Assignment Takeaway #4
The first thing I thought of when reading the instructions on the woman’s image on adveristment would be the oversexualizing of a woman to make their product pop and use oversexualized phrases like the Hardee’s old commercials. Using the woman’s body and doing sexual movements to the foods to appeal it more. The second thing would be with cleaning supplies, the people in those commercials are kids making a mess and the mom or woman cleans it up. That’s the only person you really see in cleaning commercials in the 70’s to early 2000’s. The commercials insinuating that the woman in the house does the cleaning. But a positive commercials i see as of lately is dove ads, they use all type of women to assure their product is good for every woman and every woman has a beautiful body and showing every type of body type.
For men, one of the things some ads say being a real man. If you buy this product, you can be a real man and feel free even though the product is protein milk/protein granola bar. The ads targets on their masculinity. The next thing would be cologne commercials will have one man using the cologne, and women are surrounding him. The ads target that a man wants to be wanted or to be a “womanizer”. The last thing I will say a positive ad would be the X Fenty which is Rihanna’s underwear line. In their ads, it shows heavier set men modeling the boxers. The ad is trying to be more personal and feel like anyone can wear their underwear. The culture I would compare would be Korean women ads, for the most part I think they are the same. Their models are heavily Photoshop but are catered to different concerns in each culture. Korean culture want to be as pale as possible and will buy products to do that while in the US a lot of women want that nice glow tan.
Assignment Takeaway #3
The first thing I noticed when reading a couple of the abroad’s blog entries was talking about their emotions about doing the abroad opportunity but also being away from their friends, family, their home, and everything they know. One of the abroad students I want to highlight is Nyah Trinsley, she lives in the United States but currently lives in Costa Rica. The only blog that stood out was called “Spending Thanksgiving Away from Family for the First Time.” She talks about ways to cope how to deal being away from her home, and that it is really hard to be away on a holiday when families always have their traditional things on the holidays.
But after giving advice on how to deal with being away from family, she starts talking about how much this opportunity means to her and her life experience. For the most part, not many opportunities will comes like that or you will have time like this again in the future. I chose this student because I thought it was cool, she had her pronouns in the beginning. But I have never studied abroad but I thought what she was experiencing is really cool, and would love to go to Costa Rica one day.
Assignment Takeaway #2
I think the 13th value is the one that stuck out the most to me to talk about. Growing up in middle and high school, having certain things made you cool and made you want to work harder or ask your parents for certain things from your parents. Even my mom herself, she puts so much value in her stuff and making sure she has the more expensive kind and it needs to be that certain way, it did rub off on me and my sister for sure. I truly loving owning more stuff than I need like having a nice phone or getting the new Funko pops.
My abuela came to visit the family in Virginia, she is from Peru and just has a small apartment for herself. When she got to my mother’s house, my mom would get upset because my abuela was choosing not to use the extra appliances in our house like a rice cooker, blender, and waffle maker. In her eyes. that stuff is not needing, she can make the stuff on the stove with a regular pan and juice fruit with her hands. My mom also gave her a used cell phone to call her friends family but never used it and just use the house phone because she never used a cell phone before, she only needed a house phone to call who she needed to call. She thought most of the things were nonsense and almost like a waste of money and space. I chose the image because owning more stuff and putting value in our things is very Western/American type of lifestyle.
Assignment Takeaway #1
The stage I am in when it comes to the intercultural sensitivity is integration of difference. My father is American and my mother is Peruvian, she was born in Peru. I grew up in Wisconsin, a very white neighborhood and growing up I realized that others didn’t think I was American enough. But when I spent the summer with my mom and her family, I am not Peruvian enough because I don’t speak Spanish. I felt very torn on it because I felt I struggled with my identity. Being seen as different in both homes, not being good enough for both cultures to fit in. But I have learned that this is my lifestyle, that I have two types of cultures.
This specific assignment is giving me more of an insight about what I have been experiencing my whole life that I didn’t really knew had a name. It aligns with the course objectives expectations that I stated in my blog #1 saying I didn’t want this to be a throw away class, that I really wanted to learn/take away something from this class. The picture I chose for this assignment takeaway, was someone stuck between two paths. Everything I said in the first paragraph, talking about how sometimes I felt torn in both at my mom and my dads, that you don’t know what culture you identify the most.
