ATA5

To be honest this activity was quite difficult. I had a hard time finding peer reviewed journals talking about basic gender issues in Mexico. Most journals would talk about gender as it related to immigration. However I did learn a lot from this assignment. I knew that traditional gender roles are the norm in mexico but I didn’t realized that there was still a lot of that thinking in the United States. Their rankings were relatively close in regards to the women’s opinion. However many men both in mexico and in the United States still prefer to somewhat hold traditional gender roles.

The class that I would relate this to is my Hispanic Culture and Identities course. We talked a lot about gender differences in the course and where those ideas stemmed from. This is personally relevant to me because I am going into a profession that is traditionally for women and I know that it will come up in some of my future education courses. It is also relevant to me because it is important to know how other people think in order to relate to them.

I chose this image because it represents the harsh reality of what it is like being a woman in Mexico at the moment.

ATA4

I found this assignment quite interesting and surprising. A lot of the beauty standards that exist for us in the United States are the same as a lot of ads found in the western world. Women are still told that they have to be perfect and skinny and small just to get male attention. It is reinforced because advertisements with women in almost no clothing still draws the male attention. Society constructs what men want and it is quite damaging for young girls because they are expected to look a certain way.

Mexico and Latin America has more issues with the existence of machismo and marianismo. Men and women are dictated to certain roles because it is what fits their gender. A lot of times ads will encourage the extremes that are machismo and marianismo. It is progressively getting better and I think that I want to keep up with it. A lot is going to change within the next few years to be more accepting, but for now a lot relies on strong gender roles.

I chose this ad because it shows what a lot of ads were like in the past, to make it more complete i would have added another that shows that advertising is changing but a lot of times there are still advertisements that have women portrayed in the same way.

ATA2

This assignment enforced my knowledge that different cultures rate values differently. In my assignment I talked about time in different cultures. I have always known that time is regarded differently all over the world and in different cultures. As far as applying it to my other courses go I could apply it to my hispanic culture course where we went into detail about hispanic culture. This exposed the class to how not all cultures are the same and value different things.

As I mentioned in my paper I have experienced culture and different interpretations of time first hand. In Mexico and Nicaragua time was more fluid and people showed up on softer time tables. Serbia was some what in the middle they weren’t tough on time but they wanted you to be someone on time. However, now in Germany time means a lot and you have to be early to be considered on time. Even more than that living in other countries has taught me that just because peoples values are different doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing.

I chose this image because it shows that American values can vary greatly from the values that are considered important in other cultures.

ATA1

I would say that more than anything this assignment taught me more about myself than anything else. Intercultural sensitivity is something that I have always prided myself on and thought was a big part of my personality. I also came to the conclusion that it is hard for people who are not around various cultures to be far along on the intercultural sensitivity scale.

As far as applying this to other classes goes; I am a Spanish major so culture and sensitivity is an everyday topic in my classes. Even within the Hispanic culture, we talk about there are specifics that have to be understood for each country. I think I assume that everyone else around the world has much more intercultural sensitivity than we do in the United States my this assignment had me thinking about how every person in the world has to go through all the steps and might be just as misinformed as anyone else.

The reason I chose this collage as my representative visual image is because it shows how much I adapt and adjust to new cultures I am put into along with my family. I included a lot of pictures from Mexico because I integrated so many aspects of that culture into my life. My family and I are in the process of integrating ourselves into German culture right now.

Representative Visual Image