Final Web Essay: Steroids

For the web-essay, I am going to gather information about the use of steroids and how steroids play a part into beauty myth. I want to do this topic because I know some information about steroids and would like to further my knowledge of the substance so many people use on a daily basis. Also I want to know why people may take steroids, is it so they can perform better in the sport they play or want to enhance their body so they see themselves as more appealing to others or themselves. 

With both of these questions does it play into the beauty myth, that if people use steroids their sexual appeal will be enhanced. I believe that many people who use this substance do know the bad health effects of it but they do it because they may not be concerned with what will happen in the future but live in the present and want to look bigger, stronger, and all together more fit, which plays into the beauty myth. In the U.S., an individual more than likely does not go through a day without seeing ads directed to the body image and the pressure to look a particular way, one seems to be encouraged to purchase supplements in order to have a sexual appeal. 

From T.V. commercials, magazine ads, reality T.V. shows where everyone seems to have that perfect body, to walking into a convenient store, we are surrounded by body image. All of these influence beauty myth further. Throughout the quarter we have read and seen many different beauty myths. This topic, steroids, has not been touched on and I would like to find more information about them and if they truly do play into beauty myths. I am going to look at companies who advertise the use of body enhancement drugs and who produce these drugs. This topic interests me because it seems that our culture/society everyday is becoming self consumed with how we look rather than if we are healthy or not. When it really comes down to it, I feel as though people should be more concerned on whether they’re healthy or not than if they have a good looking body that has big muscles, tight abs, larger biceps and so on. 


http://www.raysahelian.com/steroid.html
^This website offers information on what legal steroids are, what they're used for, what the health effects are if they're abused and overall this site provides the basics of steroids. 


http://www.suppusa.com/
^This site provides information about the different types of steroids people can use to enhance their body, which steroids work and don't work, cost differences between different types of steroids, and how to take steroids, injections, oral spray, or nutritional supplements. 


http://www.narconon.ca/steroids.htm
^This is an alcohol and drug rehab website that gives information on health hazards, what steroids are, and the long term use of steroids


http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/steroids.html
^This is another site that gives some more information about what steroids are, the health effects, long term use effects, how widespread steroid abuse is, the addictions that come with steroids. 

Week 8

 Kinky: One Afternoon When Barbie Wanted To Join The Military= I picked this story form Kinky because it appeared to be the most masculine choice, which I assumed would be more interesting for me than the other choices.

“GI Joe, seeing their plan was a mistake, asked her to return his clothes, making Barbie promise not to tell anyone. As she slipped back into her classic baby blue one piece swimsuit, she realized this would be her second secret. She couldn’t tell about the time she posed nude for Hustler.”

I thought this quote was funny because Barbie decides to join the Military and since Mattel says that she cannot get a military outfit, she is forced to borrow GI Joe’s. After realizing she cannot harm any opposing enemies, she gives up. It is a funny story and has color throughout it with examples that she posed for Hustler and that Barbie was grateful for Ken’s flatfeet. This relates to the first paragraph in Chapter 3 of Barbie’s Queer Accessories, “Barbie has acquired many new adult accessories in recent years. A few have actually “played Barbie” by playing Barbie, either for love, like Cynthia Jackson, or for money, like Lori, form southern Indiana, who had little use for Barbie until the early 1980’s, when she wound up supplementing her college money by impersonating Barbie for Mattel in local shopping-mall fashion shows…. They didn’t want a girl who looked great in a Barbie outfit, but when she took it off, the things that she liked to wear were short shorts and a tank top and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.” I believe this relates to my reading from Kinky because it talks about the changes in Barbie’s accessories. When Barbie wants to join the military, she is looking for a different image through different styles of clothing. She didn’t want to look like her usual self. This quote speaks out against the Barbie norms. 

Reading Reaction #2

Body Outlaws Intimate Enemies

• “I sure wish I had your problem,- it only shows how our culture screws us every day. We’re taught that fat is bad, so thin is best, regardless of the sacrifice.”
• I chose this quote because it is true, if someone has a problem or illness that makes them thin, other people look at it as a great diet. This is what is wrong with the outlook on fat and thin, not everyone is going to look the same. But a food allergy that is envied is the worst thing yet.
•  “My body and my spirit continuously struggle. It seems one must lose for the other to win: It’s either the freedom to go to that late, smoky party or the freedom to expand my lungs in the morning. It’s a weird life, but it’s life and I’m still thankful for it.”
• I like her upbeat attitude towards her life that to us would see like a burden but she realizes she has to deal with it in her own way. She has to make decisions between living life and saving her life, but she still finds a way to keep her spirit up in the mist of all the difficulties.

 

Mondo Barbie Playing with Barbie

• “Her real attraction was wardrobe, the minute perfections of her clothes like adulthood stitched diminutive, fur collars, satin linings, lace.”
• This quote explains how just like Barbie, her accessories are more adult appropriate than children. The reading was strange but it explains the way that playing with Barbie was all about imagination. The end brings it all together as she says, “She fits again right in my hand – and I’m King Kong.”

Reading Reaction

Mondo Barbie: Voodoo Silences: “I run faster than my heart can drum, up the stairs, past the statue of Jennifer, into my room. Barricade the door with everything I own till Mom comes home.” 

• I chose this quote because it reminds of all the times I was in trouble with my dad and I would run and think that everything would be fine once my mom could calm him down. It is funny that kids do the same things and think in the same ways. Girls probably have the opposite effect that they run from mothers and wait for their dads, but I just liked that way the writer told it.

