It’s the final week of autumn classes and students, including yours truly, have been asked to offer one final blog about their experiences in Women’s Studies 230.
Do you like blogging for a grade?
I enjoy the creative process that is writing. The format in which essays are presented seems less relevant. However, given this arrangement, perhaps students could use it to a fuller extent. Review and commentary of peer writings—much like a debate where opposing views are expressed, challenged, and contested—could be a way to engage students and exchange ideas.
Were blog assignments well structured?
Generally, yes. Requiring students to provide thoughtful answers to multiple questions, especially related to terms and concepts, is useful in fleshing out ideas and strengthening knowledge.
Blog critiques from the instructor offering constructive advice would also be helpful.
Should the class offer more quizzing, less writing?
Since I am a student, I’m probably part of a majority who would prefer less testing. But, this is college so it’s the nature of the beast.
And writing is expected in college, too.
As long as there is relevance to the material, quantity of writing assignments is a non-issue.
Fair deadlines, even when changed?
Sure. And, I think adequate notice was provided when changes were made.
Did blogging create challenges in understanding reading content?
No. In fact, understanding of the readings was enhanced by the opportunity to write about the content. Providing relatable media clips helped to reinforce ideas and concepts.
Eight is enough (blogs, that is)?
Well, technically, there were ten counting the extra credit and movie blogs. The number seemed reasonable given the class schedule.
If I were the instructor using blogs as a medium I’d…
Create opportunities for students to interact with one another.
In 1982, George O’Dowd was twenty-one and the lead singer behind one of the year’s most successful pop tunes. With distinctly falsetto alto vocals, O’Dowd gained immediate recognition. Radio airplay of his moderately-produced recordings showcased accessible lyrics and infectious beats. Within a year following MTV’s debut, O’Dowd’s songs weren’t the only thing drawing the public’s attention.
American cable’s music television provided listeners a face with a name and images to coincide with mellow refrains and throbbing melodies. Although videos provided an additional layer to the music experience, an artist’s image would become as important as the music—sometimes eclipsing the relevance of performer’s artistry.
O’Dowd’s band, Culture Club, appeared with him in the music video for “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Yet, it was O’Dowd’s alter-ego, Boy George, who was the primary object. (The use of the word object seems relevant here since this was the world’s introduction to “the Boy.”) Along with extras, who throughout the video seem perplexed by Boy George, television viewers also were trying to sort the man from the image.
At the video’s beginning, Boy George emerges into a public setting, shuffling, fingers snapping, aware, singing to his audience members. They are aghast.
He is fragile.
With skin pale contrasting with dark dreadlocks topped with a wide-brimmed hat tilted back, he is dressed all in white. Wearing an oversized tee shirt, he is fully made up—brows darkly penciled, eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick. He is not a beauty yet, there is a certain softness and purity which lends itself to a look that can be described as subtly pretty.
As front man, O’Dowd is a confident vocalist which may offer him allowances to experiment with his looks “understanding (that) identity (is) something that could always be reworked, improved upon, and even dramatically changed” (Ouellette 120).
Following success of their first singles, fame offered the band higher video production values and, for O’Dowd, public affirmation of his Boy George. A more refined image—glamorous, even virtuous—would emerge. Still shapeless in colorful caftans and muumuus, the fashion industry began to look at Culture Club’s lead as an incomparable source of insight of what was always a female-driven commerce.
O’Dowd’s Boy never seemed to take himself too seriously. Dolly Parton identified with the pop singer’s flamboyance, hinting of a possible future duet recording.
Writes educator Pamela Wilson, personas like Dolly Parton and Boy George are “a social parody, hyperbolic stereotype, a tongue-in-cheek charade that playfully and affectionately subverts the patriarchal iconography of female sexuality’” (Brown 85).
Later, O’Dowd’s personal life would unravel amid allegations of sexual promiscuity and habitual drug use. O’Dowd became overweight, looking haggard and out of shape. The persona of Boy George, once youthful and virtuous, was now a pop icon for the history books and fodder for media tabloids. Neither O’Dowd nor Culture Club would ever regain the success of their earlier years.
Still, remarkably, even the likes of George O’Dowd achieved the American Dream on some levels, although short-lived. Like his and many other well-documented celebrity cases in which dreams are shattered or irrevocably diminished, the real question is not about its achievement; rather, it is about sustainability, building upon dreams in a meaningful, hierarchical fashion.
