There’s a Place For Everyone
I know of a place; more so a kind of place, where you can find every type of person. You witness people that are loud, quiet, outgoing, boring, crazy, normal, lazy, active, funny, weird, or cool. You will spot humans of all different shape, size, ethnicity and gender and age. This location has complete diversity, it has a place for everyone. This drew me in because of how unexpected and different it can be.
My chosen location can sometime be filled with inhabitants and sometimes nearly empty. The environment there can be crazy but sometimes laid back. The place can be at a house at a park or at just about any venue. You go to these places to celebrate things like birthdays graduations and sometimes just to celebrate the end of the week! If you haven't guessed this “place” is a party! So let the fun begin!
I almost always opt to be the DD (designated driver) whenever my friends choose to go out to a party. The past couple times I did this were a little different though, as I hung out with my friends I payed a little closer attention to my surroundings. I noticed a lot of things I had never stopped to think or care about. My observations ended up being quite interesting.
Night one of observation was a saturday night the fourth of September. Everyone hopped on into my car and the night officially began. We started off the night at the “Baseball House”. We walked in and you were instantly hit by an awful scent. As the night went on I thought I would eventually get used to this horrible odor, but unfortunately that never happened. Another observation I made was that in the kitchen of this house there were at least twelve bundles of bananas I’m talking at least a good 40 bananas were in there. I found this to be quite odd. The location of this party was in Golden, Colorado, not a far jaunt from my boyfriends house were our journey began. In walked a girl I recognized, by the look on her face she was as equally unpleased by the awful aroma as I was. I realized this girl was from my math class which came to me as a surprise because this was a School of Mines party. I came to realize that about fifty percent of the girls at this party were not from Mines, most of the ladies came from Metro State or Denver University. There were probably about five guys to every one girl at the party which I have learned is typical of these parties because not many women attend the School of Mines in comparison to men. The baseball parties inhabitants were not very diverse. It was a group of about forty white individuals ranging in ages from 18-23. Almost all of the men there were athletes and all of the females were either athletes from Mines or from a different school. I found this to be typical of the other parties as well. After about thirty minutes the guys luckily had all decided it was time to leave and go to a different party. I grabbed my things and left that smelly place as soon as I could!
Once we left we made our way over to the football house which is called the “Thunder Dome” this is not a joke. The “ Thunder Dome” was pretty crazy on this night because they had played their first game that morning and this was the first party of the new school year there. The whole front yard was crowded with people. We pushed our way through and got into the house the second you walked in you were being shoved into people. Luckily I have a big boyfriend who I can use as a shield to push my way through with. We made our way through the first room and the next room was lit with just a black light and there was very loud music playing and people dancing in a very un-tasteful way. We got out of that room as soon as we could, the last room we had to squeeze through was the kitchen. The kitchen was much more laid back, the people in it were all just hanging out and having fun. This room was well lit, didn’t smell bad and wasn’t full of bananas so it was probably the most normal place I had encountered so far that night. We hung out in there for a bit then the 105 degree temperature of the house became too much to handle so we made our way to the backyard where we remained the rest of the night. It was very nice outside everyone was talking about their summers and reconnecting. There were a lot of familiar faces and the night was finally feeling fun. All of the sudden I hear two football players talking smack to each other than next thing you know a fight breaks out. One of those fights you see in the movies where everyone circles around them and oohs while they pummel each other until two others guys go in and break it up. After the fight the party died down quite a bit and we decided it was time to leave so I gathered my crew and got them all home safe.
My second night of observation was the following saturday the eleventh of September. This weekend some of my girlfriends from High School came to visit so my crew got larger. On this night our first stop was at the “hockey house”. Have you noticed the trend yet? I have at this point come to the conclusion that only athletes at the School of mines throw parties. At least they are the only ones that throw parties people actually want to attend. So we get to the hockey house and there are a large number of girls that don’t attend Mined covered in bright colored paint. Why they were covered in paint is still a mystery to me. We made our way to the “beer pong” table which was elaborately built or more so “engineered” by one of the boys living at this house. Every house we have been to is obviously more for partying than living in. I would never live in any of the houses we went to. Back to the beer pong table we are all standing there everyone is chatting and having a fun time as I make my little notes into my cell phone about the surroundings. We only recognized about 4 people total out of the 100 that were there so we decided this wasn’t where we wanted to be so I gathered up my friends and we left.
My last destination was the “Soccer house”. The soccer house was cool. The soccer players that live there obviously have rich parents. There were quite a few people there but I knew all of them. I looked down and there was a dog at my feet I sat down and played with it a majority of the night. That puppy got a lot of attention that night. The girl to guy ratio at this house was about three guys to every one girl. There was music playing off of someone's mac computer and there was a huge 52’ flat screen on the wall. The house was very old and had a really strange layout. I left my spot on the couch with the dog and made my way into the beer pong room to see what was going on in there. The team that had just won was on a 18 game winning streak which had people very excited. I looked back out into the living room where I had previously been and noticed that everyone had left. They had all went outside and were being very loud. People were running around in the streets dancing and having a jolly ol’ time which was not the greatest idea since it was eleven o’ clock at night and there were under aged people there. We decided it would be in our best interests to go home.

