RGM Post 2

So last night in class we were discussing women's roles in media and society. The point was brought up that people may have a great view of a company until they find out that its CEO is a woman. Their thoughts about the company might immediately change and they could lose some of their support for the company. People tend to have less faith in women running a company than they do for men, and that's completely ridiculous in my mind. Yes, women have made leaps and bounds in their rights, but to still be looked upon as less capable to run a business shouldn't be the issue that it is. I could go on about this, but it wouldn't be any new insight that hasn't been said before, so I will move on.

We also saw an ad that portrayed plus size models, and said plus is equal. The biggest issue that people had with it was that the models they used were still hourglass shaped, and that's not how everyone looks. They are wanting to show how women truly look...by choosing models with a specific body type. Now, I understand why they did that, but people are still going to get upset because it's not truly how women look. The problem is, I don't have the magic solution to this issue. I don't think anyone does really.

The last thing we discussed in class was the black press in America, and the history of it. It was so interesting to me! I really enjoyed the documentary we watched about it. The crazy thing is, we don’t learn about any of this in history class. Sure, I had heard the term “black press” before, and honestly I knew about a lot of it from my History of American Media class at UNT. But I believe that this stuff should be taught in History classes in high schools. It is an incredibly important part of our history that shouldn’t just be skimmed over. 

Minority Representation in the Media

So here it is, the start to the new semester. We've only been in Race, Gender and the Media for two weeks and I've already had a lot of things to think about.

One of the things that keeps coming to mind was actually brought up this last week in class. We were talking about the way different races were portrayed in the media when it comes to shootings and things like that.

Someone brought up the fact that most of the time, white people who come into schools or theaters and shoot people have mental issues. But when a black person is the one who has done the shooting, it's related back to gang violence.

Now that's not all that surprising. What got to me was when someone brought up kids who are raised around gang violence and the issues in their development that could occur to being brought up in that environment.

Honestly, I had never thought about that before. Sure, I feel bad for kids that are raised in it, but I hadn't thought about the issues those kids would have!

It just made me really take a look at myself and the way I view other people and their situations. Rather than judging someone immediately, or brushing something off saying, "Oh that's just the way they were raised", I'll definitely think more about the child who had no say in what they were raised around.

Another thing that got me thinking last week is nothing new either, but something I don't give a ton of thought to. Since we were talking about minority representation in the media, we were reminded that as journalists, we are to be the voice to the voiceless.

If the way people are represented bothers us, and it should, we should do something about it and be the voice for those who don't have one.