Only in instances involving well-grounded individuals surrounded by higher-grounded support systems is there any chance for permanence beyond the dream’s achievement.
Brown, Jeffrey A. Class and Feminine Excess: The Strange Case of Anna Nicole Smith. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.
Ouellette, Laurie. Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identification and Girl-style American Dreams. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2003.
Rod Stewart sang about rapture in his1984 hit “Infatuation.” For those experienced in the euphoria of another person, Stewart’s catchy tune is relatable and as infectious as the sheer and utter control a brand new love interest can invoke. The feeling incites a powerful out-of-body encounter compelling the abandonment of inhibitions, convictions, and objectivity.
Tales of lustful binges is nothing new in story-telling. By capturing the interest and hearts of its voyeuristic followers through the guise of crazy passion, consumers are sometimes asked to step beyond hetero-normative expectations to consider variations of the male-female experience. This happens in “Edward Scissorhands,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “King Kong,” and, more recently, “Boys Don’t Cry.”
In “Boys Don’t Cry,” Lana’s urges to abandon her dead-end, cash-strapped, small-town existence are compounded by new and intriguing love interest, Brandon.
Hastened by his outward charm and likability, Brandon exposes a turning point for Lana which invites her to think beyond her original desires, mundane as they are, to include him. It appeals to Lana and her unexamined life—fragile, reactionary, fleeting—without pause for consequence, even losing recognition of her self-identity.
Nothing special happens in Lana’s life until Brandon appears. Her reaction toward Brandon is less desperation, more compromise, less risk-taker, more “I’ll take what I can get.” An unspoken, non-binding agreement ensues between the two.
Writing about the couple, Dr. Judith Halberstam concludes, “Exclusion and privilege cannot be assigned neatly to (them) on the basis of gender or class hierarchies; power, rather, is shared between the two subjects. (Lana) agrees to misrecognize (Brandon) as male while he sees through her social alienation and unhappiness, recognizing her as beautiful, desirable, and special” (89).
Caught me down like a killer shark
It’s like a railroad running right through my heart
Jekyll and Hyde the way I behave
Feel like I’m running on an empty gauge.
Lustful indulgence propels the story’s secondary heterosexual characters, Tom and John, to lose control forcibly raping Brandon in the movie’s latter half. Beforehand, viewers become familiar with two irrational, amoral, narrow-minded, self-serving males who seem to affirm each other’s vicious behaviors with their mere participation. After all, Brandon was paid a lesson for his dishonesty, reminded of who the real men are.
Early in the morning I can’t sleep
I can’t work and I can’t eat
I’ve been drunk all day I can’t concentrate
Maybe I’m making a big mistake.
Following the act, glimpses of their remorse are revealed through Tom and John’s attempted lies and cover-ups—the recognition that assault, especially that of their queer acquaintance, will prompt them and others to question their sexuality. This appears to underscore sexuality’s frailty. “…the cultural energy involved in disciplining gender and sexuality suggests how fragile those institutions actually are; if…gender and sexuality are achievements rather than givens, then sexual identity is complex, incomplete, and unstable” (104) says author Diane Raymond.
Oh, no, not again
It hurts so good
I don’t understand
Infatuation.
It is infatuation that pushes us forward past our limits, propelling us beyond our normal capacity. It is this unbridled lust that drives the movie’s characters in their actions.
Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place. New York: New York UP, 2005.
Raymond, Diane. Popular Culture and Queer Representation: A Critical Perspective. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2003.
Stewart, Rod, Duane Hitchings and Roland Robinson. Infatuation. EMI/Full Keel Music P, 1984.
By the mid-1960’s, my parents had settled into a modest, ranch-style home in Dayton, Ohio. The neighborhood was a mix of predominately white, working-class transplants—my father among them—who found work in one of the many local factories.
I began kindergarten in the autumn of 1970. Miss Cooper was my assigned teacher and a twenty-something African-American. Most of my classmates were white. My perceptions then of a mostly-white world were nourished after supper as television broadcasts of “Gunsmoke,” “Here’s Lucy,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” and “Adam-12” offered whiteness beyond my middle-class Dayton neighborhood.
