Reflection

Oh boy, the end of the year, a time to move on. But what I have learned in this class I will take with me for the rest of my days if I can remember it. over the semester, we learned how to deal with ads with the aspects of a critical thinker. We also learned how to take in media messaging from the news and other sources and interpret the messages put out by them which influence society. We learned what cool was through videos and also learned how companies ruin that sense of cool by pouncing on it and killing it. I think this class has made me conscious of my media usage, but I choose to do nothing about it because it makes dopamine and I like dopamine. It impacts my life extremely as it does everyone in this generation. I feel like I constantly am wanting to be on my phone especially when doing homework. I think that I have always been subconsciously aware of my media decisions because whenever I watch ads now, I can instantly tell their pitch. So I guess I can say that I have gotten a bit more media literate. I am also to translate those ideas into words that my parents understand because they don’t get it at first. My parents are, however, educated consumers because they know what they need and what they don’t need. I think that rubbed off on me. This is called being an educated consumer. Being an educated consumer is extremely important because we, the people, decide how to spend our money and keep these businesses above water. We also have the ability to destroy these companies by boycotting them. I think that by keeping this log, I was able to pay attention to the media and study what advertisers are doing to attract new viewers and consumers and that was very helpful in me developing a sense of what is happening in the world. I also believed that this helped contradict the media blog about us not being attracted to the media and losing our focus of the companies showing us their products with flashing lights and different appeals.

Manscaped, an atrocity of a mens self-care product

Recently, I was watching youtube and I came across an ad for a product called manscaped. This is an electric shaver that uses an appeal to call men strong or powerful if they use the product. They also sexualize women if they are used to sponsor the product. Men who get sponsored by the product are usually more alpha-looking too as being described as a leader of a frat or someone who works out a lot, fitting the male stereotype presented by the media.

In this ad, they make the actor male and use the fact that he has gelled up hair and a beard to sell the product to other people so they can be "as fresh" as the actor who clearly got plastic surgery to do something to his body. The advertisers clearly used this actor as a way to get to more viewers.

Grove Collaborative, the reminder of patriarchy?

Recently, I was watching TV with my family and I saw this ad about cleaning supplies. The first thing that I noticed was that the people being interviewed were all women which totally supports patriarchy and the stereotype that women have to clean everything.

I think in a way this ad is assuming that the people watching NBC are families that are upper to lower middle class. This means that if we are following stereotypes, the mom is a stay at home that cleans and the dad works to provide for the family. I think that if a single mother would watch this, the ad would not appeal to her at all unlike the middle-class family because the mom would relate to the people in the ad. I think that the people behind this ad are all male and are sending it because they know that if they follow those stereotypes, they will earn more money from people believing they are true. This stereotype relates a lot to Missrepresentation, a documentary we watched in zero period because the women are not successful and they aren't shown as having jobs. They instead only clean the house and act blown away by cleaning products instead of thinking for themselves.