Sexual Orientation

After watching the video on Brendan Burke, I really started thinking about different sexual orientations. I had never really been faced with sexual orientation other than heterosexual orientation growing up. I come from a small town, where no one really talked about it. I was talking about this the other day with my sisters, and we could actually name one person from each of our graduation classes' who had recently come out. None of them came out during school; I imagine this is because of the way they would be treated and mocked. When you actually think about it, this is really sad. People live a life hiding who they really are. I'm not saying that I agree with homosexuality, but I guess you might say I accept it. I am a Christian, and I have grown up learning it is wrong to be gay. I have often wondered though, this might sound ignorant, but how do people become gay? Is there a "gay" gene? Is it a choice? Could it sometimes just be a cry for attention? Any way, I'm not one to judge someone based on their sexual orientation, I don't think this makes them a bad person, or means they will inevitably go to Hell as some people suggest. I think that what relationships people have is their own business, and as long as they are not publicly displaying their affection in inappropriate ways, heterosexual or homosexual, I don't really think it is anyone else's business to judge them.

Relationships

George Levinger came up with a theory to explain the lifespan of a relationship called the ABC(DE) model. The ABC(DE) acronym stands for Attraction, Building, Continuation, Deterioration, and Ending. In relating this to my own relationship with my boyfriend, I would consider the attraction stage as when we would hang out together with mutual friends. It was always exciting to hang out with friends, because we knew we would get to see each other. This stage makes me think of having a 'crush' on each other. The building stage would be when we actually started dating. We chose to make a commitment to each other, in which we could build a relationship out of. In this stage I think of the difference between having a 'crush' and actually calling him my boyfriend. In the continuation stage, this is where the decision is made to keep committed to each other; the daily desire I feel to continue my relationship with him. It is this stage that I would say we're going through now, but in a more difficult way than I would think the continuation stage has to be. As we now live three hours apart, and will for at least the next two years, it really becomes a daily commitment to work to keep our relationship strong. The deterioration stage is when one of the partners no longer wants to remain in the relationship. As this obviously hasn't happened with my current relationship, I will relate it to my past experiences. In one past relationship this occurred with the build up of disagreements and differences, in which we both decided outweighed the benefits of our relationship, (to relate to the social exchange theory), in which case lead to the ending stage where we parted ways.

Attraction

In class we did an activity about what we find attractive. For short-term relationships the list generally consisted of physical appearance attributions, while for the long-term relationships the list was comprised of more values and personality traits. I think that for the most part this is pretty right on, but I do think there is more to long-term relationship attraction. I think that to get to the long term relationship, there has to be a little bit of the short-term attraction features. This might sound shallow, but I think that to maintain a long-term relationship there has to be some physical attraction. Personality and values are much more important, but I don't think that two people can spend there whole life together while they try to convince themselves of their outward attraction towards each other. I think it could cause some fidelity issues if you aren't physically attracted to your husband or wife. For example if a wife doesn't think her husband is good-looking, she might be more likely to notice all the attractive men around her and start wishing her husband looked more like "that" man, and I would think that would put some strain on a relationship. Simply put, I wouldn't want to be with someone who wasn't attracted to me, because that would not make me feel good about myself in my relationship. My long-term relationship list would consist of traits such as, respectful, supportive, accepting, motivated and excited to do something with his life, makes me laugh, leads a healthy and active lifestyle, someone who I can have fun with and honestly, at least as tall as me and attractive. He doesn't have to look like Brad Pitt or Taylor Lautner, but just attractive in my eyes. Therefore, while it's is very important to be attracted to your partner's inward traits and personality, it is also important to be attracted to your partner physically.

Beauty

We watched this video last semester in my EDIT class, and I thought it was incredibly sad that so much effort is put into changing someones face before use in advertising. This girl doesn't even look like the same person from the before and after pictures. If it were me, I would feel so self-conscious about my looks even though I was put on a huge billboard, because it wouldn't be me. I wouldn't feel good about how I look, because they had to "fix" me before I was an attractive enough model. They thickened her hair, made her eyes bigger, smoothed out her skin, elongated her neck and then thinned her out. I think that putting on make-up is one thing, yes sometimes that too can be extreme, but when advertisers actually start using computers to modify someones face, that's when it goes too far, and the models start to look fake. This gives society the idea that some women are this beautiful, and girls should strive to look like this, however, it's impossible!

The Changing Definition of Beauty

I thought these pictures were really interesting. Christie Brinkley's career began in the 1970's and Cindy Crawford was one of the most popular models during the 1980's and 1990's. In comparing these two women with models today, we are able to see just how much thinner our supermodels have become. The two models in the bottom pictures look dangerously skinny. It is no wonder why so many girls suffer from eating disorders when the women who are representing ideal beauty are stick thin. I really hope that one day soon, media and society in general will come to the realization that this expectation of women is unhealthy and completely unrealistic. Honestly, comparing the two pictures, I would way rather look like a model from the 1980's, and from my understanding, it seems like on average men are more attracted to curvy women than the severely underweight women with their bones sticking out.