By 1973, the number of black classmates was increasing. My neighborhood also was changing. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes and their sons, Bernard and Frankie, moved into the house across the street from ours. I found the Hughes’ to be casual and warm. I was surprised when mother or father made friendly overtures in our neighbors’ presence. My parents weren’t very neighborly, privately anyway. It was the first time I had become consciously aware of the concept of “prejudice.”
By sixth grade, my white best friend, Brian, had moved with his family out of state. Desegregation was introduced in Dayton’s public school system. Familiar classmates from fifth grade, many of them black, were bused across town. I stayed behind. My new, transient peers—mostly white—adjusted to new school jitters. Fairport Elementary, based in the city’s section that was becoming less and less white, was now less and less black.
Did desegregation in Dayton accomplish what was intended? Were the lives of school-aged children—black and white—profoundly served in any meaningful way?
In the episode of “Everybody Hates Chris” viewed during class, we see young, black Chris adjusting to being thrust into an all-white school across town. His mother argues the change will provide him with enhanced opportunities—better education, stability, safer environment—compared to the offerings of the school located just across the street from home.
From this single episode, we are unable to see if his mother’s decision, ultimately, was right for Chris. We can glean that the sudden changes create new challenges for Chris, if only temporarily. Yet, these changes–singled out for his blackness, the lack of inclusivity and treatment as the outcast–could significantly, perhaps detrimentally, impact his growth and learning potential.
According to Beretta E. Smith, “Narrowcasting, the target of specific niche audiences, appears in many aspects, a way to keep the marginal as marginal. It encourages a center—a space where the really important demographics reside. Within this space, those who know how to behave, assimilate, and look live. Unfortunately, this space also harbors those who produce, distribute, exhibit, manage, and control” (70,78).
Still, Chris’ mother is the optimist, hopeful in the promise new (white) teachers and peers will provide. Finally, her son could dodge negative influential and consuming trappings plagued by a certain minority setting.
While ”Everybody” was autobiographical in depicting the boyhood of actor/comic Chris Rock, the events of this television family likely paralleled the lives of African Americans thirsting for relatable media content. Author Kristal Brent Zook writes, “Such shows (help) us to know that our fears, desires, and memories are often collective, not individual. (Black shows) are not unlike those conversations our grandparents used to have on front porches, in segregated cities, so far away from home” (593). Entertainment value aside, is there some deeper profit beyond mere affirmation?
Meanwhile, violence within my neighborhood escalated in the mid-seventies. In 1977, my family left Dayton, settling into a small, all-white community in the suburbs.
By then, the search for my own identity had been stunted. It would be awhile before the search gained the momentum and significant insight useful in the journey into manhood and the world at-large.
As a student, no one then asked me what I thought. Did anyone care? Does anyone care now?
Probably not.
Brent Zook, Kristal. The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
Smith-Shomade, Beretta E. Narrowcasting in the New World Information Order. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2004.
An American born during the Great Depression, his was a generation of men defined by a pure hegemonic masculinity: male, white, heterosexual, independent, and diligent. Walt is a core representation of pure hegemonic masculinity.
Yet, like many men of this period, Walt’s nucleus has been layered with characteristics categorically inherent in the male persona, creating an über-hegemonic masculinity. Stoic, crude, prejudice, patriarchal and violent features are later added as life experiences unfold and multiply.
Theorists and researches recognize the distinction. The concept of “masculinities” is born.
Author and educator Jackson Katz explains masculinities as a means “to more adequately describe the complexities of male social position” adding “gender order (produces) numerous masculinities stratified by socioeconomic class, racial and ethnic difference, and sexual orientation” (350).
Self-awareness can offer invitation to reduce, even eliminate, masculinities. “The central delineation is between the hegemonic, or dominant masculinity, and the subordinated masculinities” (Katz, 350). Such reasoning befits a human given the fluidity and profound changes over the course of a lifetime. Masculinities are malleable. In Walt’s case, the evolutions occurring in his younger life seem permanently bound to his dominant masculinity.
The breadth of Walt Kowalski’s life history is nearly realized. He is Catholic, a Korean War veteran, widowed, and a retired auto factory worker living in a once respectable, middle-class neighborhood, now fallen to crime and populated by lower-income minorities. It is this last detail which frustrates this American patriot of Polish descent to disdain for his neighbors, often peppering them with outward racial slurs.
The curmudgeon Walt holds equal disdain for his family, their unabashed show of entitlement, and for anyone dodging an honest day’s work for instant gratification. He is a man clearly defined by his past, namely, his war history.
