How is body-image culturally constructed?

Body-image is a very touchy subject in America because, as Michael Rosenwald points out in his article "Why America Has to Be Fat", two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Body-image is not usually constructed by us, but by others. It is constructed by people who are in charge of what we watch, read, and do. This includes models, magazines, tv shows, movies, professional athletes, or just about anyone we could see as an example for how we are to live our lives. It is common knowledge that teenage girls want to look like the models in the magazines, and those models are unnaturally skinny and most of them have eating disorders. Yet this is what the industry uses as role models for vulnerable people. In addition, family members and friends can have a large influence in how someone feels about their body-image. I know I have had friends whose parents told them they were fat when they were already really skinny. Friends could also tell someone something playfully, but then they could take it the wrong way and try to fix that part of their body.
Everywhere you look in America, you will see an ad or show that stars a thin, beautiful person while most of America is becoming overweight. By having this "nationally accepted" body-image, most common people, who are most likely overweight, spend lots of money on dieting and gym memberships. This helps bring in revenue to the companies, even if they are never used by the consumer. The food industry also takes advantage of this trend by going against this type of body-image. It does this by producing meals and products with more calories and fat were produced few decades ago. This goes against the "tall, thin, and tan" idea that most people believe is the ideal body image.
This image holds true for people of most all ages, but it is especially true for younger people who very often may judge people on how they look. I have found this to be true at college and all during high school. My surprise in how America values looks and body-image came when my brother started middle school just over two years ago. When I was in middle school not so long ago, people weren't dressing very risky and constantly switching between boyfriends or girlfriends. Granted, some of the students were like that. But after picking up my brother every day after school last year and getting to know some of the other students there, my opinion on that age has changed. Students those age place a lot on their appearances. This is due mostly to society and what magazines and tv shows, especially on Disney Channel, have taught them to believe what is "cool".

Annotated Bibliography

“Corn lobby’s tall tale of a gas substitute.” Christian Science Monitor 12 May 2006.

This article addresses some of the benefits and downsides associated with using ethanol as an alternative fuel to gasoline. The newspaper Christian Science Monitor is published by The First Church of Christ, Science out of Boston, MA. It does not rely on wire articles but has writers located around the globe. Some of the information in this article is very helpful in writing my papers. I learned from this text that very little net energy is produced from making ethanol from corn. It also doesn’t help that in order to make the ethanol from corn, the processing companies use natural gas or coal to power the plants. Using coal counterbalances the greenhouse gains of using ethanol.

Dean, Cornelia. “Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production” The New York Times 11 Oct. 2007: A24.

Dean wrote this piece for The New York Times which is a very respectable daily newspaper. This article addresses some problems that may occur if we continue to produce ethanol at a faster rate. Dean gives information from a panel headed by the National Research Council that shows how producing ethanol would inhibit and possibly even pollute our water supplies. I am going to use this article to show that by increasing our corn production for ethanol, we are hurting our water supply.

Evans, David. “Race is on for ‘green gold’ of tomorrow; High oil prices have propelled biofuels into the global mainstream.” Birmingham Post 19 June 2006: Business 32.

In this article Evans presents sources of alternative fuels to the reader and focuses mostly on ethanol. He gives examples of how Brazil has developed a very efficient way to produce ethanol. Biodiesel is also mentioned in this article, including where it is manufactured and what it is produced from. I will use this article as a source to show how to produce ethanol efficiently and what the United States could learn from Brazil.

Gritzinger, Bob. “Flex Fuel for the Future; Is E85 the next unleaded or a pipe dream?” AutoWeek 24 Apr. 2006: 18.

The article focuses mainly on where actual ethanol pumps can be found in the country and what benefits we get out of using ethanol. The article was published in AutoWeek which is a very respectable automotive magazine published weekly. Gritzinger also points out that even though E85 costs about the same as gasoline; it gets 15 percent less miles per gallon. This source will help me in showing that most of the places to get E85 are in the rural parts of the Midwest and cannot be found in major cities across the country.

Lynch, David J. “Brazil hopes to build on its ethanol success; Nation aims to turn alternative fuel into a global commodity.” USA Today 29 Mar. 2006: B1.

Lynch introduces the fact that Brazil is now energy independent. The article focuses on Brazil’s production of ethanol fuel and how they plan on exporting more and more as the need for alternative fuels become more demanding to other countries. This in part is due to the fact that they are able to produce more sugar cane in order to produce more ethanol. The article was on the cover page of the money section of USA Today. This shows that it was a very hot topic at the time, and still is. USA Today is a source of news for all different aspects of life; it is a national newspaper. This article will be useful to me because it helps to show how a country can produce ethanol efficiently. It will also give me a resource for my policy paper.

