Worth a Thousand Words

There is so much more to a picture than what first meets the eye. Pictures are all around us; they are everywhere we look. Ads have consumed our society. From billboards to magazines to newspapers, its actually a challenge to avoid ads everyday. And the interesting thing about ads is that they are characterized more by pictures than by words. A typical ad has a few words to get at the main point, but many ads have no words at all. Those ads are simply a picture with a meaning, and that is visual rhetoric.

Without even realizing it, we look at millions of pictures that are telling us something, they are sending us subliminal messages. Words aren’t needed for ads like these, just pictures.

This picture of a baby covered in advertisements is an example of visual rhetoric. No words are needed to get the message across, it tells a story on its own. This picture simply saying that ads have consumed our lives so much that even babies at a very young age are surrounded by advertisements everywhere they look. This goes right along with what I’m talking about: ads are everywhere. It is simply a part of our culture to constantly try to “sell sell sell,” whether it be an actually object for sale or an idea.

What do you think about advertising in American culture? Is it all-consuming or simply a way of moving forward?

Out of Cite

Sources are something crucial to nearly all writing. Almost anytime you write a paper, the use of other people’s work is included in your own. Doing so adds emphasis, gives examples, provides evidence to back up your argument, or adds credibility to your paper. When writing to an academic audience, all of these things are things you want to be sure to do.

Finding good sources can sometimes be difficult. Not all writing out there is credible. Actually going to the library and using one of their many references is a great way to get trustworthy information to use in a paper. But most of the time, we just want to look things up online. There is a lot of great information out there for us to access online, but you have to know where to look. Wikipedia is not the place to get trusted, reliable information. If you go on a library’s website and use its databases, you will find trustworthy articles and academic journals.

Citing these works is also something that is very important to your paper. When directly quoting a source, you need to be sure to put the authors name after it. At the end of the paper you need to make a bibliography where you list all the references used throughout the entire paper.

It’s really simple to use references in a paper if you know how. And ultimately, backing your writing up with supporting facts and statistics only makes your work better.

Beauty in the Eye of the Media

The media today has a very altered perspective of beauty. Beauty is a subjective thing, without a doubt, so it is difficult to define or label, but whoever is deciding what “beauty” is in today’s society has got it all wrong.

Women are objectified now more than ever in the media. In ads and commercials, women are portrayed as a thing, not as a living person. They are portrayed as a want or desire or a lust, not as a human being. The women in these ads are not real. They have pounds of makeup on their faces, their hair is all done up, and they are photo shopped to look paper thin and perfect. But the fact is, nobody can be that perfect. Nobody is that perfect. That girl in the ad doesn’t even exist.

The media has made beauty unattainable for women. Young girls, teenagers, and grown women are constantly striving to look like the models in these ads. They want to dress like the models, wear their hair like the models, and be as skinny as the model, but no one could possibly ever look like that because the model herself doesn’t even look like that.

Beauty has become such a big part of modern day American culture, and I think it’s more of a negative thing than a positive one. Seeing ads like this doesn’t make women feel better about themselves, it doesn’t help little girls grow up in the right mindset, and it doesn’t give women the respect we rightfully deserve. Ads today are demeaning to women, which is interesting when you think about it because women are held to a higher standard in the workplace, as if we are not as good as men.

Ads are just a way of using a woman’s body to sell something, and that, to me, doesn’t seem fair. What do you think about today’s ads? How to you feel about society’s expectations of women to look perfect? And how do you think this is affecting the little girls who are surrounded by this from a very young age?

Live and Learn

A huge part of American culture is education. My high school geography teacher always told us, “If you take one thing out of this class, let it be this: Education saves the people.” And it is so true.

In the United States we put a lot of emphasis on education. We go to school our whole lives from the age of four or five, some even attend preschool at age 3, and we continue to progress on our journey for knowledge all the way up through high school. Some stop here and go on to work or do whatever they please with their life, but so many of us continue on to college to build a career rather than just a job. This is just what is the norm in the United States, so I doubt you hardly ever sit down to think about it.

But think about it. In some countries, kids never go to school at all. And in others, schools are just developing, meaning the children are getting an education that their parents never got. These countries are not as developed as the US, but if they put more emphasis on education they would be. Success and education are directly related.

What do you think about the importance of getting an education? Do you agree with the level of importance the US puts on education? And if underdeveloped countries adopted our practices do you think it would help in their development and make them more successful?

More than just words on a page

Literacy is not just the ability to read and write; it is so much more. Without literacy you would not be able to hold a conversation with anyone. You couldn’t talk or even comprehend words. This is just the beginning of literacy though. From my experience, to be literate also means you can understand where a person has been in the past, where they’re at in their lives, and where they’re going, just by “reading” them. A literate person can tell a lot about another person simply by looking at them. A person’s body language gives off their attitude, their tone of voice shows their personality, and even the topic of conversation tells of their interests or hopes and dreams. All of this combined creates a person’s morals and beliefs. And when all this is put together, it forms a person’s culture.

From personal experience, I believe that the ability to read people is a part of literacy.  Knowing how to understand people a little without having to ask questions but rather simply by reading their vibe is part of being literate. I believe that everyone is capable of reading people, and that this is how friendships are made. Throughout my entire life I have made friends who are similar to me in more ways than not. I believe this is because the first time I met these people I was able to pick up a vibe from them. People who were similar to me ended up being my friends and people who were not really like me did not. I believe that this ties into literacy.

What do you think? Do you think friendships are based off our ability to read people? And is reading people a part of literacy?