Fashion-Popular Culture

Clothing and appearance is something that is becoming more and more important to generation of kids. Fashion and looks has always been important dating back to the Middle Ages and on throughout history. It is without a doubt that much more emphasis and importance was placed on clothing to everyday people with the invention of television, especially Hollywood glam. There are many aspects of life that affect clothing and fashion. Things such as economic and political situations play a major role in how clothing is portrayed in the media, (in the 20th and 21st centuries).

Clothing and appearance has become very important in the last sixty years. Clothing can relate to many different expressions to our lives. How we dress is also a symbol of the times and power status. Many CEO and Wall Street business people dress extremely professional. During times of war and economic hardships clothing styles may change to fit not being able to have all the materials or be short of materials. As stated in our reading, the Reagan administration made the saying ‘dress to impress’ placing heavy emphasis on career and appearance. After the turmoil of the sixties and seventies, the eighties became a decade of a wide mixture of conservativism of Reagan and punk rock. The clothing varied one person may be in a leather jacket while another in a business suit.

With the feminist movement of the previous two decades, the eighties were a time for women to start to have an equal playing field with men in the business world. I do, however find this to be quite the coincidence has the Reagan era and the eighties and even now supports women in the same field as men yet place heavy emphasis on how they should dress. Whenever I hear the words ‘dress to impress’ I assume it means that the woman should dress up while the man already always is dressed up. Of course, women are assumed to wear more provocative clothing in the workforce, whereas men always wear the same suits while women wear heels, skirts and dresses. This also leads to the question of when women go to get hired is it based on their clothing and looks rather than skill.



Women’s fashion has also played up in the media. Take for example the famous celebrities of Hollywood and politics overtime. Many of the wives of the Presidents have been fashionable for their time period. More notably women such as Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan and most recently Michelle Obama are in spotlight and almost pressured by the media to make sure they are dressed a certain way, whereas the Presidents themselves are hardly analyzed for their clothing choices.





Clothing also plays important role in the social world of schools and students. Once students enter middle and high school appearance becomes a really big deal. Kids judge either based on appearances and whether or not the other kids around them have the ‘popular’ clothes. I grew up in the suburbs and my high school was very stereotypical in how the kids dressed, the preppy kids who wore Hollister, the punk kids who wore skinny jeans and black and so on and so forth. I have noticed though as I have been doing some volunteer work in a Minneapolis public high school and I noticed that the students there, even the ‘popular’ ones do not dress as ‘preppy’ as they did in my school but more alternative. By this I also think that the area in which the school is located also plays a role in what types of clothing the kids are wearing.

I think an assignment for students related to clothing could be a really fun task for them to do, at the very least interesting. What I would want my students to do is to pick any time period that they found interesting, anything ranging from medieval times to present times. I would want my students to show how the fashion of that time period related to the political, economical or social situation. It could either be here in America or any other country or culture in the world. I think that fashion says a lot about a culture and it would be interesting to learn about the different fashions from around the world. The students would have to discuss the fashions for all ages and how that related to what was going on in the world. One example would be why did people of the 1950s dress so ‘leave-it-to-beaver’ perfect. Why would the women be seen vacuuming in pearls and pencil skirts? How is this significance to the social and political situation in America?

Here are some brief discussion questions to respond to:

A.) What affect does clothing have on students' social life?

B.) How important do you think clothes are in today's society? What does this say about our society?

C.)  Briefly write up a description as the CEO of your clothing line of what you would want your own clothing line to look like? Who would you target? Who would you get to model your clothes? Would they be expensive or cheap? What implications are you adding to your target and to society?

Toys: Social Impact

This is a very interesting and fun topic in terms of pop culture. Toys have a major impact on all areas of development. Everything from children’s emotional attachment to toys to the financial impact on the parents of the cost of the toys is important to the toy culture. Clearly, there are many factors that have played a role in the development of new and creative toys. I happened to find this subject of toys and culture quite interesting has it is important to child development but also in terms of marketing and advertising.