Gender

In class we did an activity where we selected some well-known people who represent the ideal of each femininity and masculinity. Our list for masculinity included Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Will Smith. For femininity, our list consisted of Michelle Obama, Betty White, Lady Gaga and Marilyn Monroe. I thought it was really amusing how much the lists differed from each other. The men are all middle aged, successful, fathers (except George Clooney), and for lack of a better term, Hollywood hunks. If we then take a look at the ideals of feminism we range from Lady Gaga to Betty White. We have a combination of sex symbols and mothers; young, old, and in between; singers, actresses and a political/motherly figure. I think that each one of the women we came up with have good reason to be considered ideals of feminism. Lady Gaga and Marilyn Monroe are sex-symbols, confident and hugely successful. Michelle Obama brings the more ideal mother and wife characteristics. Lastly Betty White is humorous and successful even at 90 years old.
Why is there such diversity in what is considered feminine, while masculinity tends to be characterised fairly similarly? In my opinion, I think that society's definition of masculinity is in a way more so clear-cut than femininity, or in other words, the spectrum of ideal femininity is much broader than that of masculinity. I think that at one end of the spectrum for females is the sexy, third-wave feminists; while at the other end is the motherly, more proper women. While for men it seems like they can have characteristics from both ends; they can be hunky fathers.

Chlidren being Influenced

In class we watched a video called Sexy Inc.: Our Children Under Influence. While I was watching the video, I realized that I, along with many others I would imagine, do not even realize how much we are influenced by what we see, and how surprisingly easy it is for people's construal of reality to be altered. For instance at one point in the video the speaker said something about "tank tops with spaghetti straps," and I caught myself making fun of that statement in my head thinking like "Oh no, not spaghetti straps!" Then I realized that, I have probably just been influenced by society into thinking this way, because when I actually stop and think about it, a lot of spaghetti strap tops don't have very much material to them and don't cover much.
Also I think children need to have more parental guidance on such issues raised in the video, such as what is appropriate to wear, relationships, and other such behaviour. It seems to me like parents either must be getting a lot more lenient on children, or I had really strict parents. For example, I don't know how girls are even let out of the house in the clothes they wear, because if I came out of my room wearing something my dad didn't like, he would straight up tell me to go change. Also when they were talking about such young girls getting involved in sexual activity at such a young age, first of all it makes me really worried to ever have kids, but then I start thinking where are their parents, and how are such young children getting into this, because when I was 11 or 12 I didn't even know or want to know about most of the things they were talking about. Another example, when I was eight years old I specifically remember telling my best friend you do not need a man to get pregnant. As I was a few years younger than the stories from the video, I clearly just had no idea about anything to do with sex, while now 12 year olds are thinking sex is all dating relationships are about. That just completely shocks me. I really think however that parents aren't giving enough attention to their kids, so kids turn to other role models, such as relationships portrayed in the media, or older teens in their schools even. Or, parents may give their children too much attention, such as the children in TV shows such as Toddlers and Tiara's or Dance Mom's for example. These little girls look like miniature women. They wear as much make-up, skimpy clothes, and then they even try to perform like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga. I think that takes it way too far. I've danced my whole life, so when I was younger I got to wear cute costumes and make-up, but I knew that it was only on special days when I had a competition, and my mom didn't try to turn me into a mini version of a woman or choreograph inappropriate routines, and I still loved it. Below is an example of one of the routines the dancers (approximate ages are 8-11) off of Dance Mom's did at competition. It was incredibly inappropriate. I also posted one of Lady Gaga's music videos. Lady Gaga is probably one of Music's biggest pop stars right now, and with role models like her, it is no wonder children want to dance and dress sexy.

Fragile

After watching Brene Brown's TED talk, I was reminded of this song. I actually choreographed a dance to Delta Goodrem's song Fragile in 2010, which I thought would be more interesting than just posting the song to listen to. At about 2 minutes and 20 seconds into the song, it says:

  If people can see right through my eyes

Like an open door that I can't disguise

I won't be afraid from the tears I cry

I'll not run I'll not hide this is how I feel inside

A little Fragile

This part I especially related to Brene Brown's talk. She talked about having the courage to be imperfect. I feel like this part of the song means that you can't be afraid to let people see who you really are; not being embarrassed if other people see your pain, but rather embracing feelings of vulnerability by letting our true selves and feelings be seen. Through this, we will achieve personal growth and acceptance of ourselves, through which we will ultimately be able to live fuller lives.