Final Paper Topic

            One topic that interests me the most is body image and advertising.  People try to push the “limits” of their body as far as it can go.  The mass media is one way people advertise, usually famous people’s bodies and how “perfect” they are.  To most women and men, models are who the average person aspires to look like.  While everyone wants to look like these models, they don’t realize that some are photo shopped and others risked their lives, health-wise, to look the way they do.  Even social media has shaped the way people look at their own body image.  There are so many ads, or tweets that say “try this new diet” or “shed 30 pounds in a month” to have a transformation like this person.  The media puts models in the special light that glorifies how they look.  So many little kids look up to famous people and are their role models.  They shouldn't be advertising themselves to little kids when they know that maybe that's not the best thing for them.  There is one thing to be thin, fit, and in shape, but theres another thing to be model thin.

            Another direction to go with body image and advertising is through sports.  There are so many athletes that look perfect so people want to be like them but a professional athlete body is so different from a “normal” body.  Even athletes have to deal with body image and advertising, because their own body might be the body in the media.  Also, athletes can have eating disorders too.  They aren't exempt from having problems like other people have.  Two sports that come to my mind is wrestling and gymnastics.  Wrestlers may have to loose a couple pounds in one night to make sure they are on track with their weight for a match.  Also, gymnasts have such little body fat that they have to make sure they stay as lean as possible.  This is not a good way to treat a body and in the end may even hurt the person.

            I think there is a split viewpoint on body image and advertising.  Those people who want to have the perfect body and look like those people that are advertised see it as a positive thing and something to help reach their goal.  On the other hand, the people that know that it is very hard to be model skinny think that this advertising puts a negative affect on people.  I personally think that the media places a negative idea in people’s minds.  They make it seem like it’s a bad thing if you don’t look like a model, or are really thin, or have an athlete’s physique.  Everyone is made differently and it’s okay to look however you were made.

            I think photos could help develop the idea that body image in the media puts a negative idea in people’s minds.  There could be a before and after picture of someone in the process of becoming a model and reaching that size zero or even double zero.  Another photo could be a model next to a “normal” person that still is considered skinny to mostly everyone.  Interviews of models or athletes of how they got to where they are and what they look like could help develop this paper.  One television show that comes to my mind when talking about body image and adverting is One Tree Hill.  In a couple episodes it shows a girl named Millie who was originally an assistant of Brooke Davis who owned a fashion line called "Clothes over Bros".  One night they were short on models and Millie stepped in.  Brooke came up with this new advertising campaign stating "zero is not a size".  Millie looked great in these clothes even though she was a size 2.  Throughout some of the episodes she started hanging out with other models and they got her thinking that zero is a size, and that is what size she should be now that she is a model.  Millie got into drugs and turned for the worst.  I think this is a perfect example showing that models aren't always perfect and to actually look like them you have to hurt your body, which is something that shouldn't be glorified through advertising.

Code Switching

            Some people may not realize that they code switch until it is brought up to them.  Code switching is when you talk in one “voice” to certain people and another to others.  In the article “How Code-Switching Explains The World” by Gene Demby he gives a very common example of code switching.  Demby states, “You drop the g's at the end of your verbs. Your previously undetectable accent — your easy Southern drawl or your sing-songy Caribbean lilt or your Spanish-inflected vowels or your New Yawker — is suddenly turned way, way up. You rush your mom or whomever off the phone in some less formal syntax ("Yo, I'mma holler at you later,"), hang up and get back to work”.  This is very common in many people.  Even though I don’t think I code switch that much I know I do at times.  I know when texting friends I use abbreviations or shorthand, but when I’m texting an adult or say my boss I never use abbreviations.  I agree with the statement “We’re hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities- sometimes within a single interaction” by Demby.  It states that people code switch when they are put in different situations based on culture, linguistics, race, and ethnicity.  In the video of President Obama in the restaurant it first shows that he can be a regular guy just like everyone else.  It also shows that when he is in a different atmosphere, people of his own race for example in this video, he even code switches.  He knows when it is appropriate to speak in some may call it, slang, and when it’s not. 

            I know of one example in code switching in my life before I knew “code switching” was even a thing.  A friend of mine is from England and moved here when she was little.  She can speak perfect English with no accent because she moved when she was little.  But when she is around her family or calls them on the phone she has a heavy accent.  In her mind she does it without thinking because she is so used to it.  I think it is kind of cool that she can do this because she doesn’t loose her culture from where she was born, but she can also adapt to the people and culture she lives in now.

            Code switching can happen not only when speaking but it can also happen with sign language.  Just like there are different languages in the world and different dialects, there are also different types of sign language.  In the article “Sign language that African Americans use is different from that of whites” by Frances Stead Sellers, she explains that there is a difference between black ASL and “mainstream” ASL.  Carolyn McCaskill is a black deaf woman that realized there is a big difference between the two when going to a deaf white school.  She had to learn a new version of sign language at school, but then know how to code switch when she was back with her family and friends. 

            No one thinks that people who use sign language would have to code switch, but just like English, French, and Spanish, sign language has different dialects that everyone speaks all around the world.