Pop Culture

Blog 11

No one can go through life today without being affected by pop culture. It’s a wickedly strong social force that is impossible to ignore. Pop culture can affect people in different ways, both positively and negatively, depending on the person. 

Growing up my mom read the best books to me. She read everything from The Velveteen Rabbit, The English Roses by Madonna, to every single Dr. Seuss book she could get, and many more. As a child I grew up with Barney the purple dinosaur, Garfield the orange and lazy cat, the clean comedic characters of The Muppets, all the 101 Dalmatians, Simba and Pumba from the Lion King, every Disney princess and prince, and many classics. As for music, my parents contributed to 100% of my musical experience as a child. My musical diet consisted of a healthy serving of classic jazz and blues, a hefty amount of rock’n’roll, and a little bit of country every now and then. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me and I thought I was pretty much awesome. 

Then when I started school in the mid-90’s my exposure changed. While I still secretly slept with my stuffed animals, read Dr. Seuss often, and adored everything Disney, my tastes elsewhere drastically changed. My friends and I were all about some Britney Spears, boy bands, plaid, scrunchies, Spice Girls, bubble gum, Mary-Kate and Ashley movies, shows like Hey Arnold and All That, and crimping our hair. I liked me, my friends liked me, and of course Justin Timberlake thought I was mighty fine. Pop culture had little to do with how I felt about myself or gender other than that I knew that the Back Streets Boys were a heck of a lot cuter than any boy I had class with. 

I changed a lot between those days and middle-school. I was a full blown “nonconformist” tomboy by then. I had no interest in girly things, fashion magazines, and all that. I liked alternative music and watched little TV. I had very low self-esteem and therefore chose rather to just not think about how much prettier the other girls were and just hid in my over-sized T-shirts. However, after meeting my best friend of that time, who was the complete opposite of me, things started to change. Social media, TV, music, movies, pop culture was my life. I loved to get all dressed up EVERY SINGLE day and always had my headphones on, blasting the latest underground music. I got my first cell phone around then and became the “texting queen,” as my parents called me. 

Pop culture certainly made me feel like a lesser person at different times of my life. Sometimes it made me feel like I wasn’t pretty enough, my boobs weren’t big enough, my skin wasn’t clear enough, my shirt wasn’t low enough, my skirt wasn’t short enough, my outfit wasn’t cool enough, the music I liked wasn’t rad enough, I didn’t know enough, and the list goes on and on. However, pop culture has also benefited me by helping me come out of my dark shell and becoming the happier, girlier, more involved person that I am. It’s all about finding a balance between who you are, your insecurities, and pop culture. 

The First Time I had Sex

8th Blog Assignment

My first sexual experience was with a girl when I was very young. I was nervous but excited and it was a very fun and pleasurable experience. However, my first (and quite frankly most of them) sexual experience with a male was quite the opposite.

The first time I had sex with a male I was 15 and a freshman in high school (First strike, I was way too young to be having intercourse). I actually remember the date, May 28th 2008. I had sex with my then boyfriend, Ryan*. Ryan was 18 and a senior at our high school (Second strike, can you say pedo?). We had been dating for six months. He had been badgering since month two to have sex and that if I truly loved him I would have sex with him (Third strike, that obviously wasn’t love and if I was too stupid to see that then I was definitely too stupid to be having sex in the first place). I thought he was a virgin as well but little did I know that somewhere between two months and six he had decided enough was enough and that if I was going to drag my feet he would just sleep with, and lose his virginity to, my backstabbing friend, Sarah*. Of course I didn’t find that piece of information out until after I lost my virginity to the bastard. 

The night came when his parents went to sleep early and he had finally badgered me enough about it that I decided I might as well just give him what he wanted. Our “sex” consisted of light kissing, no foreplay, and 20 minutes of me sitting with my knees to my chest saying “I don’t want to do this” and him trying to convince me, then him making me be on top even though I didn’t want to be, and ending in no pleasure and certainly no orgasm for me. And to top it all off the cheating bastard also had the tiniest penis I’ve seen as of yet. Serves him right.

