Digital Story Proposal: Body Image in the Media

It is no secret that the media puts an enormous amount of pressure on teenaged girls in society to fit a certain body type and image. The media paints a picture of a specific image that women all over the world see as "the ideal figure". It’s no surprise that many teens have unrealistic expectations about their physical appearance. Teenaged girls tend to be the most severely and commonly affected group in society from the media’s standard of beauty. For some, this focus on perfection may lead to extreme measures,such as eating disorders or drug use to lose weight and improve body image. Girls tend to feel a sense of failure for not living up to this image, instead of being proud of and loving who they are and the image they have. From an early age, they are exposed to the use of super thin cultural icons representing ‘feminine beauty'. Constantly being compared to computer-manipulated images of already thin and cosmetically ideal models, women of all ages, not just teens, develop and suffer from body dissatisfaction, depression, anorexia, bulimia, perfectionism, low self-esteem, and other psychological damages. The drive for thinness inherit to many women is a learned behavior that media sources, especially magazines, explain how to achieve. Women are expected to have certain body characteristics that just aren’t realistic: not everyone has large breasts, a small waist, and long legs. Girls also grow up believing that they should fit into some sort of category, not appreciating diversity and uniqueness that truly makes someone beautiful. Although at some point it becomes apparent that the majority of women do not fit into media’s definition of beautiful, psychological damages are already incurred and the time spent unhappy cannot be given back. For my digital story, I plan to create a video of pictures. These pictures will contain example images of the "ideal figure" that the media presents through television and advertisement. There will also be images of girls negatively effected by this media pressure. My video will also contain slides of facts and statistics about my this topic. It is possible that a clip of an interview will be included as well. Sources: Just Say Yes- Self Image Media Influences Google Image NEDA Feeding Hope

Permissions for SAP Project

For our SAP, we are using the PollEverywhere to create polls with questions about cyberbullying. We are going to post flyers around campus with the questions and the number students can text to give their answers. We learned we need permission to post flyers around the school and they needed to be approved so we went to Rodman Hall to see if they could help us. They told us that we would need to go to the student center. We walked to the atrium and then up the stairs and found a room over the university bookstore that was the office of student activities. There, we spoke with a woman named Janet Paradise. She told us that she was in fact in charge of approving flyers that go out on campus. We explained to her our project idea and how we want to execute it. She seemed to like the idea and explained that we should create an original copy of the flyer with the information we need and bring it back to the office. Then we would give her the flyer, and if approved, she would stamp it saying so. She would give us back the flyer and it is our responsibility to make about 65 more copies. We would bring the copies back to Janet and she would distribute them that day. We are going to create two sets of flyers. The first will have the questions we want to pose to the student body. The second set will be the results so everyone can see how the polls worked out.

Literature Review

Richard Donegan said, "Bullying has been engrained in American society since the country's founding. Bred from a capitalistic economy and competitive social hierarchy, bullying has remained a relevant issue through the years". Although bullying has always been apart of society, the issue expands with the pace of time and continues to be present in the daily lives of many. With the growing and expanding of technology, bullying has become easier to do. As technology has evolved over time, bullying has proliferated. Cyber bullying is a major issue in today's society, but it wasn't always. It did not become a major issue until the start of common social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Many studies on the issue have been done, and the majority of results show that people choose to cyber bully instead of having face to face conflict conversations, because it is faster and easier to fight. Also, the intensity level of the bullying is higher, because cyber bullies have the luxury of hiding behind the computer screen. They have more confidence to bully others and make derogatory remarks, because they do not have to face those they are victimizing in in person. Bullying is something that most people deal with at a young age, whether they go through a phase of being a bully or a phase of being a victim of a bully. The reason most people deal with this at a young age is because bullying is associated with immaturity. Surveys show that one of the main reasons cyber bullying is still such a huge issue is because children are afraid to stand up for others and shut down bullying.

Problem Statement (What Now? / Why Now?)

The goal of our social action project is to target the main reason behind cyber bullying. We want to find out what drives people to cyber bully others, approximately how many people on campus have been victims of cyber bullying or have cyber bullied others before, and the most common ways cyber bullying is used. Our plan is to create three polls, all in which will contain multiple choice questions about cyber bullying. These questions will ask things such as "Have you ever been cyber bullied?", "Has anyone ever cyber bullied you?", "What drove you to cyber bully another person?", "In what way did you cyber bully that person", "How has someone else cyber bullied you?". Students on campus will know about these polls through an email that we will send out and flyers we will post in various locations around the campus. After we collect all the data from the polls, we will create a huge poster board of the data and display it somewhere on campus. Although we know that not every student at John Carroll University will participate in this survey, we hope that we will collect a lot of good and telling information from those that do. Cyber bullying is a serious issue and students need to be aware of just how serious it is and how relevant it is in the social world. Our goal is that once students see how many people are effected by this issue and victims realize they are not alone in the matter, then students will ban together to put an end to it.