“NPRA’s Slaughter: ‘Biofuels are not the answer’.” Oil and Gas Journal 13 Nov. 2006: 29.

This article is a summary of the views of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association’s president, Bob Slaughter, on America’s use and production of E85 ethanol fuel. Some of the quotes in this article by Slaughter are very relevant to my topic and I will use them in both of my essays to help back up my issue.

Potera, Carol. “Alternative Fuels: The Economics of Ethanol” Environmental Health Perspectives 1 (2002): A18.

Potera uses two different studies to write this article. She introduces different reasons as to why America shouldn’t focus on converting to using ethanol instead of gasoline to power cars. Some of these reasons include what the effects will be if we continue to grow more corn in order to produce ethanol. This article will be very helpful to me to show how the environment will be impacted by producing more E85 ethanol fuel.

Samuelson, Robert J. “The Upside of Recession?” Newsweek Web Exclusive 30 Apr. 2007. 15 Oct. 2007 .

Samuelson’s article is mainly about inflation and recession in today’s world. A few of the paragraphs have to deal with rising food prices. He attributes this rise to the production of ethanol in America and the use of corn for ethanol. This article is important to my essays because it helps show how using corn to produce ethanol has affected food prices and the production of meat and poultry.

SWA #8: Topic Proposal and Sources

Ethanol as a Fuel

In recent years, E85 ethanol has become an increasingly popular alternative to gasoline as a way to power our cars. Chevrolet is constantly advertising its flex fuel vehicles, or those that can run on both gasoline and E85 ethanol. The government also repeats itself often in stating that using ethanol helps to decrease America’s dependency on foreign oil. Advocates for ethanol also claim that it is an energy efficient way to power cars.

My paper will explore the effects of ethanol on America’s agriculture and how it reduces our dependency on foreign oil. I will also show how studies have shown that the production of ethanol may affect our water sources. Ethanol has also had an effect on rising prices of meat and food at the grocery store. The materials used to research this topic include articles from highly respected newspapers, magazines, environmental journals, and online publications.

My audience will be my classmates and those around me who may have an interest in this topic. Ethanol is becoming a more popular subject to debate, and more people are forming their own opinions on it. My goal is to write a paper that shows the different sides of using ethanol by showing what the pros and cons are of producing ethanol.

Works Cited

Dean, Cornelia. “Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production” The New York Times 11 Oct. 2007.

Gross, Daniel. “Popcorn: Is the ethanol boom going bust?” Newsweek 5 Oct. 2007 .

Potera, Carol. “Alternative Fuels: The Economics of Ethanol” Environmental Health Perspectives 1 (2002): A18.

Samuelson, Robert J. “The Upside of Recession?” Newsweek Web Exclusive 30 Apr. 2007. 15 Oct. 2007 .

Sever, Megan. “Is ethanol the answer?” Geotimes June 2006. 15 Oct. 2007 >.

Tenenbaum, David J. “Harvesting the Potential of Biomass” Environmental Health Perspectives 11 (2005): A750-A753.

Smoking Ban Brainstorming

**Who is affected by smoking bans? Smokers who want to smoke while at a restauraunt or out to eat. Restauraunt and bar owners are very affected by it. They may lose business to people who spend a lot of money there.
**Why are bans put in place? It is legal to smoke above the age of 17, but cities and counties are starting to put bans on where people can and can't smoke.
**Does this go against their rights as American citizens?
**Why are smoking bans put into place at all?
**Who decides where people can and can't smoke?

My PostSecret Card

The text on my card is "I don't love my parents, but I tell them I do". This kind of applies to my life, as I have felt this way before, but I haven't felt that way in a long while. I tried to pick a real topic that people could relate to. I think my classmates understood what I was going for and what I was trying to say. I don't know if they read beyond what the card said; no body said anything about that. The background is just white and the lettering is black. It is that way because I wanted it to be very plain and the text to stand out. That way people could interpret it as they wanted.

"Secret" Post

picture

The claim in this post card is that the author doesn't have feelings towards real life tragedies. The claim isn't explicitly stated, but it is there. The author says that they "cried for Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars but not for the Tsunami victims". This could be applied to many tragedies today. People don't always feel for things the way they should, or how society expects them to. People have different ways of dealing with things, and that could be the reason why the author didn't cry for the Tsunami victims. The author could be just about anyone. Any person, whether it be a child or elderly person, man or woman, with any background could be saying this. The audience could also be any person. The audience could feel the same way as the author or the audience could be appalled that someone was capable of feeling that. The visual component isn't very strong. It doesn't draw in the reader immediately; it just shows a night sky on the top and some water on the bottom, but you can't see a wave like a tsunami.