food for thought.

The pressure of the cosmetic industry.

Why do we let it affect us?  Due to the strong commercial advertising from many beauty companies, many women have very low self-esteem.  The media expects bodily perfection, which is near impossible for women to attain and that does not go over well for many of them.  Girls resort to “solutions” such as choosing to not eat, overwork themselves at the gym, buying the best of the best makeup, etc.  Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty is one solution to this problem that has already been put in place.  We could localize the target audience to just TCU female students, and perhaps start an educational seminar or at least play the videos that Dove has already created that many girls have not seen before.  This was my topic for Paper 2, and I feel very educated in this to make this my top choice for the collaborative proposal topic.

Parking at TCU.

This is definitely a problem for the entire TCU body, including both students and faculty/staff.  Parking tickets are given out constantly, and the high rates of such little mistakes are very frustrating.  TCU keeps building more dorms and other buildings, but these new entities are taking parking lots away, but nothing else is being created in replace of them.  There are two very small lots for all of main campus parking that are always full, and freshman parking is about a 15-minute walk away from some dorms, such as mine in Clark.  I think the solution to this needs to be a parking garage.  Due to the fact that we are a small school placed in the middle of Fort Worth, we can’t exactly expand outward, we can only expand upward.  I understand that there are risks such as rape and other sort of violence that is generally associated with parking garages, but there could easily be some sort of escort service, similar to Froggie 5-0. One thing for sure though is the fact that this does need to change, and soon.

The plus/minus system.

In cases, the plus/minus system can be a good thing, but it also messes up the GPA scale.  The most noticeable thing that many students at TCU don’t like about this system is the fact that there is only an A-, not an A+, therefore not balancing the GPA scale.  In the schools defense, professors try and make a more accurate depiction of students’ grades, but something needs to change.  There should either be an A+ added to this category, or just take the plus/minus system away entirely, as it is affecting TCU students and their GPA.

“Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behavior, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women.”  In other words, what society has already defined for you and how you must act in order to stay in the norms.  The World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition of gender may be politically correct, but is there more to gender than this?  Jamison Green, a transsexual, seems to think so.

Green defines gender as “another system of classification that describes characteristics and behaviors that we ascribe to bodies, and we call those characteristics and behaviors ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.”  In his words, gender is more of how you define yourself to be, which sex you can relate with more.  One’s sense of self, or gender identity affects everyone on a daily basis, which can be very difficult for transsexuals and transgendered people.  Jamison Green asks a thought provoking question: “What’s more valid, your feelings and your certain knowledge or yourself, or your body, the thing that other people see which signals to them what they can expect from you?  Imagine what it would feel like to live with that discrepancy.”  Because of this misalignment between gender identity and outward appearance, Green might feel like the WHO’s definition of gender may need to change.  Instead, gender should be defined as the interface between our psyche and our cognitive mind/body/sex because gender is more than just what other people perceive of someone—it is also how they feel on the inside.  Without this change of how gender should be viewed, society will continue to make judgments on “confused” people in society who don’t fit into either a female or male persona.

Jamison Green seems to be reaching out in particular to anyone that hasn’t questioned gender before.  Even me just reading a few chapters of his book have already eliminated some stereotypes that I had previously held for people.  Green gives his argument as if his audience has never questioned how they know what sex they are before.  The either male or female population doesn’t really think about that on a daily basis, and Green effectively states a claim that could be different than previously thought about gender.  The scientific experiments and statistics provided in the first chapter of his book strongly appeal to logos, and it shocks the viewer of the reality of how common transgender and transsexuals there really are in the world.

Before reading this book, I had a very similar definition of gender to the WHO’s definition in my mind.  I knew there was a difference between sex and gender, and gender was the one that was more of a role played and less of a biological factor.  However, after reading this, everything I have previously thought has been eliminated.  I didn’t even realize how much variety there was in the world in regards to gender identity, and in no way would I judge them for that.  I guess just in the area I have been raised in, not many transsexuals openly displayed themselves, because this is a topic that I’m not too familiar with, but it is extremely interesting and I now want to read the rest of his book!  His book was very effective with the way that he had his audience think about gender, and how things are not always how they seem to be.

On Thursday, February 25, 2010, the killer whales we have always heard about since our childhood watching “Free Willy” held true to its name.  Tilikum, an orca whale held at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida, attacked and drowned its trainer, Dawn Brancheau.  Witnesses at the live performance say the whale grabbed the woman’s ponytail in its jaws and pulled her in, playing with her like a toy until she drowned.  Shockingly, this has not been the first time something like this has happened with Tilikum.  In 1991, he was blamed as one of three whales who killed a woman who fell into a pool tank in British Columbia, and eight years later, the body of a naked man was found with bite marks from Tilikum.

Why is this okay?  The chief of animal training at SeaWorld parks stated: “…we have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Well… it already happened three times, how many more chances are you going to give this killer whale?  Simply a change of habitat at different theme parks is obviously not proving to be the answer.  I truly hope that SeaWorld can come up with some sort of solution that will actually work this time, because too many lives have been taken already. She was more than just a trainer, she meant a lot to different people, and played the role of “…someone’s daughter, mother.” A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman says, “for the most part, they run a top-notch facility.”  For the most part, eh?  Not convincing to me.

I feel like SeaWorld should increase the size of the captivity of Tilikum because this could decrease the stress put on the whale and make him more at ease.  Creating a little more space for him to move around in (a 6 ton creature with almost not enough room to turn around in would make me a little frustrated too).  I understand the importance of keeping this animal for breeding purposes, as he is the largest and oldest orca in captivity today (which must have good genes to carry on to younger generations), but safety is the number one most important thing, and what SeaWorld has done in the past is not cutting it.  Soon the blame will be taken from Tilikum itself and be placed on SeaWorld, his captivity, instead.  It’s time to try to give this captive orca a better, more respectful life.

Article found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35566392/ns/us_news-environment/