for me. Most people would think about why the homeless  didn’t they just go to homeless shelters instead of staying outside. I was no different from these people. I have better prepared myself by making myself more opened minded and even went out to find information from a person who has indeed experienced homelessness. I researched more about the reasons why people go homeless and even went deeper with it. I also found possible reasons why people don’t go and stay in homeless shelters. With the information I have gathered I came up with my own definition of what it means to be homeless.

What does it mean to be homeless? For me being homeless isn’t just not having a place to live, but you can also be considered homeless if you have a place to live but you can’t really keep up with the rent or you can maintain yourself or your family, also fleeing from domestic violence can be considered homelessness. For me this is what it means to be homeless, for others there’s more to it. After you see what I have gathered here, you can up with your own definition of being truly homeless. In Slate Blog #1 I got most of my info from a site that was reliable but it was updated in 2015, I recently got new information from a site that was recently updated in 2017. The site was a pdf file of The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, it gave me a lot of updated facts in 2017 about the homeless. When going through it I found out that 553,742 people were experiencing homelessness in the U.S, 65% of the people that were homeless were in shelters or had housing support while the other 35% were unsheltered. 61% of the homeless are men while 39% were women. Race is something that shocks many of us because each race is given a stereotype and many believe them, people believe that hispanics and blacks are more prone to becoming homeless but in reality whites have a higher chance of becoming homeless. 47% of the homeless population is white, 41% are black, 22% are latino or hispanic and 7% identified as multiracial.

For many of us when we hear the word homeless we think of someone lazy and is a drug addict who just doesn’t want to work and keep things easy for themselves. The truth is that this isn’t the case for many of the homeless. It’s different from what we hear and it’s hard when you are in this situation and you have to change your life around. To get a better perspective i went to the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission and got the chance to interview Eric who was homeless and now he helps other homeless people turn their lives around. This homeless shelter is located in 1010, 302 N 13th St, Philadelphia, PA 19107. In this interview I wanted to get a better insight from someone who was homeless to understand the truth of how some people become homeless and how their experience was. I wanted to hear Eric’s opinion of how he feels about the stereotypes about the homeless and what he would do to change this problem. Of course, before I asked him these questions I had to first hear his story. This is the document of my questions.

My inquiry was an interview and my questions were answered in a very detail way by Eric because I could see what he said and feel what he felt. Eric helped me better inform me about the homeless by telling me about how he got in the situation of being homeless, telling me his experience, and how he got out of that situation. He proved my point of the misconception of homeless people because they are people who were just in the hard times in life, some got beaten down by life, and others picked themselves up.

There is homeless people that are in the street because of mental illnesses. These are the people that need a lot of support, about 25% of the homeless population suffer from mental illnesses. You may be asking yourself, why didn’t they just get support when they were with their friends and families? The reason is that they lose their communication with friends and family because of their delusional thinking. When this happens they are left all alone and unable to take good care of themselves because they lack sustainability of employment. Many others have mental illnesses after they become homeless, that is because the fact that they are in the situation that they are in stresses them, encourages anxiety, causes fear, depression, causes them to sleep less, and this eventually leads up to drug abuse. It’s sad but the truth is that people with mental illnesses experience homelessness for a longer time when compared with someone who doesn’t suffer from mental illnesses. Domestic violence is the reason 75% of women experiencing homeless have mental illnesses. Hospitals and prisons have a big role of why there’s people with mental illnesses in the streets because they release them into the streets knowing their situation and that many of these people don’t have family to go to.

There’s many homeless people in the streets and many of us just wonder to ourselves, why don’t they just go to a homeless shelter? The truth is there’s reasons why many homeless people don’t go to shelters and one of them is that many homeless people can’t bring their best pals around with them, meaning there is no pets allowed in the homeless shelters because of the lack of resources. Many homeless people don’t want to give away their best friend who has been loyal to them.

Many homeless people don’t go to shelters to avoid giving their best friend away.

Another reason is because homeless shelters deny the entry to people who suffer from mental illnesses because they can be a threat to others. I believe that they should be allowed in because all they need is somebody to talk to and what better people than the people who are experiencing the same problem these people with mental illnesses are experiencing. Many people also don’t go to homeless shelters because they don’t let people with parasites, lice, and bedbugs because they can spread and ruin the shelter. Others don’t go at the fear that they could be raped or assaulted.

