Module 4!

For me this section was slightly more difficult. The part that was most difficult was trying to understand the concepts Terry Dugan was trying to explain.  So here I go diving into the subject of culture and health in the media.

The first thing that stuck out to me was the video on the “Impact of Media on Culture”. What really made sense to me was the explanation that culture has been learned by a variety of ways. Dugan explained that culture can be learned from behavior, by individuals, and by a group or groups of people. We are learning culture by all the people around us and a large influence is our parents and family. Our culture often relies on our family to help shape values that we either will accept or reject along with adding our own personal life experiences to the mixing pot. Dugan brought up an important point, as time has gone on the decline of family values has been at stake. This refers that culture hasn’t been passing down from generation to generation as successful as it has before. Media seems to be a factor as to why bad actions and the decrease of family values have been diminishing. Media lacks to reveal consequences and may encourage bad behavior. This leads to a connection I found in Sternheimer’s text that the sexual revolution needs to be blamed on social structure not so much media or pop culture. Chapter 6 describes that media isn’t all to blame for issues such as teen pregnancy or being sexually promiscuous. This chapter reveals that it is often mistaken that people’s sexual interactions are encouraged by media. This book encourages us the readers to look outside of what everyone thinks and believes and replace it with other knowledge. The proof it gives us is we need to” understand the social context of sex in the twenty first century”. Sex isn’t as influenced by the media rather than it is influenced by the ones we know. For example young teenagers that might be experimenting with sexual things aren’t looking to media for encouragement but rather their friends and other people they surround themselves with. It leads into the statement that if my friends are having sex then it is okay for me. Our minds are often tricked that media encourages more than it actually does. Media is easier to blame than our social structure, why is that? A question I challenge to the group. I found this connection to be eye opening for me that we are quick to blame the media without looking at other resources. Sternheimer’s text also does a great job of explaining that research may be one sided, or fail or recognize other aspects that can take account. Such as this example of the sexual revolution, researchers aren’t looking at other facts of how teen pregnancy is decreasing it only see’s that pregnancy is still a major issue.

The other video that stood out to me as well was Dugan’s video “Functions and Effects of Culture”. Dugan starts out explaining that culture defines, divides, and unites us as part of the society. Culture is what really helps us shape the way we feel, think, and act in our everyday life. The behavior we have learned from our culture helps us distinguish the difference between right and wrong. Although our opinions of right and wrong may be different from other cultures what we decide as acceptable is part of our own personal culture. Another major part that grabbed my attention was how Dugan described the different forms of culture we have. We have a personal culture, a family culture, a bounded culture (our friends), and lastly a dominate culture (how we reveal ourselves in public). The dominate culture is one that seems acceptable to use in public, my translation is a culture we use to show our manners and not talk about or bring up uncomfortable material in a public setting. This is the way society used to be which was respectable to society. But as we know things tend to change over time and now personal culture is revealed in society much more than before. Personal things such as sex are more commonly brought up than before. But that doesn’t mean sex is becoming an issue for young teens.  We live now in a personal society that we post our lives on social media and lots of people know about our lives. That can lead to a misconception about sex becoming a bigger part of our culture, which is not the case. We are becoming more accepting overall as a culture.

After reading chapter 6 it hit me. Since we are becoming a society that seems to share more personal things about ourselves we have also learned to be cautious. That is where my connection from the paragraph before and chapter 6 from the text made more sense to me. Since the media mostly reveals sexual advertisements and the promotion of sex is supposedly an issue then why are teen pregnancy rates decreasing, condom using going up, and abortion rates lowering… that’s a good question. My answer is that sex is the biggest issue in media. Since sex is overly flaunted my realization is teens are realizing the consequences unsafe sex can lead too such as diseases and pregnancy that teens seem to be more responsible. Media sends out the cliché that all teens are irresponsible and can’t control their behaviors which seems legit but based to the statistics the media is wrong.  An important stat Sternheimer mentioned was “condom use went from 46% in 1991, to 60% in 2011” which is most recent.  Another fact to look at was “56% of males and 70% of females report to have first sexual experiences within a steady relationship”. That last fact made me have hope for our teenage society. Sex I feel is often looked to as a competition or lust. The last stat made me appreciate that the majority of people having sex are keeping it between their partners and are being more responsible. This is an example of how media blows issues out of proportion which seems to be a common trend we’ve been realizing in this class.

