Just Sayin’ – #9
August 25, 2012
As much as the hype over The Shire seems to be abating (I’m not sure what their ratings are like at the moment), it seems ludicrous that the types of people who media feel we need to ‘follow’ are people like this:
Shire star charged over gay attack
When producers of TV shows like The Shire sink to the lowest sludge at the bottom of the bucket to create ‘entertainment’, I just wonder one thing:
Question #83: Who are the bigger fools? Those who create the show or those who watch it?
Why is a man who has urinated on another in a homophobic attack, given the platform and reverence (by some) that TV affords them?
WHY?
As always, though, we do have a choice as to whom we give our prized attention. Let The Shire sink into its own excrement.
…Just sayin’.
Deep Breath.
x
Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!
July 24, 2012
What IS the world coming to?
We recently had a new ad campaign, start airing here in Australia. It’s played later on in the evening when the kidlets are in bed – with a naked girl (with all her naughty bits covered with strategically placed white-as-the-driven-snow flowers) – talking about liners for ladies’ underwear.
The girl factually describes how wonderful the body is and how it works for us – and that for women, there are times where the discharge we get between our periods, is the body’s way of keeping the vagina healthy.
Vagina.
There it is! A part of the anatomy that more than half of the planet has. So what’s the big deal, right?
Well, it’s just incredible the hoo-ha (and no, I’m not writing an alternative word for the vagina…hahaha!) that’s come about from the actual word being used. On the The Project, I saw Steve Price (57) ask the ad’s spokeswoman on the show, why such a vulgar term was being used. The woman’s eyes widened and she looked a bit like a rabbit in headlights for a second, at the ridiculousness of the question – but answered, “Because…that’s what it’s called.”
Interestingly, though, when she continued with the sentence, she actually hesitated a fraction before saying ‘vagina’ herself, in a more hushed tone.
Hmmm…
Recently in America, a US politician, Democrat Lisa Brown, was banned for saying ‘vagina’ in the abortion bill debate. If you can’t say it here, when can you exactly?
Question # 77: Do you find it hard to say vagina? What about to your kids?
I don’t know about you, but ‘front-bottom’ never sat well with me…
But as advertising specialist and creative director of Jara Consulting, Jane Caro said – it was time to ”call a vagina a vagina”. Click here for full article.
Well ladies, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to use it whenever possible! See how many people flinch…I know, it’s the simple pleasures.
Hee heeeee!
PS – I think it’s curious that an ad with the word ‘vagina’ is deemed more inappropriate than the PG rated The Shire showing fickle women showing their quite-exposed fake boobs, a botox procedure, blatant vanity…at 7.30pm. Quite.
Deep Breath.
x
Just look at this image…
July 20, 2012
Lily Munroe – a friend I have made through this blog (and has a like-minded blog herself: freedomfrompornculture) – found the following, A-MAZ-ING image, after reading my last post:
Question #76: Do you think this is what’s happening?
I do…
and I’m finding myself getting a little alarmed.
Deep Breath.
x
Don’t make them right!
July 20, 2012
In lieu of the recent discussion about ‘quality’ television, it made me question what we’re becoming as an audience.
The general response, by the people who defend shows like, The Shire or Jersey Shore etc. etc. etc. is, “It’s so bad, it’s good!” or “It’s just for a laugh!”
But when pushed for an articulate explanation as to what it is they ‘like’ about it or how it’s funny…there is only the sounds of crickets.
That’s because there is nothing they can say about the tripe they’re watching – in fact, some of them explain with an, “I dunno, it just is.”
Yet they’re popping up everywhere. Why? Because it’s what the creators and producers think we want.
Is it?
Well, the tragic part is that it does appear to be what the masses want. I’m sure there will be many people glued to their seats, watching the next gripping and exciting installment of their favourite show of ‘tacky and fickle’.
Are they in the majority?
We appear like a nation of dumb and mindless, when these sort of shows are afforded our attention…and they gain ratings.