This was were my observations ended. I realized many things from this experience. I noticed the gender gap, I notice most of the girls that go to school of mines parties go to other schools. I also realized about 95 percent of the people at these parties were athletes. Like I thought it would be, each party had a lot of similarities and they each had their differences. At each and every place we went everyone had their own place,there were all sorts of different people and they all had their own niche. My observations also proved that you never know what to expect. I learned that all in all its fun to go out sometimes and celebrate with your friends, but I learned its even more fun to have a calm night at home with your friends just having a good time; thats were I belong, thats my place.

Monkey See Monkey Do (Remix)

It is said that most people have to see or hear something three times before they remember something enough they are able to recall that information later on. This information will begin to stick in one’s head whether or not the message is positive or negative. Such is the case of the media, the specific purpose is to convey messages to the masses; and these messages are everywhere in the world we live. Over the years with the evolution of technology, media has found more ways to get to their target audience. Each day the message varies, but whether you are looking at a magazine, listening to music, watching TV, or searching the web you can trust the media to be broadcasting their message. The most common theme of these advertisements are often not hard to miss, “You are only beautiful if you look like this.”

Media as a whole has three main objectives; advocacy, entertainment, and announcements. Underneath those objectives you can fit many different categories of media such as advertising, marketing, propaganda, music, sports, acting, and the list goes on and on. Americans are told from a very young age, from these many different sources, that if we do not fit what media shows and shares as what “looks right”; what is “pretty” or “handsome”, everyday individuals are ugly and imperfect. Media is, in a sense, shaping what our culture considers handsome or beautiful.

If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and the beholder sees what the media shows us, isn’t beauty in the eye of the media? Subliminally, we are told from a very young age how we should look and act. A perfect example of this is at your local Wal-Mart, when looking at the toys for young boys and girls. Wander down the girl’s aisle and you will see lots of bright colors, particularly in pink, and the kinds of toys “only girls“ play with--dolls. Often it is Barbie; a blond hair, skinny, big breasted female, whose favorite activity is shopping, and that becomes a young girl’s role model. Walking down the boy’s aisle is a different story, though. All their toys are dark greens, blues and black; their role models super heroes, and G.I. Joe’s figures with large muscles and kung fu grips. When it comes to how we are “supposed” to look and act we are exposed at a young age to what media considers the “norm“, but realistically we are far from that image.

Everyday we see messages that tell us what we should look like, what we should dress like, how we should speak, and a large portion of this information is found on TV and in movies. When watching your favorite TV show or favorite movie, is the leading role played by someone who has an unfit body, bad teeth, and a poor taste in clothing? Or is it that the best things happen to the characters who look the best? While there are exceptions to this, movies and television shows that incorporate everyday people, for the most part what you see portrayed on screen is a very blunt message of the image you should be. For women it is generally blond, with big breasts, full lips, a tiny waist, and curvy hips. For men, it may be less strict, so long as you are a tall man with large muscles. TV shows for example, take the Biggest Loser. It’s a TV show and show dedicated to showing the public over the span of a season of a group of obese people losing wait. Another to take a good look at would be the TV show the Jersey shore, it’s a show fallowing the “life” of a group of adults from with what some people would call the “perfect” body. To these characters it all about GTL, it’s their life. Whether in reality television or the latest box office hit, the idea of portraying perfection is there.

This message that you are not “all you can be” is found almost anywhere, in advertisements all over the place. It can be found in late night TV, selling the latest pill that is not yet FDA approved (and is really just a tape worm eating you from the inside out), advertisements on the One Crunch, Six Pack Abs Machine, in newspaper ads, and advertisement banners at the top of a webpage. The concept that we are told we are not perfect is used to sell these products and ultimately make money. It might be safe to say that everyone has, at one point or another, fallen victim to media’s theme of imperfection. I have even fallen victim of it, and though I recognize it happening, the message is everywhere and hard to avoid at times. A person can be told they’re imperfect so many times that after a while it may stick with them and they want to do something to change it.

No where is this being spoken more loud and clear than on magazine racks. Open up any of the popular magazines, Men‘s Health, Cosmopolitan, or People Magazine, and you‘ll see similar articles all over the place-- “10 Ways to Last Longer in Bed”, “Drop 5 Pounds in a Week“, “Kristen Bell‘s Secret to Great Abs“. All these magazine articles are selling the same point. You are not okay the way you are, but if you buy from us we’ll make you better. When is it ever okay to just be ourselves. While these articles may have been written from a helpful standpoint, their bottom line is still focused on changing who we are. Inspiring change is one thing, but lowering one’s self-esteem in order to do it is the wrong way to go about making change.