Many people are afraid of going to shelters because they could be raped or assaulted.

Some people know that they have a disease that can easily spread and they decide to stay away from shelters to not spread it and they can’t even get in the shelters because they deny entry to people with diseases. A very high reason why people don’t go to shelters because they can’t be helped with their drug abuse. The main reason why people don’t go to shelters is because of the lack of available beds. There is many more reasons why people don’t go to shelters but you can check more out at this site (where I got my information). Many of the homeless people are in shelters and the people with mental illnesses and drug addictions are left in the streets and this is what caused the stereotypes of homeless people because that’s all we get to see.

Now that I have done some research I can give my opinion on how I truly see the homeless. I believe that the homeless are people who were beaten down by life and that does who stay homeless haven’t necessarily given up but they don't feel motivated because they are alone. But, for the people that picked themselves up, they were motivated at the fact that they wanted to help their family, prove people wrong about them, or both. There’s many things I still wonder about, I wonder If with the help of others, we will be able to end poverty? For Slate Post #3 for change, I am thinking about going out to the streets and telling all the homeless people I see that they aren’t alone and that me, others, and god support them. I will give them food and money so that they can start their life again. They don’t need much support, they just need a boost. One only cannot make change but one and others can.

Bibliography

   The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Women’s Mental Health

Moriah Lahr

3/14/18

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lJ6B8PTnw_vgVb6aBkCLC_DRJA1BjmPpT_-KwdDTSdg/edit

I want to focus on the topic of the effect of sexual objectification on women’s mental health. I experience sexual objectification daily. Whether it’s seeing a music video of half naked girls dancing around a guy or getting cat called on my own block. Both which can make me feel bad about myself. A goal I have in researching this topic is to be educated on the different types of sexual objectification and the different health issues it can cause. I want to help make a change by getting women’s different point of views and stories of being objectified and getting the word out there to people who can’t see that it’s a problem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3673099/Man-confesses-checking-mediocre-women-Reddit-good-deed.html

This woman is shown walking past a man while he looks back at her curves. What this photo actually came from was a website that had a married man saying he checks out mediocre women to “compliment them” as if we enjoy being gaped at.

I am interested in this topic because as a woman in this culture, I have been objectified many times in many different ways. This topic matters to me because I have many friends who have been cat called or checked out etc. and I know first hand how scary it feels to me and my friends. When I’m out with my friends, we have to talk about what if a guy comes up to us and starts checking us out and saying creepy things to us. We came to a conclusion that if that happens, we’ll just say we’re a couple. I think it’s truly sad that girls at a young age are so scared to just walk outside because we get looked at and taunted. Some men even think checking out girls are a compliment when it really makes us feel worse about ourselves. “We are not outside for your benefit. We do not look in the mirror every morning hoping this outfit will get a guy to silently follow us down the street for five minutes after saying, “God bless you mami… Damn.””

http://www.eatthedamncake.com/2010/06/14/getting-checked-out-by-guys-with-wives/

This woman is being showed in the camera view in an angle that only shows her body and shows two guys looking at her body. This shows how much women’s bodies are sexualized and lusted over. It’s showing her body as if she doesn’t have a face or a personality.

In the research I found, I learned that sexual objectification comes in many forms such as catcalling, getting checked out, sexual assault, rape, pornography, television, etc. These things can cause not only men to look at women as objects but cause women to look at themselves as objects and make them want to look a certain way to fit into the cultures view of a “perfect body”. This causes mental health issues such as body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, etc. It is important for people to know about this and be aware of it because some men are raised to think it’s okay to objectify and they just don’t know any better. Knowing the research behind it might really change the way we are looked at and the way we look at ourselves. The details in my research that can educate readers is what the different types of objectification there are because some people might not even be able to realize it when they see it or do it.

http://websterjournal.com/2014/12/01/catcalls-arent-compliments/

This photo shows a woman that is covering up and looking insecure as people are cat-calling her all around. This happens on a daily basis to women. Mens calls make us feel insecure like all we are is a body.

