Sunny Saturday in Salem

To balance out my last post, I've decided to make this one short, light, and good (I feel better about my new posts by criticizing the previous post, the irony is great). Today was an incredibly fun day. We (from left: madison, me, jenny, and fidelis) started out this morning on an AP Art History scavenger hunt in downtown Salem, consisting of us wildly running around searching for the real residing places of the images on our "scavenger hunt list." What started out as a, "oh let's not go crazy/we don't have to win," quickly turned into a "whoa! we're doing really well/we could win!" as we began to run from picture to picture. And as documented by the picture that finally works (fingers crossed), we won. I consider it an awesome upset. haha. I spent the rest of the day at River Front Park with Caroline and Zach, practicing violin (I'm in the process of trying out 6 bows from the violin shop), and watching olympics/eating dinner with mom. Success.

I'm probably too young to be disillusioned, but...

It's around 1:04am right now (we'll see exactly how long this post takes me), and what better way to continue to procrastinate the mountain of statistics (a subject that I have decided really has no use beyond computing simple means and standard deviations...nothing else) homework I have left than to rant on a recent lecture about "the male gaze."

Disclaimer: I hate it when my peers try to be philosophical and "soapbox-y" because I feel that we really haven't "lived enough" to say anything truly worthwhile on societal issues like this one. Yet, I continue anyways. This makes me a hypocrite before I even begin my point. So we'll see how this goes...

Lately in AP Art History (don't get me started on how much I wish this class interested me) we have been studying the artist's large role in shaping an unrealistic womanly beauty that subjects a woman to demeaning and purely visual standards/categories that are pleasing to the "male gaze." The concept is basically explained by Raphael's quote, "...to paint one beautiful woman, I must see several beautiful women...But since there are not enough beautiful women, I use an idea."

As you might have already guessed, this topic put the class on a rather long tangent on society's effects on modern day images of women vs. men. I sleepily blew it off at first, it's not like this had been the first time that stereotypes and sexual innuendoes were discussed in class. But as I continued to halfheartedly listen to the discussion, I became very bothered and discouraged by the overwhelming amount of women conforming to society's, mainly men's, degrading visual standards. Not surprisingly, the male students agreed on the fact that beauty (disregarding any type of inner beauty by guideline of activity) was a combination of a woman's eyes, legs, butt, stomach, hair, and breasts. Again, "whatever, I'm not shocked." But then when the focus was shifted to the female students, I was actually quite disturbed by the obvious majority of the students who blindly accept all that the "male gaze" subjects the woman too. Topics discussed by the majority: forcing themselves to wear high heels (so their "butts would look good") even though they caused indescribably amounts of pain in simply crossing the street, beginning to wear makeup at the age of 11, and trying to look the skinny/curvy "Barbie model" type shape.

I really don't want to criticize the situation, though I do see it as discouraging and a direct effect of media (and the overpowering male dominance in producing media shows), but I did feel fairly confident in myself after the discussion. Needless to say, I really don't stress on my image (almost to the point of not caring too much, according to mom sometimes. haha). I wear sneakers everyday. I wear no makeup, and it literally takes me 15 minutes to get ready every morning. (Note to self: I'll probably view this as some sort of barbaric stage in my life when/if I ever start making a conscious effort to present myself). Regardless, I came out feeling absolutely blessed that I feel comfortable enough with myself to not have to worry about my appearance and what others may "judge me by." I won't get all sappy in Godly beauty, but I truly believe in it and appreciate the simplicity that it brings to my life. And whatever happens, I hope I hold this (most likely naive) ideal in my life forever.

Next post: Why society has subjected us to wear clothes. Lol, I kidddddd...

Bananagrams

*One of these days, I'll upload a picture that works...

I haven't posted in a while, and honestly I have nothing of substance to post about (not that my usual posts have substance...but you know). So I've taken this opportunity to (1) set a goal to add more pics/videos in my posts; apparently it adds flare, (2) talk about my new found possession, and my favorite (3) just blog because I can.

Bananagrams is the best game I've encountered in a long time. (disclaimer: I am an absolute "wordnerd")

I guess it's a frantic/speedy mix between Scrabble and crossword puzzles. As the name suggests (banANAGRAMS), you start with 21 tiles and create words that fit into a "crossword" in front of you and try to beat other players to the last tile (someone says peel when they're crossword is complete and all players need to pick up another tile simultaneously). The trick is to be able to quickly rearrange your letters/crossword at any given time to create new words. It's awesome (don't make fun of me...it's my blog). lol.

In other news (since this blog is pretty random/pointless anyways): LAKERS beat C*ltics in Boston today with the help of Kobe's clutch shot. 90-89. Hollinger better recheck those power rankings...