Now we are going to shift gears a little bit. The next topic I want to largely touch upon is from Chapter 8 is Sternheimer’s text “Media Health Hazards: beauty image, obesity, and eating disorders”. I am going to start out with obesity. In the previous modules we saw that exposure to too much television and playing too much video games leads to unhealthy lifestyles. Which I have to partly agree that media does, but to only some extent. Society likes to blame media watching TV and eating junk food is making our children obese. But what society fails to see is that is more to the story. The text describes that TV isn’t the only reason children are being obese but the lack of heathy resources available to them. The book encourages us to take a look as to where most children that are obese seem to be, the answer in low income areas. As we learned from module 3 poverty and low income doesn’t seem to be resembled too much in the news. Children who are from African American descent and from Latino descent seem to suffer the most from obesity.  Those children who live in low income neighborhoods live in unsafe neighborhoods where children are forced to stay indoors and the area has fewer funds for safe playgrounds for the children to exercise. The neighborhoods also don’t have access to healthy grocery food chains and aren’t able to get their hands on as much fresh produce. Instead these areas have more “low-cost fast-food restaurants” that are not as healthy for children. As we can see TV isn’t the only reason children seem to battle with obesity, but again media doesn’t address these issues.

The next very important topic the text touches upon is body image in the media and anorexia and bulimia. I must say what this book had to say on the topics I wasn’t too thrilled about, but there were others I am glad I was informed about. This section explained that only a minority of people are impacted by the body images seen over media and strive to be that way. But since it is a small number “4 to 7 million American’s living with either anorexia or bulimia” I can try to understand the message the book is trying to reveal to me as a reader. However, when I think of myself I compare my body image to those in media more often than I would like to admit. When I am surf Instagram I see all these beautiful people and models and wish to aspire to have a body image like theirs. Even though I am not going the length the not allow myself to eat as much or anything drastic like that I feel shameful for who I am, which is wrong. That first section did slightly upset me and that is why. I have a question though for my group 3 bloggers. Did you agree with what Sternheimer had to say about body images in the media don’t reflect upon people that suffer from bulimia or Anorexia? I know it is okay to disagree so I’d love to hear any thoughts. I believe understanding the other part of the story will help me expand my knowledge.

Another part of this section about bulimia and anorexia I did find informative was the part about weight regulations for models. I never knew that before so I was glad to hear this issue was taken in account. “Spain declared all runway models needs to have a body index of at least 18” this equals a 5”10 model to weigh at least 126 pounds. I thought it was great what modeling agencies are doing to make sure their models stay on a healthy track, but I hope this regulation continues to be enforced down the road.

Concluding the last section of chapter 8 brought another important topic to the table, health hazards. I did not know that one of the biggest health hazards to our society is the amount of people especially children that don’t have health insurance coverage. I always knew it was expensive to have but I never was informed the amount of people that have to live without getting proper medical care from a doctor. It isn’t only just people that have low income do not have health insurance but those in the middle class as well. Our society is at harm since they aren’t able to receive proper care when needed. Another problem that less employers offer health care insurance benefits than ever before, and if they do it may be that it is too expensive to add to many people’s budget. Life expectancy will decrease if better means of affordable health insurance is not provided to society. As we saw in this section, there is more to health hazards than we originally thought. Sternheimer closes chapter 8 by saying yes watching too much TV can be unhealthy and yes models are deemed as unhealthy but there is a “bigger picture” in mind that may hazard our health. Having less access to proper nutrition and health care will lead to the poorest health in society. This book did it once again, takes you to the big picture of media and what we are failed to be shown. Like I said earlier there’s always more to the story than media wants us to believe the number one reason I have enjoyed reading this book and learned from the examples Sternheimer provides.