 Barbie Ferrari: “Turning in slow motion in the air above the banister, for whom ideas of gender and marketplace are nothings less than nothing. It’s the car she was born for. It’s Barbie you mourn for.”

• I chose this quote because the writer is trying to characterize the Barbie car as gender neutral. The car was made for Barbie and it goes with her, but it is funny that boys probably wouldn’t have a problem playing with the Barbie car because of the name of the brand.

 Body Outlaws: The Elephant and the ice cream: emotions, politics and food: “I realized that I had been chasing after some male fantasy that never provided me with happiness, no matter how thin I was. I realized that feeling beautiful was about self-acceptance, not fitting into a certain pair of jeans. It is ironic that I came to love myself most and feel most beautiful only when I stopped trying to ‘be beautiful.’”

• This quote perfectly sets an example of how women think that they need to be thin to be beautiful and get male attention, but women should choose to diet and exercise if it is for their happiness. There will always be men that don’t like the stick thin girls and girls need to realize that. But this quote explains the message that women should follow, to be happy with themselves and not worry about things for men.

 Memoirs of a (sorta) ex-shaver: “Beginning in the 1920’s, women’s legs and underarms had to be smooth and free of body hair; the torso had to be svelte; and the breasts were supposed to be small and firm.”

• I chose this quote because it relates to our class discussion perfectly. We have talked about women issues such as these that are stereotypical of what a woman is supposed to be like. Facial hair, leg hair or armpit hair are considered male traits. So women are supposed to be smooth in all of those body areas.

 “The word was that college years were a time to get all the nose rings, goatees, crimson hair and bottomed-out Birkenstocks out of your system, to quick-get-it-over-with and dabble in bisexuality and ménages a trois (or at least talk about it), because you’d probably never get another go.”

• I chose this quote because it is funny what she thinks college will be like and what those years of individuality mean. She thinks of it as a freeing time to try anything and everything to discover who she really is. It is a good quote from the perspective of a young girl. 

Paper Reflection

After looking my paper over from the comments I received from my peers and Lydia, I felt a lot better and more confident about my final paper. I think that through having others edit my paper and receiving this feedback, it was a critical step in developing my final paper. I am worried that I did not use our readings from class as a reference in my paper. I only used the movie "Gender Codes" as a reference and for this I did not have concrete reasons that could have made my paper stronger along with relating it back to what we have talked about from our readings. Another thing that I am worried about is that since I am a male, that my ad is more directed towards females and if I would have picked an ad directed towards males that I could have elaborated and had more connections in my paper. Overall I am satisfied with my ad critique and hope that I met all the criteria that I was suppose to.

Barbie-Q and Strip

MONDO BARBIE: BARBIE-Q

1. “Only Ken’s invisible, right? Because we don’t have money for a stupid-looking boy doll when we’d both rather ask for a new Barbie outfit next Christmas. We have to make do with your mean-eyed Barbie and my bubblehead Barbie and our one outfit apiece not including the sock dress.”

This quote spoke to me because the little girls can’t afford more dolls or things for their dolls but they are happy anyway. They know that they can ask for certain extras at Christmas, but they have to decide which toys are more important because they can’t get them all. It’s neat that the girls use their imagination that their Ken doll is invisible because they would rather ask for presents that can be used for Barbie, such as new outfits. And they make their own creative clothes for the dolls because they only have two outfits together. Things like this remind me how creative young kids can be and that they are happy with anything they can make. They don’t ever sound angry, but just hopeful for what they can do with their dolls.

2. “On the outside you and me skipping and humming but on the inside we are doing loopity-loops and pirouetting.”

This is similar to my thoughts about the girls being creative with their dolls. They have excitement for the smallest things in life. Since they can’t afford to buy new Barbies, they find discount Barbies from a toy store fire and make do with what they can afford. They were so excited about their burnt, smoke smelling Barbies that they were thrilled inside, but didn’t want to show it so walked casually as they found their new toys.

Body Outlaws: Strip

1. “When you play the gender game by everyone else’s rules, you can only lose.”

This quote was significant to the reading because it showed the difficulty of defining gender. There is a gender game that society follows with certain norms and roles, but really the people that don’t feel as if they fit into one gender or the other end up losing. It is hard to say everyone lives either as male or female because that is not true physically or for others emotionally. There is no way of winning in finding how gender suits people because they can feel different than any definition of gender.

2. “No matter which of those hundreds of thousands of different interpretations of the stereotypes of gender or ability I might have to confront, I had stripped naked. I had stripped naked, before women and men, and been seen not as a freak, not as an object, but as a woman, as a person, with a unique and human power.”

This is a powerful quote because it perfectly depicts the story. This person feels uncomfortable in their everyday skin and has to deal with the impressions that people make each time she walks by. She believes that she is either male or female and then is unsure which she fits into. But stripping gave her the confidence to expose her breasts and penis without shame and without feeling like a freak for the first time. And the way she describes it as “unique and human power,” makes it more inspiring to be comfortable with who we are.

 

Blogs are different than regular notebook journals but in some better ways. With a blog, you can add pictures and links to other videos or websites that interest you. It can be decorative in a ways that shows your personality. 

1st Blog

My name is Ethan Kirkwood, I am an Organizational Communication Studies major with a minor in the Global Leadership Program. I am 21 and from Cincinnati, Ohio. My parents recently moved up to the Boston area, Braintree MA, but fortunately they kept our house in Cincinnati where my older brother, Colin, and his girlfriend, Ali, are living. This is great because my home base is still in Cincinnati and I don't have to go to Braintree while on school breaks.

I enjoy doing outside activities such as hiking/camping, swimming at the ocean or lakes, playing Frisbee golf, mountain biking and fishing.