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Music and its impact on youth
Music and its impact on youth
Music and its impact on youth
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Sometimes, when I lie on my back in the solitude of my room and the carpet bristles my skin, the ridges in the ceiling spread like daddy-long-legs in port-o-potties. Sometimes, when I lie in bed in the hush of the night and the moon is precisely angled outside my window, the global light streaks across my pillowcase like tadpoles in silver ponds. Sometimes, when my mind wanders…
I’m fearless and flawless.
And sometimes, at these dreamy times, I am not an eighteen-year-old prom junkie standing in the middle of my floor, facing my mirror, and whispering to the butter-fairies in my stomach to buzz someplace else. I am not spending thirty agonizing minutes shaping one frizzed curl with half a bottle of Green Tea Styling Gel or obsessing over which shade of plum lip gloss best accents my eyes. I am not, as my ex-boyfriend used to say, “acting like a girl.”
Instead, I am already twirling on the dance floor, my auburn-fried hair bouncing with charming confidence as I transcend all muddied doubts of myself. I am effortlessly and naturally beautiful. I am—“Don’t forget to pluck the hair from between your eyebrows,” my mom’s brassy voice of reality plummets me back to my Mary-Kay dungeon of anxiety.
“Mom, pl-ea-se stop. I do not need you telling me what to do.” I innocently crank up the volume two notches on my stereo in hope that River Cuomo’s electric guitar can silence her motherly concerns and rattle away my “I don’t want to go anymores.” While the beat vibrates and I lather my legs with freshly scented cucumber lotion, I begin to sway with forced excitement. “I’m going to have fun tonight,” I tell my stuffed dog, Douglass. But his vacant eyes seem as convinced as my crackling voice. However, when I slip into my olive ch...
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...sure melting, it’s my Cinderella fantasy that dissolves.
In this moment, as the sun bounces like a fireball off our windshield and crackles against headlights, the air dissociates into molecules of barely breathable oxygen. In this moment, I may not be hip. In the moments to come, darkness may envelop our forms and my moss eye-shadow and “Barely There” foundation may fade like lifeless clowns booed out of the circus ring. In the moments to come, I may not dance like Janet Jackson.
No, in this moment, I am still an eighteen-year-old prom junkie. Although my glittering fantasies of popularity and beauty may sometimes threaten my happiness, I know who I am. I do not need to prove myself with a cigarette, a rowdy mouth, or a provocative dance. And when the dandelions become a golden blur in my window, I feel their secret whisper through my soul. I am beautiful.
Following Joan Jacobs Brumberg throughout her conveying research of adolescents turning their bodies into projects the reader is able to see where all of the external beauty fascination came from following up to the 21st century. Brumberg effectively proves her point, and any girl of today’s age knows the struggle of which she continuously portrays throughout her book. Beauty has become such a preoccupation that it has gone from soap and washcloths, to makeup, to cosmetic reconstruction of body parts.
Maureen, her nanny, whose face is riddled with defects, still inspires Coralie to think that, “she [is] beautiful, despite her scars” (10), despite the imperfections she, herself, posses. Then I realized: Isn’t this the true nature of life? Don’t we often look at ourselves, picking out the flaws that we think others will notice? I do this too often, never once thinking that, in reality, people often don’t notice these imperfections or look down on us for them. For instance, Dove had created a commercial that placed women in a position where they had to describe themselves in front of an artist. Accordingly, other women with whom they had met previously were asked to describe them. Of course, the outcome is completely different, yet many women can’t see that. Due to this blind nature, people often try to remove their faults, alike to Coralie, who “attempted to rid herself of the webbing with a sharp knife…” (19), which seems extreme, however many nowadays go through cosmetic procedures to ‘fix’ themselves too. This struggle of accepting ourselves is by no means new—it is an eternal static that doesn’t seem to
The novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin demonstrates the themes of independence and freedom. It is set back in a time when women were supposed to grow up being protected and controlled by their fathers, then move to the same role with their husbands. The main character, Edna Pontieller, defies the social norms as she does not assume the title of a good mother, good wife, and good daughter. Instead she has her own ideas and is a reoccurring symbol of freedom and independence.
Chopin, fatherless at four, was certainly a product of her Creole heritage, and was strongly influenced by her mother and her maternal grandmother. Perhaps it is because she grew up in a female dominated environment that she was not a stereotypical product of her times and so could not conform to socially acceptable themes in her writing. Chopin even went so far as to assume the managerial role of her husband's business after he died in 1883. This behavior, in addition to her fascination with scientific principles, her upbringing, and her penchant for feminist characters would seem to indicate that individuality, freedom, and joy were as important to Chopin as they are to the characters in her stories. Yet it appears to be as difficult for critics to agree on Chopin's view of her own life as it is for them to accept the heroines of her stories. Per Seyersted believes that Chopin enjoyed living alone as an independent writer, but other critics have argued that Chopin was happily married and bore little resemblance to the characters in her stories (150-164).
