Reflection...

In these last couple of months during this grueling semester of media literacy, what have we learned? Well, we know ofcourse what we've always known, which is that media is EVERYWHERE!!! and there is no doubt that it affects many aspects of our lives. But besides the big apparant picture, we have learned a lot. I was particularly fascinated with the way that men and women are portrayed in the media. Though we as a society have come a long way in regards to the approach at equality between men and women, we often times allow the media to leak into our every fiber of thinking and get into the way of that progress. For example, in my psychology class we did an activity where we were given a list of ten personality characteristics and from that we were to accumulate a list of five charachteristics that pertain to men and five that pertain to women. The stereotypically "manly" characterisitcs were picked out by the class, and likewise with the women characteristics. We picked out the same characteristics as picked when this study was done in the 70's. So while there were some disputes about one or two characteristsics, we havent really separated ourselves from those stereotypes that the media contibutes imensly to.