ATA5

Assignment 5 was an awesome opportunity for me to work with scholarly material. I researched a health topic in the UK and Scotland, because Scotland is a country I desperately want to visit. I wrote about levels of smoking in the youth of both countries. It was a nice chance to get more comfortable with interpreting scholarly material and to research some health problems of a culture I admire very much.

I included this image because my assignment was about strategies to reduce smoking in younger people. One strategy mentioned is to increase advertisements that paint smoking as undesirable socially. I found it interesting, given the other information we have learned about advertisements this semester.

ATA4

This assignment involved locating ads for men and women in North America and another country, which I chose Japan. We were asked to analyze these ads and discuss the implications of such advertisements. As someone who has struggled tremendously with body issues, self-esteem, and confidence, this was a tough assignment.

I already kind of assumed what kind of ads I would see for North America, but I was surprised by those in Japan. I guess I had the assumption that because they were a little more socially advanced than America, they would treat women better. In a human services class I’m taking this semester, we’ve been recently learning about intersectionality and how that applies to criminology, feminism, political ideologies, and may other groups. This assignment kind of helped me understand intersectionality as it pertains to feminism. I had this assumption that Japanese women did not receive the same kind of societal pressure or harassment that American women do, but I was clearly wrong. Which honestly goes to prove that intersectional feminism is important.

Personally, like I mentioned above, this assignment was hard. I have struggled most of my life (thanks 90s body expectations) with self-image issues. When I was growing up, it was super popular to be very, very skinny, by any means necessary. As someone who grew out of that expectation for my own body, it was disheartening to see the same expectations still portrayed for girls. It honestly goes to show me how much work needs to still be done socially to stop the pressure on women and let girls and women exist however they choose.

I included this meme I found, because it perfectly illustrates the work we still have to do. Men are often portrayed less sexually or revealing than women, because culturally speaking, men are less sexualized and objectified than men. In order to improve the health of girls and women, work has to be done to make differences like these go away.

ATA3

This assignment involved reading the blogs of student’s who are studying abroad and finding themes from our own course within their experiences. I found this assignment interesting for a few reasons. I was never able to study abroad, so I found it valuable to read all of the different things the student’s experiences. I reflected on Miquela’s blog in my assignment, because I felt I related the most to her and her experiences. She faced a lot of challenges as she adapted to how different Germany is from her hometown. I think if I would have been able to study abroad, I would have faced the same challenges.

In a way, this assignment kind of helped to normalize those struggles for me. I’m taking an human services class this semester that focuses on diversity and I’ve spent a lot of time expanding my opinions and beliefs about other cultures. It’s not an easy process, but I’ve been kind of hard on myself because I thought that it was just me. Reading the blogs and learning about how all these other students are adapting and learning made me comforted.

I also found it very valuable to see the themes from our class applied in real life and to then reconnect those themes back to my own life and experiences.

Below I included an image from an excursion I took on my honeymoon. It was my first time out of the country. We went to the Dominican Republic. I definitely felt like I experienced some of the challenges and changes that Miquela experienced. This particular picture was taken on a beach, before we went on a boat to go to a local island. The beach was full of vendors, tourists, and locals, and I felt very overwhelmed. My Spanish was rusty, so I couldn’t communicate that effectively, and the environment around me was so different from what I’m used to.

ATA2

I definitely think I learned a lot about what constitutes American culture in this assignment. I focused on the self-help concept and I think now being aware of that has made me be conscious of it in every other aspect of my life. I have to work on a group project in another class and in sharing information with other group members, I find myself being more thorough to make sure I’m actually helping them in the way they need. Personally, it kind of helped me understand the way I was raised a little bit more. The attitudes and beliefs my father held, that I explained in the paper, make a lot more sense now. 

Picture is from: https://emandfriends.com/products/american-values-magnet, where it is sold on a magnet

I included this picture because I think it is a reflection on how my understandings of American values have changed from this assignment. Before this assignment, I would have thought that would be a fair assumption for most American values. After the assignment, I think American values look a lot less like this image.