Unlearning the Myths that Bling us by Linda Christensen (Quotes)

According to Christensen, every child has been “handle” by the media.  The media teaches them stereotyping of different cultures, gender, and influence the way they think,
act, or behave.  She explains that it is very important to take actions towards this issue in order to make a difference. 

“Because we can never look like Cinderella, we began to hate ourselves. The Barbie syndrome starts as we begin a lifelong search for the perfect body.  Crash diets, fat phobias, and obsession with the male realistic becomes commonplace.  The belief that a product will make us rise above our competition, our friends, turns us into addicts.”   

            This quote is so powerful. Sometimes we do not realize the damages we do to ourselves when we get influence by others.  Millions of people die because of excessive diets; sometimes the media lead us to become someone people will like to see, not someone who will feel comfortable about him/herself.  In my opinion, I believe some of these issues will not be happening if we didn’t consider the media as a big part of our lives.  There are people that do not care about what others think about them, but not everyone thinks the same way, there’s people that care about what others think, which t leads them to become obsessed with the way the look.

“Justine, a senior in Christensen’s contemporary literature and social class, said, “It can be
overwhelming and discouraging to find out my whole self image has been formed mostly by others or underneath my worries about what I look like are years of being exposed to TV images of girls and their set roles given to them by TV and the media.  It’s painful to deal with; the idea of not being completely responsible for how I feel about things today is scary.”

After years of not recognizing that the way she looked, was basically created by the influence that the media had on her, Justine feels disappointed about herself. She realized that the way she feels about herself it’s not the way she will probably feel, if it wasn’t for all those years of letting the media influenced her.  This quote made me think about the ways the media influenced our childhood.  I remember how as a kid we pretend to be a TV character because that character was pretty, famous, rich, etc. even though we think about this issue at all; at one point of our lives, the media will manipulate us.

“The impact of racism begins early. Even in our preschool years, we are exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves. Many of us grow up in neighborhoods where we have limited opportunities to interact with people different than our own families….consequently, most of the early information we receive about “others”—
people racially, religiously, or socioeconomically different from ourselves—does not come as a result of firsthand experience. The secondhand information we receive has often been distorted, shaped by cultural stereotypes, and left incomplete.”

            This quote made me think a lot, because sometimes it is so easy to judge someone we do not know just because we let ourselves get influence by what the media says about him or her.  Often what we see on TV is not real, but since the media is such a big influence in today’s society, we believe everything they say.  We do not realize that we need to get to know
the person first, before making any judgments. 

We are all being manipulated by the media. It will be great if in class, we try to
come out with ideas to stop letting ourselves get influence by the media. This
link shows how the media tries to controls our lives. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/13871/media_influence_in_our_society.html