Susan Bordo "(Re)discovering the male body"

Derrick Brooks, et al. "Who is gazing at whom? A look at how sex is used in magazine advertisements." Journal of Gender Studies 17.3 (2008): 201-209. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 28 Oct. 2011.

In this article "Who is gazing at whom? A look at how sex is used in magazine advertisements" by the Journal of gender studies, the researchers observed how often sex was used in advertisement overall. What they found was that more often than not sex was used in order to capture the male audience. This strenghtens Bordo's argument where she points out that while Playboy is very prominent, Playgirl and Viva which are the same but aimed at women, aren't as popular. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that it is because women are uninterested, rather it is because society is just becoming accustomed to this new age where men's bodies are portrayed as sex symbols. The journal of gender studies also includes that "both male and female audiences see advertising characters posed in an alluring manner or wearing provocative clothing" this goes back to Bordo's section on Rocks and Leaners in which she states that usually the lean in photos and the angle of the camera is very provocative and give an aura of masculinity in men. Where before, gazing at men might have been something of a "homosexual" connotation, today it is slowly becoming as normal as gazing at women. All in all, although some parts of this article contradict Bordo's opinion, other aspects of it do strenghten her views. Society is becoming such that male beauty is being appreciated or seen much more than in the past, with commercials like those for hanes underwear and old spice, less is being left to our imagination and more is being portrayed.

David Foster Wallace's Speech

   I really wish that I would've experienced this speech first hand. There was not a dull moment where I was bored or his thoughts seemed monotone. He kept me wondering about what point he would make next. For one, I was shocked but enveloped in his theme of discovering ourselves through our education, not through our acquired knowledge but through changing our "default setting" the one that makes us see everything as happening only to US. I think he makes a great point with the anecdote about the two men in a bar. I would've thought that the atheist man after being saved by Eskimos would've believed in G_d and perhaps wondered if G_d sent the Eskimos to save him, however this was not the case. This made me realize again how everyone is different and while perhaps my "default settings" would cause me to believe this, it might not apply to everyone. When Wallace describes the routine-like day involving the traffic and tedious super market experience, I was captured because although I'm still an undergrad student I've been in that position at times. I laughed a couple times throughout his speech as I realized how he got every last detail on that routine down perfectly. I liked how he began his speech with the story about the big fish talking to the little fish about water and he also ends his speech with that same message "this is water". I guess my interpretation of that is just that this "water" is life, and sometimes we "swim" around life unaware of our surroundings and the meaning of events in our life slip us by because we are so accustomed to over analyzing things that we forget there is such a thing as simplicity.

The "Banking" Concept of Education

   I personally admire this wonderful piece by Freire. As I read on I came more doubtful of my "learning" experiences and I began to see learning in another light. For one, Freire makes a great point that "education is suffering from narration sickness" and in a way I see the seriousness yet light-hearted comic relief this line contains. I can relate to being "sickened" by the "narration" of education especially throughout my high school years. Essentially throughout high school I was never really required to learn, in the full meaning of that word. I was given information and I regurgitated that information on tests and it always got me by. Now reading Freire makes me realize that it isn't only me, the student is as much at fault as the teacher and society itself. Freire made me wonder, what constitutes "true knowledge". What I consider "true knowledge", will it be the same for another person? Can we blame a teacher for trying to "deposit" what he/she considers "true knowledge" into student's "depositories"?
   I found it quite interesting how Freire dissociates the world and human beings. Freire states that a person is merely "in" the world but not quite with it. Then, could it be that each one of us is just a mix of every person we've ever met and every experience we've ever had? Maybe not any one single person is original. Freire makes a wonderful statement about reality, claiming that it cannot take place in an "ivory tower". He alludes to the ivory tower which represents a "dreamer's" state of mind a place where one is not conscientious of the world and surroundings. Freire does this to make the clarification that only on a day to day basis communicating with others just like ourselves is that we can really begin to be a "corpo consciente". I think that Freire makes a great argument through the use of his allusions and philosophy. He left me trying to answer my own questions, one of them being, have I experienced my existential moment in life and what if I have and do not know it? Is it no longer existential? And will I ever actually know?