Class at the Paley Center for Media 1/6/15

On January 6th my group and I went to the Paley Center for Media and took a class there. We took the class called Girls, Body Image and Media. I was personally really excited for the class. When we got there we met with our teacher Caroline. She took us up in the elevator and took us into this big theater. It was only my group and I in the class. We sat down in the front and we started to have a conversation with Caroline about our thoughts on how women are portrayed in the media and what we thought the media making girls ashamed of their body types. She first showed us this little montage of videos of music videos, commercials, and TV shows from the 70s to 2014. It was really interesting to see how TV has changed since the 70s, but at the same time it was really similar because women were still being used as objects. We would watch little clips from TV shows and then have a conversation after. We watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Vampire Diaries back to back it was really interesting how they were similar and completely different. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy, heard this boy screaming for help and she went to help him and she killed this big “manly” vampire. When she first came out the vampire and the boy both said “What are you going to do you are just a girl…” but she ended up killing the vampire. After she saved the boys life he didn’t even thank her but she was proud because she killed a vampire. Then Vampire Diaries came on. In Vampire Diaries, Elena, was learning how to fight vampires because her boyfriend had become one and she wanted to know how to fight them so that she could be with him. She was also sad over her boyfriend so she was learning how to fight. Then they show three girls walking into including Elena and they are all talking about their boyfriends and how they are these creatures. I though it was so interesting to see that in Buffy the Vampire Slayer she learned to fight vampires because she wanted to and she was being a very strong woman; but in Vampire Diaries Elena is learning how to fight vampires because she is sad over her boyfriend. I personally really enjoyed the class and it really got my group and I thinking about how we see commercials everyday but we don’t always notice how offensive they are towards women because we are used to it. I can’t wait to go back and take another class at the Paley Center.

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