I was born in 1988, so as I was growing up video games, cell phones and technology was already fairly popular. However, I did not always play video games or with technology advanced toys. Some of my favorite toys were the classic Barbie dolls, although I must admit I also have a collection of Britney Spears and N*Sync dolls/action figures, littlest pet shop toys, my little ponies and care bears.


Something that I noticed was that although I played with Barbie dolls, most of my toys were in some form of pet animals, like beanie babies and littlest pet shop toys. When I was little I wanted to be a vet and I think the toys I played with had to with in some ways. I think the simplest toys are sometimes the best to play with. I am also a child psychology minor and I have studied the impact of toys on children.
Child development is something very interesting to me and the impact of toys and with the newest technology including things like baby Einstein. From my readings and research baby Einstein and other toys similar to it have not always proved to be best for babies.

I would have to agree with this article, toys can be proven to increase cognitive awareness in some aspects but an increase in an IQ score is almost impossible from the toys and videos alone at such a young age. This TIME article brings up some good points on early infant interaction with toys. With all the media changes, TV is perhaps one of the most influential ‘toys’ or products on children and takes away from their interactions with real physical objects and/or people. I also think with technology of TV and video games that kids are becoming more over stimulated as also mentioned in the article. Kids are, in general, used to getting entertained and not being able to occupy themselves when they get bored with the TV show or video game. I personally think it stunts creativity in children.
As kids get older, toys take a different form, especially in today’s society. Many toys, as we get older, are cell phones, ipods, and laptops. This is different then twenty years ago. I think things like this that used to be prized are now common day items, i.e. cell phones. I know that my cousin who is in third grade now has a cell phone and some of my students at my school that I worked at also had cell phones in fourth and fifth grade. I remember I got my first phone in eighth grade and I could only use in case of an emergency but now kids use these ‘toys’ at a much younger age.
I also think that with mass production assembly lines toys are much easier to produce and reproduce. For example, the classic Barbie still exists but there are many replicas and copies such as Bratz, which have also caused a lot of controversy.
Toys such as Bratz and Moxie Girls, I feel, promote materialism, many of these dolls ‘need’ accessories such as different clothes, purses, and even cars. Young girls who play with these dolls assume that they as well may need these things as well. Overall, I think that toys are an important part of our development. Even the simplest toys are important to the creative, social and motor and skill development. I also think that toys, especially nowadays has an important social impact in social circles of kids.


Brief Discussion Questions to Respond to:

A.) What were some of your favorite toys growing up?
B.) How have toys changed across the decades?
C.) Do you think these changes are having a positive or negative impact on society?
D.) Design an advertisement(write out what it would be like, you may also add pictures if you would like) of your favorite toy growing up? The target should be of kids of the 21st century.   Is it similar to the advertisements you used to see for it?

In the World of the Food Industry

This blog is posted a bit a late, so I am sorry for that. However, I do find this topic of food and health issues to be a very pressing issue in all aspects of our lives including teaching. There are a few different ways I want to approach this topic since it is so vast. On a personal level, I feel that food infiltrates all aspects of our lives. I never realized how much food and eating habits affect our daily lives until my freshmen year of college, when I was warned about the freshmen fifteen. Ever since then I have kept or at least tried to monitor what I eat and to try to exercise regularly. But as with most people, my weight and eating habits fluctuates with stress and other life factors.
With all the recent controversy and the House passing a Health Care reform bill, I feel as though it is our job as teachers and citizens to keep informed on the food culture and to teach our students to keep informed about their decisions regarding food and exercise. A recent article that I found in the New York Times, helps to give a better understanding of the tensions of health have come to. It is much more than a health issue; it has become a political and social issue as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08fat.html?_r=1&ref=health

I think to better understand the social context of food and popular culture we need to understand the huge change that has occurred in popular cultural since the invention of television and such models as Twiggy. The 1950’s classic case was a typical family, in which the mom stayed home to cook dinner and the family ate together every night. Grant it, this may not have been true for every family but as a whole this was the situation. Fast forward fifty years, to two career-oriented parents and kids playing in different sports and activities every night, there is just not enough time for the parent, most likely the mom to sit down and cook a meal and instead they have family dinner in the car going through McDonalds. Today’s lifestyle is clearly much busier and more complex then fifty years ago.


