We are deceieved by the media into perceiving “beauty” as having certain characteristics - bright eyes, thin face, light skin…And although we live in reality - we have pores, fly-aways, and yellow teeth - we seem to accept the messages the media send to us, and even consume and strive to be whatever it is they deceive us into buying or becoming. How much are we, as a society obsessed with pop culture, to blame for feeding into the perception? Who in fact changes the perception? It is a vicious cycle, but I believe the media has been in control…until the world wide web afforded us a public platform on which we, too, can influence mass perception through our OWN media. We can produce and broadcast our own messages through video, music and more on services like YouTube, GarageBand, and Blogger - and people are listening! So when will the “media” listen to us? Or are we now becoming the “media”?

The truth about this media :
It was made to promote “real beauty” by the Dove Self-esteem Fund.
“Fasel” actually means “fake”, and the makeup is a fake line.
It took 10 hours to make her up, including the Photoshopping.
She is not a super model.

I showed this video to my Media Seminar class and we discussed when it was OK for advertisers to “deceive” consumers through the use of technology, and when it was not. We talked about the messages these ads send to us, and what the effects are on our perception of ourselves and our world. Why should the media define what is cool, what is sexy, what is desirable, and what is beautiful? One girl felt models SHOULD look perfect - “that’s what they are supposed to be!” But when asked if this definition of beauty was her own or in fact the result of the influence of what she had been sold or told, she was flustered. No one likes to think they have no control over their own decision making and opinon, and I am not preaching that we are brainwashed by advertisements! But our choices and our values are influenced by what society accepts and promotes is the norm, or, what is more impressive - the ideal.

So when will WE become the media and make our own messages? I believe we already are. And I challenged my students to get their own messages out there with and through the technology they already know or will know in my class - through blogging, podcasting, video, web design, and digital art.

A nice transition into the PSA project, dontcha think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 11:12 am and is filed under reflections. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.