Question #75: Is there no sense of pride – knowing that we appear so easy to dupe?
This INFURIATES me because thanks to this perception, a lot of us are being held to ransom, as the choices of what to watch – for entertainment – are so limited.
Worse still, people are making money off it. Your attention = money.
We need to be more frugal with who gets our attention because at the moment, it appears that when a ‘carrot’ with big boobs is dangled – we follow – like children behind the Pied Piper.
Or we say nothing.
A few years ago, when I was on an excursion with students, I noticed that there was a new energy drink in the shops, called Pussy.
I talked to the students in my year group about seeing this drink. I told them of how I imagined the guy who thought it up – thinking about how he would get rich – he himself imagining guys saying to each other, “I’m going to drink some Pussy!” *HawHawHaw/SnortSnort*
I said to them, “Don’t make him right! Do not give him a cent!”
I urge you to think the same way about what’s being dished out and sold to us as being ‘popular’. Step back and take a look at the core of what’s being sold.
In these sorts of shows, the message that keeps hammering us over the head – on BIG screen TVs across the country – is that young women are not worth our attention, if they don’t have a certain type of vanity attached to their behaviour. This can manifest itself in a spectrum of ways – through clothes, make-up, plastic surgery, conversations, ACTIONS! – and the guys?…well, I didn’t see much about them in the first episode of The Shire – it mainly focused on those girls – and I don’t intend to watch anymore to find out either. My brain cells are still recovering from the first encounter.
So, what sort of audience member are you?
Don’t you want – DESERVE – something better?
Deep Breath
x
The Shire
July 17, 2012
I will be brief as most of Australia has heard of nothing else but this all day.
Last night The Shire aired its first episode.
I literally have no words to explain the levels of ‘wrong’.
Many people from the area are incensed that it’s not an accurate depiction of ‘how it is’ there and then I have a colleague at work who knows which high school one of the girls went to…and it wasn’t in ‘The Shire.’
Oh well, big deal. So the creators are deceiving us – what’s new?
I only have one MAAAAJOR problem with this show and that is how young women are being portrayed.
One of the ‘duo’ (pictured below) did NOTHING but talk about spray-tans, big lips, being thin and botox – with her sidekick. She also convinces her friend to get botox in her forehead…which we see get done. The response? “Is that it? That didn’t even hurt!”
It was like an ad.
By the way, the breasts she’s so subtly pushing out in the image below, were pretty much ‘in your face’ throughout the episode.
Many people in the public were responding to the show by saying how terrible it is that these girls are being judged for how they look. In general, I tend to agree. There are many women who embody similar attributes and attitudes and many more who don’t and we should all be accepted as we are…BUT…
…how can one NOT judge these women about their looks, when the producers not only picked THREE of the main female characters to appear obsessed with their fake appearances – it was, in fact, ALL they talked about. What else are we going to discuss about them – their witty banter?
We have entered a sad time of ‘entertainment’ when such ineffectual people are being glamorised on the screen, for our children to absorb. And they ARE absorbing everything they see.
Question #74: Aren’t we sick of it yet?
What do our daughters have to look up to, when nowadays women have to look hyper-sexualised and self obsessed to become ‘famous’?
Where’s the balance of the other 95% of wonderful women out there to model for our children?
This show, besides all that, is manufactured tripe and should really be boycotted. Don’t you want money and sponsorship spent on something better to put on the telly?
Deep Breath.
x
Ready, Fire, Aim!
July 16, 2012
I have taken a very deep breath and after my off-loading in the last post, I found the second wind I needed from all the wonderful support and great conversations – both online and with friends and family around me.
I still feel the same way as I did in that last post – but now it’s from a clearer and calmer position – and much less overwhelmed as I did a few days ago.
Let’s get to it.
Ready, Fire, Aim!
I heard these words at a professional development day at my school recently – the words of James Nottingham, an educator from the UK.