Everyone dreams of being “perfect”, but what they don’t know is that they are perfect. One just has to see within themselves. Everyone is uniquely and secretly beautiful, but that gets taken away because it is not what society wants. What society wants is for women’s self-esteem to be broken so that they can be morphed into a product of someone else's idea of perfect. In “Barbie Doll” Piercy argues that the pressures put on women by society affect their self-esteem. No one needs to change who they are for anyone. If anyone wants to change, they should change for themselves! Being you is all that really matters. The key to beauty is confidence. Something that everyone should keep in mind is that, don’t let someone change who you are, to become what they need; otherwise you don’t need them in your
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross describes people, specifically the Wingfield family, as “stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” Through the play, Laura Wingfield’s beauty is masked by her crippled appearance and glass figurines. However, Amanda Wingfield’s beauty is hidden by her nostalgic controlling past. Amanda’s son and Laura’s brother, Tom, has his glowing dreams and future crushed by the regret of abandonment. Throughout the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the reader is tested and persuaded by the three main characters to be the protagonist of the 1945 play. To begin, the audience may feel Amanda Wingfield, mother of Tom and Laura Winfield, is the protagonist because of her developed personality. Whereas, critics would consider Tom as the central character because he is the play’s narrator. Finally, the reader may consider Laura as the focus because of her capacity to change through the play. In essence, depending on interpretations, any of these three characters are possible protagonists.
There are many different types of child abuse. There is maltreatment and sexual abuse. Maltreatment is an area that encompasses many different things, such as physical abuse, child neglect, and emotional abuse. Physical abuse may begin with “shaken – baby syndrome” and escalate to routine spanking, stabbing, punching, hitting, beating, biting, burning, and any other thing that harms a child. The adult doing this may not intend to cause harm, but it is still abuse. Physical abuse may lead to brain damage, disfigurement, blindness, and even death. An average of 5.5 children per 10,000 enrolled in a day care are sexually abused. In the United States more than 125,000 children suffer injuries intentionally inflicted by their caretaker, and between 2,000 and 5,000 of these children die as a result of their injuries. In 1994 3.4 million cases of child abuse were reported.
The abuse of children is not new. It dates back to biblical times. During recent years, child abuse has had a rise in the public eye. According to the nationally known website Childabuse.com, there are four types of child abuse: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect (Childabuse), each with its own unique set of characteristics, each affecting a child differently, and each noticeable, stoppable, and preventable.
There are different types of child abuse. One type is physical abuse. It involves the parent inflicting injuries to the child’s body. These injuries can include: bruises, burns, broken bones, head injuries and even injuries to internal organs (General Information about Child Abuse). As a result of physical abuse, children may be scared and shy when people approach them and try to touch them. Another sign that abused children might show can be them wearing long clothing in order to cover and hide their injuries (General Information about Child Abuse). They do this in order to prevent outside factors from asking them questions. The main sign of this kind of physical abuse that the parents or caregivers can show are anger problems or the excessive need for control.
Ow. My head hurts. It has been lying against this wall for at least an hour now. I scratched the back of my head to move around my dark, curly hair. It was beginning to feel plastered against my scalp. It was a bit tangled from not brushing it for a day and my fingers did not run through it with ease; nevertheless, it felt good to keep the blood flowing. I was lying on a thin, light blue mat on the floor. My head was propped up against the cold wall as if it were a concrete pillow. My chin dug into my chest and I could feel the soft, warm material from my sleeveless sweater cushioning my jaw. I looked down. I could see the ends of my hair cascading over my shoulders. The red highlights matched quite nicely with my maroon sweater. My arms were folded over my belly and they appeared more pale than usual. My knees were bent, shooting upward like two cliffs. My baggy blue jeans covered the backs of my fake brown leather shoes. ("Christy, let me borrow your pants, the baggy ones with the big pockets. I can hide more stuff in those.")
The subjective element of beauty involves judgment, not opinion. Many people feel beauty is only something seen by the eyes. St. Thomas Aquinas views beauty in both the supernatural and natural orders. Aquinas lists the attributes of beauty to be found in nature. These are; unity, proportion, and clarity. We will see how these attributes of beauty are seen through the eye and felt by the heart.
Adolescents is a time of significant life transitions in which young adults learn to cope with changes that are brought about by physical and emotional maturation (Sands and Howard-Hamilton, 1994). During this time girls begin to become more aware of themselves as females, and learn to identify society’s signals to conform appropriately to their gender (Sands and Howard-Hamilton, 1994). The high school girls that are present in this writers program are starting to understand that they can use their bodies to get attention from boys therefore making them value their individual beauty. Some girls have identified that the “boys” that they like do not value them for their brains, but for their beauty and therefore this is where high school becomes a popularity contest, and academically their grades begin to suffer.
First, women spend huge amounts of money to improve their looks. So here we are unable to escape the reality that we can never be flawless or blemish free; moreover, as long as women have the belief that all greatness de...
The definition of beauty is varying among different people in the world. Even though almost everyone knows the term beauty, many people are struggling in defining it and persuading others to agree with their opinions. Beauty is defined by a combination of qualities existent in a person or thing that fulfills the aesthetic feels or brings about profound gratification. Many people define beauty as a term to describe a person’s physical appearance; they often think that beauty comes from magazines, video girls, or even models. Although the term beauty can define a person’s physical appearance, true beauty lies in the way one acts and thinks rather than the way one look.