It is also vital to mention music, as this theme of body perfection shows up again and again in popular song lyrics. Keeping things clean, “You love my lady lumps (love), my hump, my hump, my hump.” The Black Eyes Peas are a rather popular band, but the song “My Humps” is sending the same message about what men should find attractive in a woman’s body, particularly when talking about Fergie’s looks and why guys love her “lady lumps“. You can find tons of songs that are shaped around this concept. After all, everyone knows that Sir Mix-A-Lot “like[s] big butts and [he] cannot lie”. On top of the explicit music lyrics, the music videos for these songs only continue to show a hard to attain image of what one should look like. The average music video finds plenty of scantily clad women gyrating in the arms of their tough, well dressed, “blinged out” boyfriends; hardly a good message about looks and beauty.

In a medias voice on what is “perfection”, being okay in ones skin is something that is hard to accomplish. We can hope that even with media telling us daily we could be better and that we are not perfect, that people as a whole are able to come to a deeper understanding with one’s self and find what they think is beautiful. Sadly, that’s not always the case. It can be too easy to get wrapphttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3124575992399192770ed up in the media’s portrayal of beauty and perfection, to begin changing ourselves to fit what we think the rest of the world wants us to be. And when we change ourselves to fit someone else’s standard of perfection, we lose ourselves. Whether or not we will ever be able to avoid this message, it’s hard to say. When media influence begins at a young age, when the message that we need to look, act, and do things a certain way shapes something as benign as the toys we play with, can we fully realize we are being molded in someone else images? The real trick is finding yourself when media is
telling you to be someone else. A monkey, when shown an action repeatedly, can learn to imitate that action. A person, when shown an image repeatedly, can learn to imitate that image. Is this monkey see, monkey do behavior beneficial to us? Or is it more beneficial to look beyond the media, and learn from the images we aren’t seeing?

The Truth about the Local Park (Remix)

There are many communities all over America that claim to be integrated and that people are created equal, but in some places it doesn't seem like that is true. Growing up I remember going to the local park to play with friends, play on the swings, play chase around the jungle gym, and hide and go seek in the tunnel; what I don't remember is people who looked different from me. I am Caucasian, and when I was younger I would walk to the park by myself or with friends to play, and from what I recall the park was not very integrated. I don't ever remember seeing African Americans, Hispanics, or any other race for that matter. This made me think of how times have changed or if they really have.
To find out the truth about integrated parks, I of course had to go to one. I thought that it would be interesting to go to the park that I went to when I was a young child. This park was always very special to me and always made me feel safe. There is a lake that is the home to many ducks and frogs, a jungle gym that is a paradise to most children, and a field that seems like it goes on for miles. This park looks the same as it did all those years ago; there is still that slide with all the skid marks from kids trying to climb up it, that swirly slide that is always fun to slide down really fast, and there is still that swing set that makes kids feel like they are flying. While I was there I noticed young children playing chase around the jungle gym and hearing their parents telling them to slow down. I saw that the jungle gym is still a faded blue color which seemed to give the jungle gym its character. There were people running around the lake exercising, while taking the dog for a stroll in the park. The atmosphere that day had a nice warm breeze that was slowly changing from summer to fall. There were even kids fighting over the sand diggers, which was always a popular toy on the play ground even when I was a young child. One thing that seems like it hasn't changed are the people that go there.
Apparently throughout the course of time things haven't changed at this local community park. I was surprised to find on my trips to this park that there wasn't many different types of people. There were not many African Americans, Hispanics, or any other race, and this is shocking to me. Communities always preach about how people are created equal and that they are integrated. From what I saw that is not the case. There were young Caucasian children running around playing chase, sliding on the swirly slide, and playing rocket ship on the swing set, but they were all from the same ethnic background. There were parents who would socialize with the other parents and they would laugh and talk about their kids, but once again those parents were from the same ethnic background. On my first trip to this park I did see a Hispanic woman and her child, but the other kids and parents were not socializing with them, and the next time that I went the Hispanic woman and her child were not there. This made me wonder how people of different races feel when they are not accepted in their community.
When I went to this park as a young child I always felt accepted and safe by the other people that were there. After coming back to the same park years later I see people of a different race who are not accepted, and it makes me wonder what they are thinking and feeling in this situation. The looks on their faces that day said it all; they were uncomfortable and it made me hurt for them. They had this look of complete sadness accompanied by a look of defeat. At that moment it was like the sky went gray and the joy that once filled the park was gone, and in its place was the feeling of great depression. That day some of the people at that park would even look at them like they were from a different planet; it was like the people at the park just saw the woman and her child come to earth in a flying saucer. People who are from different ethnic backgrounds should not have to feel this way in their own community. These people should have felt how everyone else feels when they go to this park and that is safe and welcomed by others.
The local park is a place that people can go to in order to relax, exercise, play with their kids on the play ground, socialize with the people around them, and be able to enjoy themselves. I now see that this is not the case for everyone in a community. People claim that times have changed and that communities are integrated and make everyone in that community feel equal, but from what I saw that is not true. It is not fair for people to feel unimportant, unwelcome, and in some cases unsafe. Through doing this I have learned a lot about my community and it is disappointing. People need to learn more about this and are able to by going to local organizations who try to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Maybe if people were more aware and educated than racial discrimination wouldn't happen. This local park over the years has not changed in appearance and the people who attend it.