My research so far has impacted my understanding of sexual objectification because I never really focused on looking at the mental health side of things and how it affects people. Now I can see better why me and some of my friends have the self image issues that we have. I’m objectified on a daily basis so I feel like this is a personal topic that I have actual experience to backup my claims with.

effects on well-being

“The present research suggests that stranger harassment (i.e., experiencing unwanted sexual attention from strangers in public) is a frequent experience for young adult women, and that it has negative implications for their well-being. First, stranger harassment was positively related to self-objectification. This was true for women who coped with stranger harassment using common strategies (passive, self-blame, or benign), but not for women who used an uncommon, active coping strategy (e.g., confronting the harasser). Second, stranger harassment experiences and self-objectification were positively related to women's fear of and perceived risk of rape. Further, women who feared rape were more likely to restrict their freedom of movement. In concert, the findings suggest that stranger harassment may have both direct and indirect negative effects on women's lives, and that it is a phenomenon worthy of future research. “

Women perceive themselves as objects

“girls and women are typically acculturated to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves. This perspective on self can lead to habitual body monitoring, which, in turn, can increase women's opportunities for shame and anxiety, reduce opportunities for peak motivational states, and diminish awareness of internal bodily states.”

This says that women see themselves the way other people view them and if they are viewed like objects that’s how we’ll see ourselves as.

Graph of psychological consequences  

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This image shows what sexual objectification can lead to. It’s like a domino affect where once one thing happens there’s a trail of bad things happening after it.

I gathered surveys from 3 different female SLA students. Some new information i found is that ⅔ of them were around my age and ⅓ was an older teen. I learned that people experience similar things such as getting cat called and feeling extremely uncomfortable. One girl said that being cat called is one of the most terrifying experiences she has, I can relate to  his because for me it also sparks a lot of anxiety when I’m being sexually objectified.

Also, 100% of the people who answered the survey say that they deal w mental health issues. This proves my point that sexual objectification affects the mental health of females. I asked them what they think we can do to end this issue, and the main response was to just bring awareness and show people this is what’s happening to you and how it makes you feel as a woman.

What's really the best for you?

In my previous post I spoke about what people's food actually contains and how it affect their body. In my post I explained how meat can have a negative impact on your body. When I wrote my first post, it was based on the documentary What The Food and it glorified being vegan, but I wanted to personally find if being vegan is as good as it seems to be.     

To find my original research i decided to do interviews to get different perspectives on being vegan. I did three different interviews. The first interview I did was Gabe Sosa he is the father to one of my classmates, Miranda Sosa. He responded to  my question via email. When I did get a response I was shocked because I didn’t think he would say those things. Here are my following questions:

Q: What was the reasoning behind you becoming vegan?

A:I became a vegan because I was having health issue.

Q: Do you believe that becoming vegan was a drastic change?

A:I think that for some people it can be a drastic change for them, I know how to cook so for me it was just about making good wholesome food. So my instead of eating meat and dairy products I made substitutions. For example, for my cereal in the morning I used Almond milk, (has the same flavor of milk) and for meat products I used beans and made beef patties. For me it was not a drastic change. (for my kids it was, because they don’t like good food)

Q:What is the hardest part of being vegan?

A:The hardest part was taking the time to plan out your meals, For example I work a lot on the road, so I had to makes sure I have food to eat. A lot of food has animal products in it. So I could not eat it. it hard because you can’t just run into McDonalds and get some fires. Because they have beef flavoring on them so a vegan cannot eat there, and just so you know a lot of fast food does not have Vegan options.

Q: How much has being vegan benefited you?

A:I feel that being a vegan has not benefited me as much as it would have any other person. I think that if someone became vegan it would benefit them a lot more than it did me.

Q:·  Have you seen a change in your health after changing your diet?

A:My health has declined even after 3 months of being a vegan, as my issues are not with what goes in my body but what stays in my body. My blood holds on to too much iron in the blood, and you can get a lot of iron from Lentils, spinach and other vegetables (that I have been eating a lot of) along with meat. So I think that eating more of these vegetables might have hurt me as much as eating meat.