An interesting argument and idea that is mentioned in the New York Times article but also mentioned in Tooning In is that how do we make our personal choices. Some overweight people, as in the court case mentioned, sue or blame McDonald’s or other fast food restaurants for their weight problem. On the other hand, you have diet program after diet program being pushed into our culture every single day. It seems to me that the food industry pressures us to binge eat by getting our drink super sized and then to take these diet pills that will help us lose ten pounds in ten days. The marketing of food and health issues contradicts itself in the media and as consumers it is hard for us to reject this unhealthy pattern of eating. I feel it is our job as teachers to try to the best of our ability to help our students understand the importance of balance between eating and exercise as well. I remember it was either last year or the year before the Minnesota Daily published an article about over-exercising, which is also another issue related to unhealthy eating patterns. http://www.mndaily.com/2008/01/24/overexercising-potentially-dangerous

I think the key is to help students and ourselves understand that balance or the ‘gray area’ is very important. Excessively exercising and dieting does not help your body and healthy issues but also eating unhealthy and not exercising doesn’t fix the problem either. It is central to our lives that we find a healthy way to go about eating and exercising but it is hard with the media pressure along with political and medical pressure as well.

Interacting with CPAs

Interacting with Computers

The content of the two articles “Conversational Agents and Their Longitudinal Affordances on Communication and Interaction” and “When sex, drugs, and violence enter the classroom: Conversations between adolescents and a female pedagogical agent” offer a deep psychological, philosophical and social understanding of teaching and culture within today’s society and advancement of technology. After reading and thinking critically about these articles I became much more aware of how technology affects students in a very negative way. I also learned about the concept of having a conversational agents and the benefits and disadvantages.
I would first like to discuss the idea of a conversational agent. Before this article I had never heard of this specific type of learning style or technological use. In very basic general terms I believe that the idea of an instant online support system is really good idea for students. Students will have more flexibility to complete assignments whenever they want. This made me think of how school flexibility has changed over the years. Schools and teachers used to be very limited to how much time they spend with their students, before it was only during the school day and even then class may not have met every day. As phones, internet, computers and a wider view of education in general increased so did the amount of access to and from students and teachers outside of the classroom. Online blogging, aim and even facebook helps students communicate to each other and to their teacher outside the classroom. So when reflecting upon the progress of education and technology it is not that big of a surprise that the conversational agent has been invented and used with students.
The results of the study were interesting. On a personal level, I believe that one of the best ways to learn is through personal contact and interaction. Humans offer human feeling that cannot be replicated through a machine, despite how close these CA’s came. There is a certain uniqueness and lack of control when talking to person, by this, I mean when talking to a person you never know where the conversation can lead to and how the student could develop a different viewpoint by walking into new territory. There is also a flip side. For basic questions regarding the assignment the CA is a good thing but for a replacement or even side of a teacher the CA does not compare. For an open discussion of ideas and concepts I don’t think that the CA is a good fit for it could never be as open as a discussion with the teacher or another student.
I would like to say that the use of inappropriate language shows another aspect of popular culture and children; their maturity rate. From my own experiences I can say that in the elementary schools I have been at students tend to talk more aggressively and sexually even in front of me as the teacher. I think this is an important aspect when it comes to school and society. I think the media plays a huge role especially these days with the ‘sex sells’ image everywhere. Students are learning things at a very young age. I think as teachers it is important that we are keeping up with the trends of the time and what goes on in popular culture that way we can adapt our thinking and teaching to our students.