The Oscars and Body Image

While I was watching the Oscars on Sunday night with my family and family friends, there was one specific thing that stuck out to me. Many times, when a celebrity walked up to the stage, someone in the room would comment about the way they look (almost always their weight). For example, when Catherine Zeta Jones was performing a song from the musical "Chicago”, someone commented, "she's put on some weight." I have never really been interested in celebrities' lives, so I was surprised at how one could keep track of the slight changes in the actresses' weights. Besides, even people are really into celebrities, what is it they are paying attention to? It made me wonder what really makes people love the celebrities they do. Many of my friends have said that they like certain actors or actresses because they are pretty or cute. I think this intense focus on appearances of famous people influences the way we believe people "should" look. When all the attention is put on how much people weigh or how young they look (among other things), it takes away from the original point of the Oscars, which is to award actors and actresses for their great performances. This is not to say that celebrities should not want to look nice for the event, but I think the viewers need to remember that actors and actresses are human --they gain weight and get wrinkles too.

Catherine Zeta Jones performing "All That Jazz" from Chicago

Anne Hathaway

Is the civil rights movement still happening today?

Yesterday I was flipping through TV channels and I saw that the History Channel was playing a program called "Stories From the Road to Freedom" which was a documentary about the civil rights movement. Although I only watched about ten minutes, I found it interesting because it related directly to what we have been learning about in class. The program reiterated what we have been discussing-- that 80% of southern African Americans migrated to the North, many to escape the violence caused by racism in the Deep South. The narrator mentioned that people who migrated out of the south did not really have a choice of where they moved to. Most people just got on a train, and if that train was headed to Chicago or Detroit, then Chicago or Detroit it was.
Additionally, all was not well just because people moved up north. African Americans unfortunately still faced racism even out of the south. One man quoted, "a black man is a black man no matter where he is." I think that there tends to be stereotypes that we grow accustomed to, like learning that the south is the racist part of the country and the north is not. While most of the violent acts against African Americans occurred in the south, the north was not completely innocent (even today). For example, Chicago is still one of the most segregated city in the country. I have more facts about Chicago's diversity in an older blog post (linked here). I am bringing up these contemporary facts because when we learn about the Civil rights movement in school, it seems like the story ends when the unit does. Many people believe that even though the C60s are over, our country is no longer segregated.

Literacy tests and Standardized tests

For a project for American studies on the Reconstruction period, my group learned that African Americans were forced to take literacy tests to be eligible for voting. African Americans were given the right to vote with the fifteenth amendment. However many people still couldn't vote, even with this new right. The literacy tests were extremely difficult, and were actually used as a mechanism to stop black people from voting. In class we were given a literacy test from the 1960s, and only one student out of 50 was able to pass. I found this interesting because it was advertised as a literacy test, and I would say everyone at Nw Trier is literate, but we could not answer these questions.

These literacy tests reminded me of the standardized tests that students take to get into college, like the ACT and SAT. Some people are not as good of test takers so they get lower scores, but that does not make them unintelligent. I took a prep class to practice for the ACT, and I was able to get a score that I wanted. However, many people do not have the means to take these classes or the general education that would prepare them for these tests. As a result, they may not be able to go to schools that are higher ranking. I do not think this is fair because a standardized test does not tell anything about the type of learner someone is or whether they would be successful at a certain school. On the other hand, someone who gets a very high score might not have the highest IQ. What do you think should be done about standardized tests? Should they be removed or should there be some type of replacement?