Our principal said these words – this formula – as a way to inspire positive change in what we do as teachers and I think they’re awesome.
The idea is that we fire – to just do – see how it goes and then readjust our aim. Otherwise we just keep sitting in the same situations waiting for the perfect solution to manifest itself, without trying it out first.
Nothing effective in that.
How are we supposed to get things right, if we’re not willing to try something different? Again, I can hear the voice of Dr Phil making its way through the haze, imploring us to think…”How’s that working for ya?”
I hear MANY women and mothers complain about the state of certain affairs – in everything, mind you, not just in this feminist realm – but that’s all they do…talk about it to each other.
Well, I’m here to say that we can all make small change in one of two ways (or both!):
- Raise your voice and/or
- Choose who gets the benefit of your money.
Just Fire!
To a lot of you, the story I’m about to tell, may not raise any eyebrows and may put your ‘care factor’ at zero. But I care and I think it’s the subtleties like the following, that most people just accept – and we really shouldn’t.
When lines are tentatively crossed, the perpetrators will see what the reaction is – but when there is no reaction or opposition (which seems to be the way of things) – they just draw another line further along and cross it again.
On Saturday night – at 6.30pm – the wonderful, The Sound of Music was on TV and, although I had seen in a gazillion times throughout my youth, I thought it’d be lovely for the girls to immerse themselves in its legendary and geeky glow. How can we forget Liesl going, “Weeeeeeeeeeee!” after her first kiss! It was also cool to see that they already knew some of the songs, even though they hadn’t seen it before…
…and then the commercial break.
We have a new series that’s about to start in Australia called, The Shire – looking at life on the southern beaches of Sydney – through the eyes of a select few, young (of course) adults. It looks like an attempt to do a tacky, Australian version of, Jersey Shore. For anyone from overseas, these are the sort of shorts we’re seeing in the lead up to its inception – Click here – along with the classy promo shot at the end.
So, now you’re starting to see the full picture – one moment we’re all singing along to,”Doe, a deer, a female deer…”and I’m telling my girls that their aunt has pictures of the actual glass gazebo, where Liesl and Rolf sing and dance – and the next we’re assaulted with the image of a blond, heavily made-up girl, referring to herself as a princess, saying:
“I’m so preeeety.”
Worse still there are two girls with little clothing on, in another version of the ad, describing how they don’t like the natural look – with one of them saying:
“I love looking fake – if you weren’t born with it, buy it.”
Well, as far as I know, NOONE is born ‘with it’ – ‘it’ is manufactured – but thank you for getting in my daughters’ ears with this crap.
If there were a visual of me desperately trying to find the remote and change the channel, you’d have a right laugh. But it was what I had to do – because the brain takes an imprint of everything it sees and I simply don’t want my girls seeing this same image of women, over and over again.
And it’s everywhere. It’s exhausting. Even ‘my choice’ not to watch the show is taken from me because (at least here in Australia), the ads are practically half the episode…a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift.
Simply, what’s been made painfully clear to me, is that my kids literally CANNOT watch anything on TV because these ads were not age appropriate – a family movie coupled with ads of spoilt, fake, over-made up and fickle young adults. It really pissed me off.
So now I fire.
- I am complaining to Channel 10. What will come of it? I don’t exactly know, but I do know that when there are enough complaints, the Advertising Standards Board will investigate the issue it’s being presented with.
- I will boycott this show.
Question #73: Can you imagine the effect if everyone did one or both of the above?
People power.
I know that speaking up is not for everyone – but there are always ways to show you’re not happy…especially through your wallet.
If you don’t buy it – there isn’t a product to sell. If noone’s watching, investors will lose money and hopefully learn that they’ll have to back a different kind of show next time.
Simple really.
So if you don’t like a situation – whatever it is – just Fire! Aim later.
Deep Breath
x
PS Just look at the difference…
Questions for Us 