March 18th Blog

“What’s Wrong with Cinderella?”

In the short story “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?” a mother expresses her feeling on this world trying to turn all little girls into princesses. At first I was skeptical, but as she started to site these examples I started to agree. She talks about the corporate world being obsessed with producing princess items to make little girls look up to this “princess figure.” The mother is a feminist and strongly disagrees with this whole princess era where girls are taught to only look at themselves based on body and beauty rather than what’s in the inside. I agree with her on this, everything now to a little girl is about pretty and sparkly, I cant remember the last time is saw a “tom-boy.”

“Facebook grows up”

The short story “Facebook Grows Up” by Steven Levy, is a writing about how Facebook turned from something that was made for college students to keep in touch, to something that the world, no matter what the age, is logging on to. This is true, now when I have lunch with my parents friends, I find their friends always talking about how many hours they’ve been on Facebook, and everything they have been doing on it. It’s kind of weird to me. The story begins with a 40-year-old mom telling her story of a day when Facebook went down, she didn’t know what to do without it. After trying to login to the site five or more times, she realized she was addicted to Facebook. The story goes on to talk about the change Facebook has made from a student site, to being full of business professionals and politicians. The story says that the site has a growth rate of 3% a week, which is an astonishing number. I learned a lot from this story, numbers wise, on how Facebook works, and what kind of activity this site actually does generate. Overall it was an informative story about how Facebook is changing communication in this world.

“Harry Potter and Divorce among the Muggles”

This short story by Constance Matthiessen, starts off with a family listening to the tape of latest Harry Potter book. It was a mom and her three kids; they were driving to their new house, fresh from a divorce. As they family was on the way home from the beach they were listening to the tape and discovered the death of a main character in the story. This raged the family especially Aiden. I can understand the families rage in this death, after you get into something like a book, it makes you mad to see a part of it disappear. But I think this anger had more to do with to with the recent divorce than the book. The mom is really worried about the divorce and the effect she knows it will have on her kids. I understand that must be a tough situation, knowing what you have done will affect your kids in a negative way. I do agree with the author that a divorce will change a lot for the children, and not good change. I think this author did a good job of comparing her divorce and the effect on the children, to Harry Potter and the story he goes through. I think I would read something else by this author and I would recommend it to any parent who is divorced.

“Pumped, Pierced, Painted and Pagan”

This story by Joe Woodard, goes through the female fad of breast augmentation. But not just small augmentation, what the doctors call “unnatural.” The doctors say that the size of breast enlargement is getting bigger and bigger, up more than four times the size of the past. Personally, I don’t like these huge unnatural looking enlargements, and they can’t be good for the women carrying them around. One surgeon says that the demand for “monster breasts” is a geographical issue. I learned a lot from the article from the effects of the surgery, to how the different religions feel about this change to the body. The story compares the American fad for breast enlargement, to the cultural body of tribes in Africa the Amazon. I think this story hits a lot of important points, especially when talking about how women now think they need this to be considered beautiful. I think this is an important story that many women need to read and see the facts and numbers on. It provides information that women can look at if deciding to make a decision about any of the subjects covered, and I think its important for them to know the effects before having the procedure.

“A Fearless Press”

The starry “A Fearless Press,” by Lisa Finnegan is a story about how the press deals with disasters, and how they report it on the news. Some parts in the story I agree with, others I don’t. The parts in the story that discuss the effects the press has on what people think and how they react, I believe is true. The press can manipulate and change things to make people feel safe, or make them feel scared. In this case it was talking about 9/11 and how the more people watched news on what happened, the angrier and more scared they got. I felt like this author was very liberal and saying a lot of bad stuff about stuff about George W. Bush. It almost seemed like it was one of her main reasons to write the article. It sounds to me like she is blaming the government for 9/11. When she says of the president and his staff, “the very people responsible for protecting this country.” The author goes on to talk about the automatic change the president experienced following 9/11. He went from not being liked all that much, to having the highest approval rating ever. I do believe that the media has a large effect of how we look and feel about things. If it weren’t for them we probably wouldn’t know about it, but I think this story is trying to touch on the subject of “is it good for us to know and watch and listen to all they have to say?” I found this text somewhat confusing because it seemed to jump around a little bit. But it did have good information about not only 9/11 but also other terrorist attacks, and how the media portrays things.

“Fast Food Nation”

In the short story by Eric Schlosser, it discusses the growing popularity of fast food and the effect on our lives. This I think is something that all people will agree with, the convenience and routines of fast food. Its something that were so used to it seems ordinary. From reading this story I learned a lot about numbers and percentages of people who eat fast food. The story says on any given day one in four adults will eat at a fast food restaurant, and that McDonalds builds around 2,000 new restaurants a year. Some of the numbers in the story were staggering to me. Out of the entire story I think the last paragraph was the best. I enjoyed the story because of the good facts and the realization of how these meals area actually made. I would definitely recommend this story to anyone who makes fast food a part of his or her daily routine.

Climax (Orenstien 361) “Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53% jump from the previous year.

Parallelism (Woodard 465) “In the past six years, the annual number of breast augmentations has climbed 400%, to over 120,000 in the United States and 10,000 in Canada.”

Understatement (Finnegan 487) “The likelihood of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is very small.”