Well the last few classes have kind of been all-over the place, bringing the concepts that we learned about toegether and connecting all the loose strings. Some of the things that I found to be the most interesting were 1. sociologically speaking married men are the happiest and married women are the unhappiest. This again completely contradicts what society pushes on us-based on stereotypes and 'norms' you would think that all married women are happy because they have a 'protector' and someone to look after, whereas men would be unhappy with their 'ball and chain' lifestyle. This statistic alone shows how completely unreal media portrayals are. This class combined with my message analysis and mass media class have all worked really well together to make me absolutely disgusted with the media, hah i mean all they show us are unrealistic portrayals of the 'ideal' in an attempt to make us so insecure with who we are that we base our sense of worth on materialistic things. Without the media's influence I think gender issues would be much less prevalent-especially in younger generations. I mean in everyday life i doubt kids would learn even a quarter of what they learn about gender stereotypes in a 1/2 hr of disney channel tv. the notions are so ingrained that children learn and practice them without question. Like "what a girl wants' showed, these media messages are affecting kids at younger and younger ages. Since when is it ok for 10-12 yr olds to be worried about what they look like or godforbid feel pressured to have sex? I think that's absolutely sick and makes me terrified to ever have children, because like we said I don't think there's anyway to shelter them from that and its only getting worse. i know this is pretty unrealistic but i really wish more people would just start living their own lives and basing success or happiness on their own standards instead of constantly comparing themselves to people on tv or in magazines. Granted this is probably just my own personal experience but I know that without the media i wouldnt even know half of the gender stereotypes that are out there, just because they simply don't really exist. For example, i wouldn't feel pressured to be a size 2, becuase in realife girls that skinny generally look unhealthy. The roles of people in relationships is also dictacted by the media- relationships don't work the way they do on TV but where else do we learn how they work? Unless you have good personal role-models people base their standards on TV instead of navigating the world for themselves and figuring out how it actually works. I know i don't have any answers and am just reiderating what we discussed in class, but i just cant get over how much people base their lives on, and trust the media with things that are so wholly personal.