Heterosexuality... the norm!

Through out all of our years, since we are born most of the people are being taught that women are attractive to men, and men are attractive to women. That’s the norm, so basically if you don’t fall in one of these two categories then you’re not normal. Something is wrong with you. Most of the people think that heterosexuality is the norm, when they are not even informed of all the other concepts that exist out there. All they know is about heterosexuality being the norm, and homosexuality being the wrong thing to do, and when I say homosexuality they only refer to gay men and lesbians, but they skip all these other terms that we have learned about (bisexual, transsexual, metro sexual, transvestites, transgendered, etc). People have the wrong perception about this and this is why the majority of films will show a negative aspect when showing people that consider themselves as one of these categories.

The movie "But I’m A Cheerleader" surprised me a lot. I think this was the first movie that I watch that really shows what life is about for gay and lesbian people in this case, and how they fight for the right to be together. At the beginning we can see how Megan is lost in her gender identity thinking that she is a heterosexual person, but then actually believing that she’s not when everyone starts telling her that she needs to admit that she’s lesbian. At the end she ends up realizing that this actually was her real identity. I think the movie makes its points very clear. Such is that fact of showing at the camp how girls and boys need to behave according with the norm (heterosexuality). As we learned earlier in class according to the norm boys should like blue, be strong, brave, watch sports, involve in activities like chopping wood, etc, while girls should like pink and they should take care of the house, the family, do the cleaning and cooking. Watching the movie is funny to see how the teenagers in the camp are being taught to learn all of these procedures, but then thinking about reality these kinds of organizations really exist and the rules and ways of living are much harsher than what is reflected in the movie. Even though the movie tries to she that heterosexuality is the right thing, by the end of the movie we see how Megan and Graham end up being together. I think this gave gay and lesbian people the motivation to fight for their right to love whoever they want and for other to come out of the closet.

By these days now we see more movies that portray homosexuality and some of all the other concepts, but cinema still fails at the attempt of really showing them as what reality is about. It looks like for cinema and for the rest of most of the people heterosexuality will continue to be norm.

It's not a disability!!

Many people have the wrong idea about disability. They are not well informed about what disability is about. They get the wrong assumptions about people. As we have mentioned in class when we talk about disabled people we think of helpless people, who are not able to function the same way as the rest of the people that have temporarily able bodies. The truth is that we have so much to learn from all these people. It even makes me think that the people who have the disability it’s us (the people with temporarily able bodies) and not them. I accept that I have learned so much throughout the quarter, and I’ve also learned many things about disability from these last weeks.

Last year I took sign language classes and since the beginning of my education here at Shoreline, they have been my favorite classes. I learned that being deaf is not a disability, but a whole different culture. Just like Hispanic culture, or any other culture we have also the Deaf Culture and there is so much we could learn from each other, but we have the wrong assumptions about people. Probably we could say that some people put deaf people under the obsessive avenger category. They see deaf people as violent, monstrous, and scary. Other put them under the sweet innocent category. They see them as dependent and dump. Some even are afraid to get too close to them, as if deafness could be contagious. This ASL class really opened my mind. I learned to respect Deaf Culture, to admire it and even it gave me the feeling of be part of it. I even consider deaf people smarter than the rest. The way they communicate it’s just impressive. They’re full of expressions and full of life.

I want to end with this video that a friend sent me to my e-mail some time ago. I have to admit that it really touched me, I cried a lot and the same time it opened my eyes. A lesson that I learned from watching this is that you are what you believe, so always think positive about yourself and never let other people put you down. You can find the video in youtube. The video is like a short movie (reflexion) called The Butterfly Circus. The story focuses on Will the main character. Will has no limbs and he works for a circus, but the circus’ show consists of making fun of disabled people or in other words they call it “weird or abnormal” people. Will has heard good things about The Butterfly Circus so he moves with them. Soon, again he feels like he’s worthless and helpless and that with no limbs he cannot do anything. Then he discovers that he is not the only one that has suffered. All the actors that work for The Butterfly Circus come from different backgrounds. Some women were sexually abused, others had alcohol problems, others were homeless, etc, but they left that life and decided to unite and start bringing happiness and smiles to others people’s lives by joining the circus. This teaches us that we should never give up. Another interesting thing that I noticed was how the owner of The Butterfly Circus is a Hispanic guy (Mendez), and how people from all different backgrounds are united in the movie (blacks, whites, and hispanics). At the end of the movie we see how Will becomes famous and he discovers all the talents he has, and if Will can do that we can do it too. Will has not a disability. On the contrary he has the ability to do so many things like the rest of us and even does things that not even us are able to do.

Please watch both parts!!

Sad to say... money can buy happiness!!

Sometimes or better said most of the time it seems to be that money is the main cause of our problems, but at the same time many people think that is the only solution to them. We have been raised in a society where most people believe that money is the main thing you need to be a successful person in life. In other words, you have money, then you can have anything you want. As we read in the article “Class in America” I can’t believe how these myths like believing that America is a classless society can exist when we clearly can see the differences of social classes all over the country. We can see people in each of the different classes (poor/working/middle/wealthy) even though most of the people will identity themselves as being in the middle class.