Obviously, my first male/female sexual experience sucked and it would take a long time for me to realize that I can and deserve to have pleasurable sex for me.

* Names have been changed 

Second-Shifting

10th Blog Assignment

Second-shifting oppresses women. It causes women to constantly be busy, never having time for themselves. It keeps women in traditional gender roles while adding on even more stress from their career. It allows men to keep doing less than women do and to believe that women can and should handle any and everything that is asked of them. This keeps women tired, stressed, compliant, and probably depressed and unfulfilled. 

Women have always been taught to be compliant, nurturing, subservient, and perfect. Women have always been expected to be the perfect 24/7 house cleaner, babysitter, personal chef, chauffeur, accountant, personal shopper, organizer, event planner, subservient sex toy for their husband, and so much more, and she is expected to make it all look easy and be perfectly beautiful and manicured and serene at all times. Now women are not only expected to do ALL OF THAT, but also to be successful career women. This behavior is reinforced by women who look down upon “stay-at-home-moms,”, men who refuse to take on extra responsibilities along side their wives, and women who let their husbands get away with that. 

Women are working harder than ever and men are working exactly the same as they always have and women are letting them do it!! Men’s disrespect for women and women’s low self-worth have not changed with the waves of feminism, and in some ways they have only grown worse. Women are expected by men and other women, media, etc. to do more and more and more than our mothers, our mother’s mothers, and so on. It is a vicious cycle that women can’t seem pull themselves out of. Women do more, men do less, and media promotes it. . .will it ever end?

Pro-Choice

9th Blog Assignment

I consider myself to be pro-choice, however, I once considered myself pro-life. That was before I was educated about what being pro-choice and pro-life really meant. I am pro-choice because abortions, however sad they may be, is a necessity. I don’t believe that the American government should enforce laws based on religion, namely the Christian religion. Considering a just fertilized egg as a human being can only be justified by the belief that we have souls. We don’t all believe that way and we shouldn’t be forced by law to follow others religious beliefs. What a woman and her doctor do should be the legal concern of no one but her and her licensed physician. The problem is that there should be some sort of boundaries. Partial birth abortion is one of the most disgusting, vial, and inhuman things I’ve ever heard of. I believe that after the first twelve weeks, roughly the first trimester, abortions for any other reason than to save the mothers life is wrong. To keep things like partial birth abortions from happening unless the mothers life is at risk we need to start educating young people about safe sex, how to avoid becoming pregnant or contracting an STD whenever they do decide to become sexually active. Humans will have sex when they want to regardless of how they were raised, so regardless of how people believe we all need to be educated and open about sex and sex education.  

If pro-lifers get their way then birth contraceptives will most likely become even harder to get or be outlawed all together. The combination of our societies lack of sex education plus the outlawing of birth contraceptives would bring about a vastly substantial increase in unwanted pregnancies. Abortions would no doubt be illegal if pro-lifers get their way so a substantial increase in unwanted pregnancies mixed with a lack of sex and abortion education plus safe abortions being illegal. . .would lead to a colossal increase in abused children, abandoned children, families who need financial help from the government, children in our horrid foster homes, and botched abortions that will lead to sickness and death in woman.

I am pro-choice because my mother didn’t talk to me about sex, if my boyfriend hadn’t of suggested birth control, who knows, I could have ended up pregnant like my best friend. I am pro-choice because birth control cleared up my acne, reduced my menstrual symptoms, and kept me from getting pregnant before I was ready. I am pro-choice because my mother wouldn’t have had me or my little sister without medical help. Because if my precious little sister was raped and impregnated then I’ll be damned if anyone try to keep her from aborting her rapists seed. I am pro-choice because abortion isn’t so cut and dry as to outlaw it completely as some sort of solution. Humans deserve rights to freedom of choice and that means that women deserve the right to choose what they will and won’t do with their bodies.