This offers some explanation for a combative nature and resolve to control his surroundings. Walt realizes it may be too late to salvage relationships with his sons (and the continuation of the male hegemonic lineage). Instead, he takes interest in young, Hmong neighbor, Thao. By Walt’s standards, Thao desperately needs a certain male intervention—Walt’s—if he is to survive in an American community where violence boils beneath the surface.
Walt accomplishes his task–securing the lineage of male hegemonic masculinity–providing Thao lessons on matters of male importance: the use of hardware tools and working a respectable job earning a respectable wage. He is coached in how to get the girl and talking like a man, complete with the usual swear words and racial insults. Despite some show of resistance, Thao is a receptive learner.
Walt’s actions are a response to what could be a growing counter-hegemonic movement during these modern times. In an extreme representation of counter-hegemony, there is Aileen Wuornos, a real-life figure immortalized in the film “Monster.”
Aileen Wuornos was a product of her time.
Wuornos was abandoned by her parents and later adopted by her grandparents. Following her grandmother’s death, Wuornos’ grandfather removed her from the home. At age 15, Wuornos turned to prostitution.
As a young woman in the 1970’s, Wuornos sought acceptance and affirmation from men. Instead, she found rejection and humiliation.
Married and divorced, Wuornos became involved with a woman. She would continue engaging in prostitution, using the money to support her and her lover. The random, sexual encounters were not without abuse at the hands of her male counterparts.
It was then that Wuornos began a series of killings.
Before her arrest, seven men were dead. She later would be convicted of her crimes and sentenced to death. Vilified, Wuornos became the “monster.”
This writer wonders if a movie directed by a female and told from Wuornos’ point of view improved the cause to diminish male dominance. Author bell hooks writes, “Misogyny wears many guises, reveals itself in different forms…but its chief characteristic is its pervasiveness” (119).
Aileen Wuornos died from lethal injection in October 2002.
What is striking about Wuornos’ story is the layers of masculinities. Beyond her sexual liaison with a female, Wuornos possesses a bravado generally reserved for men and is later convicted of a crime so closely associated with men. Katz writes “…violent behavior is typically gendered male. This doesn’t mean that all men are violent but that violent behavior is considered masculine (not feminine) behavior” (350). Moreover, Wuornos would become only the tenth woman in the United States to be executed following the Supreme Court’s1976 removal of a capital punishment ban.
Walt Kowalski and Aileen Wuornos provide stories of two individuals focused on securing a future, one the counter-insurgent, the other, the counter-hegemonic. In the end, both suffer unfortunate fates. And it stands to reason that, in most cases, overcoming counter-hegemony is a matter best handled by collective reasoning and multiple minds.
Dines, Gail; Humez, Jean M. Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003.
hooks, bell: Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994.
On a leisurely Sunday morning halfway through this decade, the couple awakes. The pair exchange flattering remarks about an evening filled with unbridled anticipation. Over coffee, there is chatter of tremendous promise, the assured boon of their recent quests.
Word reaches them. Success. Receptive audiences. The “it” factor.
The couple, Hollywood filmmakers and Madison Avenue advertisers—the surrogate parents—beam with pride. Moviegoers and idol-worshippers took the bait. Chase Crawford and Robert Pattison, both beautiful, are bonafide stars.
In a major city elsewhere, a rerun of “Family Affair” airs.
“Master Jody, I must insist that you hurry or risk being late for school,” pleads the bearded, portly Mr. French of his young charge. Two thirty-something men watch on, debating the “hot” factor of Mr. French (portrayed by actor Sebastian Cabot).
Such scenarios provide illustrations in beauty defined subsisting on a purely individual level. Moreover, certain distinct tastes prevail, bounded by a vocation to scout for precise physical qualities, lending itself to film and print. Ultimately, mass appeals among image-conscious connoisseurs willing to spend whatever costs to be surrounded, even emulate, fuel, and in some cases, sustain the livelihood of the subject. But, what of those with tastes which lie outside majority domain?
What is not found is created.
Describing the genesis of today’s societal fascination with the male body, American Philosopher Susan Bordo recounts a biographer’s detail of Calvin Klein’s “epiphany” while among a crowd of men in a New York gay bar in 1974. “(Calvin) realized that what he was watching was the freedom of a new generation, unashamed, in-the-flesh embodiments of Calvin’s ideals (sic): straight-looking, masculine men, with chiseled bodies, young Greek gods come to life” (180).