Focusing a little bit on the upper class, there are some people that probably have worked hard enough to get where they are now and all the money they have is because they have earned it, but what doesn’t seem fair is that there are many people out there that are suffering, and trying hard to survive while there are wealthy people that all the money they have hasn’t cost them nothing at all. As we mentioned in class, they are born in wealthy families. They went to the best schools and they had everything they wanted. They gained so much without having to give anything in return. Many times is hard to see how a lot of these people will not even appreciate what they have. Mostly for the people who are not in the wealthy class points of life come when they think that we live in an unfair world where life seems to play more harsh for people that don’t deserve it.

But how strong is the power of money? Well, as I mentioned before for most people money seems to be the answer to everything, money can buy happiness, and its power it’s so strong that it can even make you blind until the point where you will refuse to the love of your loved ones, you will ignore the sacrifice that they have made for you, you could even come to the point of being embarrassed of having to hang out with someone from a lower class than yours.

The movie that I want to use for this example is "Spanglish".Even though this movie focuses more on the idea that two people from two different cultures, with two different languages can fall in love, there are so many other different concepts brought up in this movie. Deborah who was laid off from his managerial position is force to manage her house now. She is married to John who owns an upscale bistro in LA. They might not be that wealthy, but for sure they gave a lot of money. Bernice is Deborah’s daughter. Deborah hires Flor, a Mexican immigrant to be the housekeeper. Here we have this stereotype of Mexicans being represented as a lower socio economic class from whites. Christina is Flor’s daughter, and she is about the same age as Deborah’s daughter. Deborah has been always telling her daughter that she’s is over weighted and that she doesn’t have a nice body, so when she sees Christina, a “beautiful” girl, she sees her as the daughter she always wanted to have, and here is when it comes the main point I want to make. Deborah starts buying Christina a whole bunch of stuff, new fancy clothes, jewelry; she takes her to the beauty salon, and wants to put her in one of the best schools. Christina starts to find happiness in money; she starts to get this idea that money can give her anything she wants that she forgets all the sacrifice that her mom Flor has made for her. She forgets that the main thing that overpasses everything is her mom’s love. Money has made her so happy that she even wants to stay to live with Deborah for the rest of her life even if her mom has to leave. Here we can see that for money many people will do anything they can, even if that involves refusing to their loved ones.

As our book America on Film says: “Occasionally a Hollywood movie will sound the idea that wealth corrupts, or “that money cannot buy happiness”” and this movie is not an exception. Sad to say; Yes, for many people money can buy happiness and even worst there’s nothing much we can do for those who are in the poor/underclass. Thanks God for those who are not materialistic and are content with what they have. Thanks God for those who are able to find happiness with or without any money.

Arizona Immigration Law SB1070... That's Racism!!

As being Latina so many times I've witnessed the racism that sad to say still exists in this country. Discrimination and racism against people just because where they come from, their skin color, or in other words many times for the simple reason of not being white. The same way that I've witnessed racism, I've also witnessed the white privilege that people have. Even though for many people this happens unconsciously, personally I think that this are advantages that white people have over the rest of people. From my own experience many times I get this surprised looks at me when I tell people that I am from Mexico. Most of the time people will say to me: "Really? How come? You're white." Of course what I answer is that not all Mexicans are brown as most people think. It's really sad to see how people can judge others just because of their skin color.
An issue that's been going around these days is the Arizona Immigration Law SB1070 that was passed on April 23rd. I'm not going to talk about immigration and illegal people here, since I believe this is not really the focus in our class but I do have to say that I think the pass of this law is an act of racism. To get familiar with it what this law requires is that all immigrants need to have their documents with them to verify their status, but this law also gives police officials an authority to stop a person if is there enough suspicion that the suspect is not a legal resident. Why is this racism? Well the question that is brought up is: How are police officers going to suspect that a person is not a legal resident? How are they going to know this for sure? Well the answer goes back to the fact that the only way for a police officer to stop someone will be because of the skin color they have, or according to their physical features and characteristics the place they come from.

I found these images by going to yahoo and just typing Arizona Immigration Law and this picture here at the bottom really got my attention. Here we can see a man who painted himself as a white man and then he has "Am I reasonably suspicious?" written all over his body. In other words trying to say that if you're a white person of course you will not be a suspicious suspect and this law will not affect you.


Through all this movement and since this law was passed it seems to be that the most affected people are Hispanics. Of course the law doesn't say that this will be applied only to Hispanics, but Hispanics clearly know that this law is directed to them. I'm sure that the police will not stop a white person but for sure they will stop Hispanics and who knows probably Asians and Black people too. Even president Obama declared this new law as a misguided law. Maybe you will think that I'm saying this because I'm Mexican, but Mexican or not I do believe that this law comes from racist people that want to "go back to the good old days" as we learned in class.

Haven't people realize that we live in the same planet?

