After a quarter of looking at media and all its different techniques, I've learned that I am just as consumed as any other person when it comes to the amount we take in daily. On average I'd say I spend 3 hours on the computer a day combining time that I play video games, talk to friends, and do homework, all at once. Overall, this does affect the way I run my life, because I get distracted easy, and don't really pay attention to anything other than what my friends and I are doing. Similarly, I spend time on my phone texting and looking at social media sites, and when im doing so, I'll just be sitting there for maybe an hour doing nothing. Having learned what we learned throughout this semester, I've come to realize what the media I'm interacting with is doing to me, but even so, I haven't done anything to change it because it's what I'm used to.

Even though my own media literacy hasn't changed from when I started the semester, I have learned that to have media literacy is important because it will help you to at least understand what it is your consuming, and in turn, manage it so that it doesn't distract you from all the important things in life. Being an educated consumer is important for the same reason, it keeps you from straying too far from the right path. It keeps you from being distracted from the past things that have influenced your life so much already. To be honest, I didn't get much from keeping this blog because to me, I felt that what we kept repeating in each blog was only reemphasizing the lessons we learned to stay away from within media.

MissRepresentation

It becomes appallingly obvious when you take a look at our society that so much of how we view one another is highly based off of the media we come in contact with; affecting the relationships we have with people, and ultimately, how others view us as well. Within the film, MissRepresentation, they demonstrate to you how men and women alike are influenced by the effects of media. For one thing, visible in so many of the ads in magazines or the commercials we see on TV, is the body image women feel they need to fulfill. Because of the images women see within media, they feel they have some need to be like that person, and because so, 50% of women suffer from some kind of disorder related to such. It is because of the media that shows women who are young and hot, who make up 79% of television, but really only 17% of the population, that put these feelings onto other women. As mentioned in the film, the time spent on cosmetics, etc. that women take to look like such could be used to discover cancer cures in just a few months.

This is just one of the effects the media's implications has on men and women. Another related issue is the whole ordeal with Sarah Palin, where she became more of an attraction than a politician. Women were viewed more to fit a certain image, and rather than viewing her as a politician, things like what she was wearing and her sex appeal took more prevalence than anything else. Coupling with that, as well, are other women's opinions that women reaching out for leadership roles are moving too soon too fast. Not only is this degrading to themselves, but it is also preventing them from moving forward, because even with some social reforms, woman still make 77 cents compared to every dollar a man makes. Similarly to that, within positions of power, compared to 2319 male governors, there have been only 34 female governors. Amongst other things, women remain persecuted in just higher job positions, not necessarily just positions of power. Women in movies are only 16% of the time the protagonist, and often times when they are, they are looking for love in a man, hence the title, Chick Flicks. One of the relatable quotes mentioned within the film went something like this,"We don't question the world we grew up in and that is the major problem in our society."  This just strengthens the idea of women putting other women down with the too soon, too fast line.

As you can see, implications put forth by the media about women affect the way they are treated in their daily lives. As well, it affects their own perceptions about women in power, and their minds are warped, often criticizing in the same way the women who are reaching for higher roles in power. MissRepresentation does a good job of explaining how the problems affect women, and what its effects are, and helps to raise the prevalence of these issues within our society today.

When we are thinking of different styles of clothing, many people have their different forms of what is defined as "cool" to their generation. Cool passes off as companies find out what is the new cool, put their brand on it, and trash it out of coolness through their marketing. Cool from the 70's greatly differs from what we see now, bell bottom jeans being replaced by the now popular yoga pants. However, as shown in Merchants of Cool, marketing has made these brands less and less popular, and only now, are they exploiting and taking advantage of the time they have promoting yoga pants. Once they have been pointed out to the general public, people will continually view the product as less and less cool.
As the fashion choices of people change so do their ideals with them. Within Merchants of Cool, their fashion sense changes as they progress, and people have used up the marketing potential of brands and are forced to hunt for the next cool thing.

Thus, it is easy to see the differing styles that continually change within marketing, and how the definition of cool continually changes.