Bordo responds, “Klein’s genius was that of a cultural Geiger counter; his own bisexuality enabled him to see that the phallic body, as much as any female figure, is an enduring sex object within Western culture. (At the time, it was an) idea largely closeted. Only gay culture unashamedly sexualized the lean, fit body that virtually everyone, gay and straight, now aspires to” (180).
Everyone, except the gay Bear sub-culture, which in the 1980’s began to submerge in response to feeling shunned by a gay mainstream, advocates of inclusivity, focused on physically fit, hairless body images. It is a culture that today has its own hegemonic brand: predominately white, masculine, hairy, overweight. Similarly, it is a group not without its own admiration for celebrity, especially those possessing Bear attributes, including actor/writer Kevin Smith.
Addressing an audience, Smith remarks on his Bear following.
Smith accepts his notoriety—and appearance—with matter-of-factness and humor. His looks suggest a Hollywood outsider yet, he is an accomplished artist with a devoted fan-base, gay and straight. This bodes well for men like Smith and Cabot’s Mr. French inside an industry with a profound dependence on physical features.
And that, as Mr. French would say, is “jolly good.”
Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and In Private. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1999.
Upon release of her 2002 studio album Stripped, pop vocalist Christina Aguilera revealed a grittier, urban persona. During the album’s promotion, a toned, tanned Aguilera sported piercings, dyed, black dreadlocks and a noticeably pronounced street slang—all of which, she claimed, was a reflection of her truer dual identity as individual and artist.
The singer’s grittiness translated into the product of the album’s first single, Dirrty, prompting a mixed reaction among pop purveyors, fans, and critics who would question the direction of Aguilera’s music and career. Artistic “transformations” do not guarantee victory, indicative by slumping sales amid a fickle, impatient, and largely white American market.
Today, imagery surrounding an artist’s music is as important as the lyrics and production quality.
American female impersonator, singer, and actor RuPaul has built a career beyond metropolitan gay nightclubs, infiltrating mainstream mediums with disco-tinged tunes and haute couture drag. The result is a non-threatening, carefully crafted, lean, sexy, leggy, confident blonde bombshell who has endorsed make-up products, appeared in movies, including her own television shows.
Part of RuPaul’s appeal has been a consistent message of self-empowerment and the embracement of individuality. And while RuPaul’s alter-ego, a black man named RuPaul Andre Charles, has moved beyond his earlier, meager beginnings, those influences often seem far removed from RuPaul, the performer.
In RuPaul’s music video “Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous,” the path to self-fulfillment takes a detour, getting a much-needed boost from cosmetic surgery. Though it’s uncertain where such enhancements fit in the life of the man that is RuPaul, the video’s opening character, a large, black female, embraces the opportunity as deserving “because I’m pretty on the inside.”
According to Martin Roberts, “This new self must be liberated rather than being imposed from the outside” (237).
Campaigning for surgery to create an outer beauty, the video character chides, “I want a nose to look like a Jackson, lips to be thin, (and) lighten my skin” so as to “give me what I need so I can look pretty,” with looks compared to that of singer Beyoncé. “Looking good, feeling gorgeous, that’s what I want to be.”
Hegemonic values are displayed throughout the video: the black woman who wants to appear lighter, the black “female” nurse with the grey-pale face, and the white male doctor with washboard abs. Then, there is, of course, RuPaul, transformed from the opening character to a woman with a slimmer nose, pale skin, and blonde hair exclaiming, “How do I look?” She looks, well, svelte and gorgeous, embodying the physical attributes of the hegemonic idea of femininity. Susan Bordo writes “…the appeal of slenderness is over determined in this culture; we worship the slender body because it evokes so many different qualities that we value” (460).
As viewers, we are transfixed on RuPaul’s uncanny yet authentic appearance, and forget about the former fat lady except for a few brief glimpses capitalizing on the before and after. Unlike the public’s rejection of Aguilera earlier, we accept this.
Those unfamiliar with RuPaul may miss the gender-bending performance, identifying her as another pretty face. Her look is the reincarnation of so many beauties before her, half-tributary, half-mimicry, always entertaining. While some may view RuPaul as freakish, there is a nod of respect and dignity to all women, real or otherwise.
