Humanities | cameronhohandp

TKAM Seminar~

Topics-The topics that were brought up were racism,sexism,age,class and socialization.

We were given three different questions about the book and chose one to answer.

My Response- I chose question C which was 'do you think the book should be banned from schools for it's content?' I said no because i think that the content of the book is exactly why students should read it because we still have certain issues in today's society that relate to issues that happened in the 60's. I focused on sexism because it is still a large issue, although women do speak out more there are still problems with this topic like the women Vs men pay gap,beauty expectations leading to eating disorders.

I wasn't extremely prepared for this because i did not finish the book also i don't like to talk in front of other people i get a bit shy so coming out of my shell and trying to join the conversation was hard for me

My goal for reading next semester is to dig deeper and really get into the book.

I think that this book does matter because there are students who are completely uneducated about the specific topics that this book mentions and we all need to learn these topics to make the world a better place.

The Mask Project-Socialization Essay-

In this world as a woman you need to be pretty and attractive to not only men but to all genders and most ages to get things done. As a young woman who wants to do things with her life this is what I thought I had to do and be for the longest time. Seeing model’s,actresses and celebrities while growing up made my view on how I should be completely irrational and my expectations of myself were overwhelmingly high. Looking at those specific careers there are not many ‘average’ looking people who are well known, even the weather girl/guy has to be attractive because that is for some reason what the public eye wants. My next topic has to do with the ‘Men are superior’ state of mind. In my house my father makes the rules,money and everything to support my family, I have been taught to respect men and in a way fear them,they can affect you and your life in major ways;father,husband,boyfriend,brother etc. My parents always told me to tell them if anyone ever hurt me sexually,emotionally or physically, but I never did because they also taught me that when my dad yelled at me and overpowered my opinions and ideas because he loved me and I needed to respect him. Learning this I one couldn’t talk to them about anything emotional or opinion based knowing they would yell at me and two that a man doing something as simple as my dad yelling at me to as complex as my uncle sexually assaulting me, to not say no to a man and always respect what he said without questions. An example is my uncle telling me to “shut the hell up and never tell anyone what just happened” young six year old me didn’t realize that respecting or obeying him would hurt me in the long run. But I am not blaming for my parents for the things that have happened to me, just wishing that they could have been there more or worded things differently. I would like to move on to mental health specifically female teen mental health and how it is not taken seriously because we are at an hormonal age and women are known as the emotional gender. Statistics show that yes women have a larger variety of mental health issues than men but get treated less because men are the only ones who can do ‘real damage’ or ‘physical damage’. A teen girl can go through a lot and when they express it parents often push it off saying they are just being moody,hormonal,probably on their period or just didn’t sleep enough. Because we are young we aren’t taken seriously. Similar to the mid-life crisis or menopause joke that pops up as you get older. To me the meaning of socialization is a way we are trained since birth to be from agents aka the people and things around us want us to be. Have any of us actually chosen the way we were brought up? Most likely not. At birth we are put into specific categories maybe one of the first in our lives was a nurse asking your parents or caregiver ‘do you want to know if your baby is a boy or a girl?’ we have all been subjected to categories and expectations from the womb. My mask was supposed to be a representation of how those expectations have been pushed on me and honestly not finishing the mask was in a way humorous to me and not just because of the fact i’m a ‘rebellious teen’ and not finishing it is sort of my point to society that I don’t need to conform to rules but also that as a human i’m unfinished, still growing and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life let alone knowing if I even want to be on this planet. You may say that’s not my choice but honestly that would just make me want to go against living even more than I already do. My mask was supposed to be a representation of what i’ve gone through in life. The symbols I have on my drawn up mask explains what i was trying to do more than my actual mask. The brand logos show how society wants me as a girl to act and look. The cuts and bruise represent self harm and abusive relationships i’ve had to overcome. The make-up on one side of the face and none on the other show what I hide and let show referring to my eating disorder. The heart and tear are a representation of pretending that i’m okay when i’m really not.My point of saying these things are to make you,the reader,think. How can we gain recognition for teen mental health issues? What makes people only want the stereotypical attractive human to have a high industry career? Why are children taught these specific gender roles? And ask you what can you do in your life to make a difference in the world.

Reflection-

Project Description-

The mask project and essay

Technology Op-Ed

Cameron Hohan

Stephen Sellers ½

Op-Ed

March/15/2018

Does Social Media Encourage Disordered Eating?

Statistics show that over 30 million people in the U.S alone suffer from eating disorders, but I will be focusing on Anorexia Nervosa-

Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder that causes people to obsess over their weight and food intake. Main causes of Anorexia Nervosa are biological; spread through family genes, psychological; the way that certain person looks at themselves and the way their brain is thinking and sociocultural; magazines, fashion, body comparison and social media.According to ANAD(National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa are-Not getting enough calories,Abnormally low body weight (this does not necessarily have to be a quick change),Intense fear of gaining weight or looking fat (eating in secret),Some people with Anorexia do not realize the seriousness of the disorder an example is making excuses to not eat, lying about weight loss and skipping meals,Very reliant on their image (overly weighing self and checking mirror multiple times for imperfections),Use of extreme diets (cotton ball or clay eating diet) or excessive exercise,Chewing food then spitting it out after,Complaining about weight constantly despite their underweight look showing a distorted body image, and Abnormal menstruation and hair growth. All of these can affect your health in ways you can’t imagine. There is tube feeding,hospitalization, and even a hair disorder that is called Lanugo, in some cases of Lanugo your hair can look green on your skin.

