Author Archives: Jasmine Smarr

After Thursday’s class I’m sure Dr. Waltzer encouraged us all to consider our idea’s in a new way or gave us better ideas. For me personally he purposed a new way for me to present my digital media, which would be a slide show showing the different sport magazine covers of women compared to men. I had already had my mind made up that I was going to film a commercial with female athletes playing their sports, with specific lines that I had wrote. I will probably combine the two ideas some how and see how it turns out. 

Dr. Waltzer also gave me the idea of using women on all levels, not just women in pro sports but women in college and high school. This may be kind of hard considering that I don’t know any high schools in New York. As of right now I am beginning to film my teammates from the Women’s Basketball team and hoping to use some of the volleyball players as well. If you guys have any idea’s or suggestions please let me know whenever you see me. =)

• Artifact- My artifact is a series of magazine covers from ESPN The Magazine and other sports magazines such as Sports Illustrated and Slam Magazine. Below you will see how the male athletes are portrayed versus how the female athlete is shown. The interesting thing about this artifact is that the female (Hope Solo) was more successful within the past year than both David Beckham and Kobe Bryant, who doesn’t even play in the MLS but rather the NBA.
• Focus- The focus of my paper is to show how within the world of sports women are inferior to men despite their accomplishments, based on various evidence, showing how society views women.
• Points I will make:

1. How women are portrayed in two distinct ways in comparison to the multiple ways of men. Some examples I will use are television shows and magazines.

2. How the media portrays women in sports magazines versus how they portray men in terms of body image. For example, when women are mainly on the cover of sports magazines it is either The Body Issue or Men’s Health.

3. The difference between women and men in sports in terms of salaries and endorsement deals. I will use factual information based on contracts and brand websites such as Nike, Adidas, and Reebok.

• What I hope to achieve- Within this paper I hope to use my sources and knowledge about sports in order to successfully prove that women are inferior to men in sports despite their accomplishments and abilities, which is a reflection of our society.

(My thoughts as I’m reading The Modest Proposal) I’m hungry, how many pages is this? I need to do my nails, and WAIT, did he just say “I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife as we do roasting pigs?” Immediately after I read that line I had to start reading from the beginning. Once I realized how absurd his solutions really were I began to understand the neglect that was shown to these people during the famine.

I found some of his statements very interesting because although they sound very extreme in reality some of these things do happen. For example Swift says “…besides the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.” If you really think about this it sounds like a more severe form of adoption. Whenever parents decide to give up their children they are no longer responsible for providing for the child financially, unless it is by choice.

Overall Swift’s proposal was very interesting and unlike any type of reading that have experienced.

“Heavy boots.” At first I just read this as a chapter title, but after reading I found that Oskar began to use phrases and said things that actually sounded like he himself had “heavy boots.” As I mentioned in my previous response Jonathan Safran Foer always amazes me with the dynamics of Oskar. It is very rare that he has a basic conversation with anyone, including his Mom, Grandmother, and the people whose homes he visits. Although he is simply there to ask if the person knew his father or anything about the key, he ends up having a full out conversation. For example in his conversation Abby Black he finds out that she is an epidemiologist and that her relationship with her husband is not the greatest.

On pages 170-171 you start to see how his frustration is causing him to miss his Dad even more. He goes from “optimistic, but realistic” to “incredibly alone.” Then shortly after he tells his Mom that he wishes it was her who died instead. In my opinion this specific scene shows his pain and that although he is very ambitious, he is still a child. It’s easy to forget that he is still in adolescence because of how he is portrayed, but at the end of the chapter the reader sees that he is suffering

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