Pregnancy Body and Good Luck Charlie

In the third season of Good Luck Charlie, Mrs. Duncan is pregnant and has baby boy Toby.  I believe that the actress was also pregnant in real life.

 

I was interested to see how Mrs. Duncan would be portrayed the weeks following the delivery of baby Toby.  I was surprised and pleased that Mrs. Duncan looked like a normal woman who recently had a baby. 

Even if it was only for one episode I was grateful for the bit of reality.  The last thing women need to be worried about right after they have a baby is looking like a super model! 

Grading Papers

I am a TA, and as part of my job I have to grade homework assignments.  A few students turn in a hard copy but most of the papers I have to grade are on-line.

Today as I was grading I was starting to feel irritable and I started thinking about why I might be feeling that way.  I decided that I was annoyed with my computer screen.  I am tired of that kind of media.  I want to stop typing and start writing on a piece of paper.  I want to stop staring at the screen and start looking at a piece of paper.  But that is just not how the world is today... it seems that there are more and more screens and less and less paper.

What do you prefer, a screen or a paper?

Female Friends in the Media

I am taking Socialization Across Childhood from Dr. Coyne and we are doing presentations at an elementary school. My group is presenting on friendship.  Last night I was making a poster for our presentation for the kids to write how to be a good friend.  I wanted to put pictures of movie and TV characters that are examples of friends to make the poster more exciting.  Things were going great I had a lot of pictures, Mickey and Friends, Winnie the Pooh and Friends, Arthur and Friends, Phineas and Ferb, Mike and Sulley, and Lightning McQueen and Mater.  That is a great list, right?

 

Then I realized, none of those pictures were girls!  What the heck?  So I started trying to think of female friend characters that I could put on my poster.  It was so hard!  I found Rapunzel and Pascal, although does a lizard that doesn't talk really count as a friend?  I found Mulan and Mushu, but again, does a person and a animal count?  Then I found Wreck it Ralph and Vanellope Von Schweetz which seems like a solid option, but are there no girl friends with another girl pairs in the media?  I also thought of Teddy and Ivy from Good Luck Charlie.

The fact that it was so hard for me to think of good female friendships in the media made me really sad.  There are all kinds of male friendships, but so few female ones.  Other than the list I just made the only other ones I can think of the three girls from Friends.

 

I know my last two posts have been about females and males in the media.  And I do not mean to be beating a dead horse (which is a horrible saying by the way)... but it is what I have noticed lately.  I can see the under representation of females in the media, and I think it needs to change!

Can you think of any female friendships that are portrayed well in the media?

Tim Allen, the ageless father?

This week I have spent more time in bed and cuddled in a blanket on the couch than I care to admit.  I have been home sick and feeling pretty crappy :-(  So when you are sick, cannot leave the house, your brain feels all foggy and weird what can you do?  Watch TV and movies of course.  So I have done a lot of that.

In the past two days I have watched almost an entire season of Last Man Standing, almost an entire season of Good Luck Charlie and a (semi-weird) ABC Family movie called Princess.  So I decided to blog about what I have taken away from this media overload experience.  The thought I found most interesting is about Tim Allen.  Now, please do not take this as Tim Allen hate...  I love The Santa Clause movies, Jungle 2 Jungle,  the Toy Story movies.  I think I could even be a Tim Allen fan, but that being said there was an episode in Last Man Standing that reminded me of Miss Representation.

      

Towards the end of the season there was an appearance by Jonathan Taylor Thomas.  There was a comical exchange between his character and Tim Allen's character about Tim Allen recognizing Jonathan Taylor Thomas from somewhere... well that somewhere was Home Improvement where more than a decade ago Tim Allen was playing the father of a family of boys.  This made me think of the Miss Representation movie we watched in class because now more than a decade later Tim Allen is still playing the father of a family of teenagers.  The only difference is now it is a family of teenage girls.

Would a female actress in our society today be able to play a mother of teenage boys and then more than a decade later play a mother of teenage girls?  Maybe their grandma or something, but I really doubt that she would be able to play the mother.

What is the difference then?  Tim Allen looks a decade older now than he did on Home Improvement, but we just accept it.  He looks more distinguished now, maybe it is more realistic now.  But what would we say about a woman in his shoes, she looks too old to play the mother again.  Or if you want this part you need to get your face lifted or something.

So am I going to boycott Last Man Standing.  No way, it is funny, I like Tim Allen and as TV shows go it is pretty clean. But what I am going to do is be a little kinder to women on TV. I am going to try to change my perception of aging women.  And  I am going to work on my perception of my self.

Hatin' on Juan Pablo

I love the Bachelor and the Bachelorette.  Can't help it, I just do.  I ended up not watching this season, school, family and church were just too busy.  I really didn't even pay much attention to this season.  But on Monday night the last episode and "After the Final Rose" aired.  I was interested to see who won, see if they were still together, see if they were getting married ect.  I saw that it was "trending" on facebook so I decided to check it out.

Holy cow!  There was a lot of Juan Pablo hate!  Good grief he made people mad, people who do not even know him... hmm...

I remembered back to when he first became the Bachelor.  There were cheers, T-shirts and kind posts by well-wishers.  Well, I guess that is over.  It seems now like everyone hates him. 

Is Juan Pablo a bad guy?  I don't know... we have never met.  Was he "the worst Bachelor ever?"  Again, I don't know I did not watch the show and how do you even decide that? 

I think I just wish that people would be a little more compassionate (or humane) on the internet.  I mean hatin' on someone you have never met and that you watched on a "reality" (ha ha) TV show... would you really say those things to his face (I hope not!).

Mirror Neurons

In the class I TA for (Infant Development) we talked about Mirror Neurons.  The topic is fascinating.  I highly suggest the video we watched during class...

After watching this video and talking about mirror neurons for a few minutes I started to wonder...What about media?  If seeing and doing are the same in our brains, or even just similar what does that mean for violent media? The sexualization of women in media?  Pornography?

Holy cow, our brains are amazing!  This idea made me want to be SO MUCH more careful about what I put in my brain! 

Bullying- Stop It!

I loved the talk from General Conference that is used in this video.  President Uchtdorf powerfully instructed that when it comes to things like bullying, gossiping, holding grudges we should STOP IT!  This new Mormon Message has been going around on Facebook.  During lunch today my husband and I took a few minutes to watch it.  TOTALLY WORTH the time!  Making someone else the brunt of your joke is NOT OK!  Being mean to another person, for any reason, is not ok. 

"The Naked One"

Oh my goodness!  I was babysitting for one of the girls I visit teach last night.  I am not big on kids (especially babies) watching TV, but this family is ok with it so that is mostly what we did.  The 4-year old daughter was controlling what we watched.  She has her own channel on netflix that are all kid shows but when she said "I want to watch the naked one", I was a little concerned.

I had a few thoughts:
1. Maybe I just didn't understand what she actually said...
2. Either way freakin out is NOT the right thing to do...
3. I will just wait and see what the show is.

I am not sure what the name of the show was, but it was one of the stupidest kid shows I have ever seen.  Basically she called it the naked one because it was an episode about a school class going to the pool.  One of the boys jumped in the pool and his swim trunks (which were actually a tiny speedo thing) feel off.  The episode was all about that... and the kid was naked (in a towel) through most of the episode.

Why is that good for kids to watch?  Who came up with that?  I just don't get it sometimes.