Social media plays a very large role in how many of people look at themselves. Depending on what you are looking at on social media it can affect you negatively or positively, if you are looking at media pages that are specifically about something that is negative for you;pro-eating disorders or models, then you will most likely begin to feel bad about the way you look if that specific topic affects you more than other topics.

Everyday scrolling through social media, etc you most likely see a person that you look up to and want to be like in some way. These people all affect how you see yourself and how you think of life. For me, everything depends on what you look at, how you look at it and what you are going through. I think that on social media everything is based on perspective and manipulation-How you can get someone to like your product and believe in what you are doing.

On the internet, there are many pro-eating disorder websites and social media pages that give information on what diets you can use to drop weight and ‘thinspiration' which is pictures of girls or guys who are the specific weight a person wants to be. There is ‘sweetspo' which is a sweet inspiration; saying nice things to yourself to motivate you. There is ‘meanspo' which I noticed that most pro-Anorexia pages use, ‘meanspo' is mean inspiration; calling yourself something no one wants to hear-fat, disgusting, gross and ugly, etc- to shame yourself into starving yourself, over exercising and more. There are also ‘ED buddies' which is short for Eating Disorder buddies who someone with an Eating Disorder would stay in contact with to encourage each other in losing weight,‘ED buddies' make pacts with each other to not eat at the same time or lose the same amount of weight together and test diets to tell each other what works and what doesn't. It is a sort of warped friendship, friendship is supposed to be people supporting each other for who they are and giving another person advice with healthy ways to get out of their problem but ‘ED buddies' support each other in the exact opposite way, they can insult each other or motivate you nicely but either way they are trying to help you lose weight in unhealthy ways.My questions are- Should these pages be online? How do these social media sites supporting Anorexia affect people with Eating Disorders? And Is it the person who's researching these negative things fault for their own problems? I want to answer these by using my own personal experience and asking other people who have Eating Disorders to come forward and help me figure out why these specific things happen on social media.

The reason why this is so important to me is because I suffer from multiple different kinds of Eating Disorders and because of this it is personally important for me to raise awareness for myself and others. Social media has affected the way I look at myself because when I was not getting treatment and help for myself I was specifically looking up things that wouldn't help anyone get better if they had similar eating problems like I did. I was looking up on the website Tumblr.com pro Eating Disorder blogs and blogs that shared tags I was interested in, an example is; ‘thigh gaps',‘anorexia','skinny',

'skinny bones','diets', and ‘ways to lose weight the anorexic way'. I always continue to wonder if I hadn't looked those websites up or they hadn't been available to me online if I would have gotten better faster. At the same time I could never blame anyone else but myself for that because in the end, was the one who chose to search those awful things up, I do feel guilty now for giving more attention and support to the topic because I have now realized how unhealthy it is and by reposting and searching up pro-eating disorder websites and blogs I was affecting myself and other people who were suffering along with me in ways that I didn't know I had been. I learned that social media, what I share and what I talk about online can change someone else's life and in this case, it was not in a good way. I hope others can realize this too but not learning it the hard way like I did.

I sent out a form to the students of Animas High School and the answers I got amazed me. I had no idea how many people also suffered from eating disorders at my school of 250 people, and even the people who didn't have eating disorders were still very passionate about how social media affects an Eating Disorder. Here are the statistics from my form-There were 40 people who answered my form,76.2% were female and the other 23.8% were male, 20% of those people 9th grade,47.5% were 10th grade,17.5% were 11th grade and 15% were 12th graders. Out of those people 32.5% said yes they have or have had an Eating Disorder, 17.5% said that they possibly have one but have not been diagnosed and 50% said no they didn't have an Eating Disorder but were still passionate about the subject and some people even had friends or family with an Eating Disorder. The Eating Disorders mentioned were Anorexia, Bulimia, Night Eating Syndrome, Binge Eating Disorder, Stress Eating Disorder and Avoidant or Restrictive food intake. When I asked if they think social media affects their Eating Disorders (or if they do not have one) other people's Eating Disorders the most common answers I got were yes because social media portrays how a person should be and look like by using unreachable expectations, people also said that it depends on what your looking at but it is most likely a definite influence on body image but some people said no because we have a choice to block out certain things or that they purposely try to avoid social media and the internet choosing to not let it affect any part of their life. Is that what it takes for human beings to be happy? A full blockage of a specific thing that you know affect the way you look at yourself? I know for me it would help just a little bit if the media didn't focus on weight and tell me who I'm supposed to be.

Sources-

TKAM Seminar~

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The Mask Project-Socialization Essay-

Technology Op-Ed

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