Discussion Questions: Week 9

This article states that certain video games can be used to help kids with depression, by making them face decisions and make the right choices. Do you think this concept is a good idea or that encouraging depressed children to sit inside and play video games will make their issue worse? Pedercinici made a point that games about certain society issues, such as war, homelessness and gender violence, are being producing by nonprofit organizations instead of people who have actually experienced these kinds of issues directly. Would involvement of these people in the producing of the game better the game enough to make that happen?

Cyber Bullying Speaker

Our group has decided to not go through with the "wear your words" challenge. After discussing the idea, we came to the conclusion that it would be too difficult to get JCU students to participate in the challenge. We feel that the majority of students would not feel comfortable designing their shirt or wearing it around campus all day. Although it seems like a great idea, the reality is that most students would probably be generic with the things they put on their shirts. In other words, the majority of the students who did participate in the project would probably not design their shirt to the best of their ability, defeating the whole purpose of the shirt. (117) We have decided to bring in a speaker instead and plan on hosting this speaker in the auditorium, on the same day of Sydney's groups' project. We talked to Sydney's group and came to an agreement with them that it is best to do our projects on the same day, since we have the same topic. After talking to Sydney, I learned that her group had thoughts of bringing in a speaker as well. Our groups plan to work together to find the right speaker for this issue and make it happen. Since Sydney's group still wants to take part in their original plan of yin-yaking continuous facts about cyber-bullying on this day, we have decided to join them in this act and do the same. With both of our groups posting continuous yaks about the issue of cyber bullying all day for a whole day, we believe we can fill up the feed and the readers' minds with the news they need to know.

Proposal

Social Action Proposal Introduction: Wear Your Words By: Mia Iaderosa My proposal is based on the issue of cyber bullying- actions that use information and communication technologies to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behavior by an individual or group, that is intended to harm another or others. Cyber bullying can take place on social media sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. People constantly use these sites to direct hurtful and negative comments at others. Many children all over the world have either contemplated or committed suicide due to this type of harassment. There have been several high-profile cases involving tee nagers taking their own lives because of being harassed and mistreated over the internet, a phenomenon that has been termed cyberbullicide. It is very embarrassing to have someone make a demeaning comment about you to your face or someone else’s, but embarrassment reaches a higher level when comments are posted online for the public. One million children were harassed, threatened or subjected to other forms of cyber bullying on Facebook during the past year, while 90% of social media-using teens who have witnessed online cruelty say they have ignored mean behavior on social media. Sometimes comments aren’t made to randomly attack or bully someone. There are times when two or more people are in an argument on a social networking site and a mean comment is retaliated in a moment of anger. Then, after it is too late and everyone saw it, that person realizes they should not have made it. It is fun to participate in social networking and there are many advantages of doing so. However, it is important that we remember to think hard before posting a comment about ourselves or someone else. Maybe you feel like making that comment to someone in the moment, but do you really want to embarrass that person or yourself by doing so? I chose to title my project “Wear Your Words”, which was inspired by the phrase “weigh your words”. Through this project, I want the students of John Carroll University to realize just how hurtful mean words can really be and what it feels like to be associated with these words, or even better, to have to wear them. I chose to create an event that would take place on campus, in the quad and in the auditorium. Students with a desire to attend must sign up. The day would start out in the auditorium, at 10:00, where an event leader would greet the attending students and explain the planned activities. Following, three willing teenagers who have struggled with cyber bullying would come share their story with the students. After that, around 11:30, the students would be relocated to the quad, where there would be tables set up with white t-shirts, black sharpie markers, and typed contracts. Free snacks would be passed around, such as pop corn and cotton candy, and decorations would be in place, such as balloons and posters. The three speakers would be at the quad to offer students the chance to meet them personally and ask any questions they have. In order to participate and take on the challenge, each student would have to take a shirt and a sharpie and write every mean word they could think of on their shirt, as well as their personal flaws and insecurities. After doing so, they would sign a contract stating that they must wear the shirt all day until everyone met again for dinner in private room around 4:00. The point of this activity is to show the students what is feels like to be exposed to others. As they walk around with that shirt on, everyone who crosses their path is able to read the words on their shirt, knowing their insecurities and self weaknesses. Having to feel like such negative words are apart of you and stuck to you is not a good feeling. By experiencing this feeling, students are encouraged to reconsider calling others out on social media for their insecurities and weaknesses and to not use negative or derogatory terms when referring to others, not just on social networking sites, but in general. At dinner, the students would write a reflection on how they felt about the challenge, which they would get to keep after.