After reading his answers I was surprised but he had a valid reason why being vegan didn’t work for him. By searching on the internet I believe that Mr. Sosa might have a disease known as Hemochromatosis. This is when you have iron overload causing it to affect your heart, liver, and other organs. To manage with this disease doctors advise you to stay away from high contents of iron or vitamin C and vegetables are full of those.  When Mr. Sosa became vegan his body continued to absorb an excess amount of iron. He said that he consumed a lot of green leafy foods such as spinach, but spinach contains more iron than red meat.

Which one is really good for you?

My next two interviews they were completely different from Mr. Sosa. I got in touch with my friend Nile Shareef-Trudeau because her and her family are vegan. I sent her my questions and she interviewed herself and her mother because this was the only way the questions could be answered at the time. This is the interview for Nile’s mom and this is Nile’s. Nile and her mother believe that being vegan is the epitome of being healthy, unlike Mr. Sosa because of his condition.

By doing both interviews I get different perspectives of being a vegan. I learned that being vegan isn’t meant for everyone. I also learned this by changing my food habits for six weeks. For the last part of my project I decided to not to eat meat for six weeks. I broke the six weeks into three sections. For the first two weeks I was a pescatarian which means that the only meat I could eat was seafood. Then the next two weeks, I was a vegetarian, and the last two weeks I was a vegan. During the six weeks I gained 10 pounds because I wasn’t eating properly. The hardest part wasn’t the fact that I wasn’t eating meat, but that most of the time I was hungry unless I did a meal prep. When I was vegan (which I did not continue for two weeks) I learned in order for me not to starve I would have to carry food with me, everywhere I go because there were never any vegan options. Instead of me being vegan I went back to eating dairy and fish.

My annotated bibliography

 Discovering new research about The Dream Act

  I did more research and i also found out that when Trump decided to end the DACA, he put an expiration date on the legal protections granted to roughly 800,000 people known as "DREAMers," who entered the country illegally as children, meaning 800,000 children getting punished for something they didn't do, and that's really unfair for the children. After Trump called the congress to act, Barack Obama called the decision "cruel" and "self-defeating” he also said "Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn't threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us.", so he's just basically saying that he should not deport this children and maybe ruined their future, and also they aren't doing anything thats hurting us now or in the future.

On top of all of this new research i decided to go out and do my own research. I decided to do an interview, It was kind of hard to find someone to interview but in the end I found someone, and the person is my soccer coach his name is Sammy. When we did our interview i asked five questions. I decided to interview him because he's the one that told me about the dream act, and also he has family the are apart of the dream act. Let’s take a look at the questions and answers...  

Q-What do you know about The Dream Act?

A-”From what I know about it is a bill that would allow undocumented immigrant who were brought in at a young age with their parents a way to gain legal status in the United States”

Q-How do you feel about it?

access to. These kids are the future of this country and the need a chance to be able to make a better future for themselves and their family”

Q-Why do you think the Congress won't make The Dream Act a law?

A-”With how divided and split congress is with political parties I feel that there isn’t much a chance for The Dream Act to pass. I’ve been hearing about this bill for many years and it is still somehow close to passing. With the president we have in office right now I feel that we’re further away than ever to getting The Dream Act to pass.”

Q-How would you feel if you or your family were apart of the dream act?

A-”I do have some family members that are affected by The Dream Act. It really saddens me that there are so many children and young adults in this country that aren’t able to live their lives comfortably in this country through the actions of their parents. They didn't have much of a choice in coming to this country at such a young age yet they are being punished for it. I feel that this bill would be able to provide them with what they need in order to be productive members of our society.”

Q-What changes would you make for The Dream Act?

A-”The Dream Act does not do much for the parents of these young immigrants. If I would make any changes to this bill it would be to help the parents get a pathway to legal status in this country. These kids needs their parents together and I have seen firsthand the devastation when a parent is deported from the country and how it affects the kids.”

      One thing that really stood out to me when I did this interview with Coach Sammy is when he started talking about how parents should be involved in the dream act, and I totally agree with him because if the parents get deported and the kids are not, then that's just going to hurt the kids, because I’m sure that there isn't any kid in this world that wants to live with their parents far apart from them.

    After speaking to Coach Sammy I got a better understanding about what should be added to the dream act, and why the congress won't pass this bill.