Given the constraints in fleshing out a story within a five-minute video, we must accept that the RuPaul character’s make-over, even one so complex, could be done in just five minutes. This certainly doesn’t help the cause to diminish and debunk such quick fixes as acceptable make-over alternatives.
Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J.. Berkely: Univ. of Calif. P, 1997.
Roberts, Martin. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Poetics of Popular Culture. Eds. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.
Few things can propel the imagination like sex. So, the pairing of a soft drink with two young, beautiful people hardly seemed like strange bedfellows, at least in the minds of German advertisers. The result is a thirty-two second spot more potent than many of today’s American network television offerings, the contents of which continually push boundaries of decency and FCC regulations.
The clip provides a pure example of the use of sex to sell an unrelated product while offering a hegemonic idea of young woman and manhood.
I think I need a cigarette.
Indeed, certain goods and services allow accessibility to sex. Clothing, travel, perfumes, and shampoos, for example, seemingly guarantee physical beauty oozing sexuality through purchase and use of these products. Other items, such as tires, prescription drugs (excluding ED medications), legal services, and toilet paper require creativity and imagination of commercial-makers and viewers alike.
In the Sprite commercial, a man and woman appear naked while engaging in the act of sodomy. Of course, we do not see this as the position of the couple—the posterior of a woman kneeling before a man standing facing forward—combined with careful picture frames (head shots), minimal activity (head bobbing, stationary camera), and limited dialogue (moaning) seem to support our suspicion. Amid the activity, without interruption, the woman looks away for a split second as if she is preoccupied. She thinks (subtitled) “I could really go for a Sprite.” She pauses, leans back, then, moves in as if to finish “the act.” Her reward: an eruption of white, sticky contents (semen) spurting horizontally straight into her face. Its source, a green bottle (penis), perfectly poised adjacent to the man’s groin pointed directly at the woman.
To this woman, the achievement of the perfect blow job if, instead of a burst of cum, she could experience the blast of the refreshing taste of Sprite.
The role of the woman is a far cry from the subordinate figure in earlier commercials and advertisements. Products used by both male and female, such as automobiles, were marketed showing draped “…blondes in evening gowns over the hoods like ornaments” (Steinem, 224). The leading lady in the Sprite commercial, while “servicing” the male, is clearly in control and she uses her imagination to create a more personally pleasing experience.
Of course, for the viewer, this arrangement is only effective using attractive, vibrant, healthy-looking individuals, affirming hegemonic values, receptive to anything—interracial relations, sex outside of the bedroom, sexual freedom beyond traditional missionary-style intercourse—given the liberties available to this pretty pair. There is no negotiated stance here since we are led to believe, once again, that a certain lifestyle is only available to those who possess certain physical qualities. It is a commercial designed for a consumer mentality.
Imagery is paramount in the commercial, from what we perceive are the actions between the man and woman to the required use of our imaginations transposing male sexual climaxes for unruly bottles of soda.
According to Sut Jhally, “ If goods themselves are not the locus of perceived happiness, then they need to be connected in some way with those things that are” (251).
And what invites happiness any better than a good, old-fashioned blow job?
Jhally, Sut. Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2003.
Steinem, Gloria. Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2003.
4. I speak English. I am currently learning Spanish.
5. Although I have never enrolled in a Women’s Studies class, I did take a gender issues class offered by Columbus State’s English Department.
6. Other popular culture studies classes taken: N/A
7. I am taking WS 230 to satisfy an elective requirement.
8. My favorite band, musician, and song are too many to mention. However, some of my favorites include “Moondance” by Van Morrison, “Golden Years” by David Bowie, “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood, “Into the Groove” by Madonna. Current favorites include “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon and “Black Coffee” by Julie London.
9. Favorite movies include “Pillow Talk” with Doris Day and Rock Hudson, “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte” with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, “Death Becomes Her” with Meryl Streep.
10. Favorite TV show is “Bewitched”–hands down. Currently, enjoy “The New Adventures of Old Christine.”
11. I am not into video games.
12. This is a current photo of me.
13. Huge fan of Madonna! At the end of this month, she will release a retrospective of her biggest hits during the past 25 years.
14. Billboard offers one of my favorite websites providing information on music genres of all types.
About the Site:
A Look At Gender, Sex, and Race One Road Map At A Time
This is a current photo of me.
