telling stories, hearing lives

Month: October 2013

Telling Stories to Change the World

IMG_5791 IMG_5792Students in Introduction to Women’s Studies are reading about the power of narrative to create social change.  We will soon begin digital storytelling service learning projects with local organizations.  “…the power that stories have to generate hope and engagement, personal dignity and active citizenship, the pride of identity, and the humility of human connectedness” (pg 1).

An Intellectual Scavenger Hunt

 

compass of lincoln

Students in Patton-Imani’s Introduction to Women’s Studies were sent on an intellectual scavenger hunt in which they had to explore, analyze, synthesize, and apply connections between knowledge, power, media images and narratives, and individual lives.   Drawing on class discussions about Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, each group was asked to critically consider what we can learn about contemporary society from this narrative, focusing on one of the following:  romantic love, beauty, masculinity, femininity.  The blog posts below share some of their work.  Please leave comments!

Masculinity in Media

http://youtu.be/Zza3GqEL5B0

http://youtu.be/owGykVbfgUE

Masculinity is very prominent in TV commercials. Two examples of this are the Dr. Pepper Ten commercial and the Old Spice commercial. In the Dr. Pepper Ten commercial, in order to get men to buy their diet soda, they make it seem like it’s a really masculine thing to buy, or that the drink isn’t for women somehow. They even made a page for the drink on Facebook where they blocked any women from joining the group. Normally women are the ones who buy diet soda, but by doing this kind of advertisement, it gets men to buy into the “10 manly calories” and purchase the drink that they might not have otherwise. The Old Spice commercial shows the “ideal man” and that by buying the deodorant you can at least smell like the “ideal man”. The other aspect of the commercial is that when he talks, he’s directing it at the women even though the advertisement is trying to get men to buy it. He says things like “Look at your man, now back at me. Don’t you wish your man cou
ld smell like me? Etc” In a way this gets men to think that women desire this type of man, and in order to be like him, you first need to smell like him. These are the type of commercials that control the way men think, and get them to buy products that they may otherwise not buy, because they want to be seen as manly in order to attract the women.