Many people think that racism is part of history now. It’s part of the past, but even though when it looks like we have overcome it, this is not true. Sad to say, racism still exists today, and even worse is that from my personal perspective I don’t really believe that there is going to be a day when we will reach an equal treatment for everyone, well at least not the United States. When I say “at least not in the United States” I refer to the fact that many people who live in different countries don’t have to face this problem. The United States is the main country where people from different parts of the world come, and because of that I believe is the country that faces more with racism. For sure people have done a great progress, and the situation is so much better than it used to be back in the past and we can also keep working to make a difference, but this term of racism has been out there for so long that many people still do it either consciously or unconsciously.

Today during class we learned that among all people we have the active racists, who are the ones who are conscious of what they are doing, then we have the passive racists, who are the ones that differentiate people unconsciously or do nothing about a situation, and then we have the anti racists, which sad to say even though we have people that try to do something about it and help to overcome these kind of situations, these people are a very low percent of the population. All the rest of the population falls under the other two categories. As we can see this doesn’t help as much.

From my own experience, me as a Mexican, I didn’t have to face racism or even talk about it until I came to this country. In Mexico everyone was Mexican, everyone was the same, but then you come here and you find out that everyone seems to be different. I’ve seen people, not only from my country but also from different countries and different parts of the world treated differently just because of their race, and it’s not enough to live this in real life but they also have to show it in films. Here we have all these films that most of the time will show people from different races as the villains, servers, robbers, low class workers, making them inferior to others.

Today in class we watched “Boyz N The Hood”. It was hard to watch, and sad at the same time, but we clearly saw examples of racism in this movie. Some of the things that I noticed was that the teacher at the school was white, and something that really bothered me was when she mentioned the word “Indians” and then she changed it to “Native Americans”. Another thing that bothered me from her was when she called the mom of one of the boys and kept asking her questions in a rude way. Other quotes that we hear through out the movie were “black men have no place in the army” and “blacks own nothing”. Even though these came from black people, this was a reality back in those days. Like these movie we have lots more that keep giving out these messages that some races are inferior/superior to others.

I came to this country. I started to meet people from different cultures and parts of the world. Thanks God I never saw them inferior/superior to me. I saw everyone equal, because that’s the way we are. This is the way I was raised. I was raised to respect everyone, I was raised to see our differences as something special that each person has and not something that makes us inferior/superior to someone else, but of course not everyone thinks this way. We’ve been dealing with racism since the beginning of times, and until this point I still don’t see the end of it, will we reach that day when people realize that we live in the same planet?

Media... a lie. The beauty ideal has nothing to do with reality.

It seems to be that in this world everyone is looking for perfection, but how can you find something that doesn't exist? But what kind of perfection are we talking about here? We're talking about having the perfect body image and body figure. I have to say that media is the principal factor that has been in charge of throwing out to people all these wrong and false messages. People get all these messages about how they should look and what kind of people should they be in order to fit the standards.

You have a good body image? Perfect! Now you'll be accepted, you'll get people's attention, you'll get the job, everyone will be after you, you're normal. Not a good body image? Oh no, you better start working on it, that's not good, you're not normal.

It's impressive to see how all these messages can takes us to an extreme situation where we cannot even see reality anymore. In the two images above we see how a "good looking" man and a woman are looking to themselves at the mirror. Even though when it appears to be that they have the perfect body image, they don't see themselves this way. The guy seems to have muscles, but it's not enough, he needs to work out more. The girl seems to be very thin, but she doesn't see herself this way, it's not enough, she needs to be thinner. This wrong ideas many times take us to cross the limit and face the consequences.

All these kind of messages are thrown out and because of this we see all these people trying to meet these expectations and many times where they end up is at the hospitals if they are lucky enough to not to starve themselves to dead. Trying to meet all these expectations takes our time, our energy and even our money. We see all these ads and commercials advertising pills, teas, exercise equipment and who knows what else that assure you that you will get the image that you want if you buy them. Here you have all these people wasting their money in all that stuff that most of the time will not even work. But what happens when we find out that it's impossible to look the way we were told we should look? Well here is where we find all these people who end up having psychological problems, people who are afraid to face the world, people who have low self esteem and lack of confidence and sad to say these include all of those who cannot live with the idea that they look horrible and end up commiting suicide.

All we see in media is far away from reality. All we see in media is tricked, is faked but of course most of us as the viewers will think is the truth. This is what media wants us to believe. In media shapes and sizes are changed, body features from different bodies are combined to create the "perfect" image, body features are enhanced with props, lighting and by computers, any unwanted features are edited out. Everything is a lie. They don't care about how people will feel, what they will do to achieve all these expectations, of course they don't think about the consequences that this huge influences have at all and this is because media is all about money. Media is a lie.

This video I found on youtube shows just some of the tricks that media uses and what technology can do these days. I was carefully looking at it and it's impressive to see how as soon as they focus the lights against the girl's face this causes a dramatic change. I also like the quote they use at the end which says: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted".