Playing with Toys

For the third make cycle we did a toy hack. A toy hack is when you take an average toy and do something with it to convey an idea. This can go in many directions but for us we had to convey a scientific issue that touched us. I choose to do mine on the psychological effect of our society's view on women particularly in media. We see over 2000 advertisements a day. On clothing, billboards, magazines, commercials, virtually everywhere. Most of which are depicting tall slender women who have been put through hours of make up and hair and then edited to the point that the pictures don't even look like the actual models. Young girls grow up thinking that they have to look like this to be beautiful. This has caused an overwhelming number of girls to develop eating disorders and other psychological issues. For my make I decided to use a Barbie doll. Just about every little girl in the U.S. owns one. She is the first thing that comes to most peoples mind when they think of beauty. For my make I decided to us one to depict the psychological effects many girls have to deal with every day by showing her standing in front of an image of herself. This image has been distorted to what she sees in her mind that is completely false. I did this by taking a picture of her and using IWarp in the picture editing program Gimp. I am not photographer or editor so this was really hard. I had to restart many times because sometimes she would come out looking like a blob. When I finally go the image distorted to the extent I wanted it I printed the picture off and taped it up so that it would be at about the height of the actual Barbie. I then stood her up and took a picture of her looking at the image trying to show the extreme difference between what she sees and what we see. I hope I conveyed my idea clearly for someone to interpret it without reading my explanation.

A Reflection of a Reflection.

So for our midterm we have to reflect on our progress in our class and what we have written in our blogs. We are suppose to look back and see how we portrayed ourselves as writers and scientists and what we left out. So far in our class we have been exposed to a lot of scientific and philosophical information. She has encouraged us to look deeper into things and to try and come up with our own questions to everyday science that we tend to over look. With all of this we were first presented with the obstacle of trying to figure out how all of this science is related to writing. But it soon became evident that the two are highly related. Not only do scientists write their findings but they also have to relate them to the general population so that we can understand what importance it has on us all. We also found that science isn't just in the natural world but in our thinking and putting our thoughts down on paper is crucial to not only expand ones thoughts but to also influence others. Writing helps develop you and can help you discover a little more about yourself as you go.

Looking over my past blog posts I have noticed a trend. I didn't really think out what I wanted to convey to my audience. I just wrote to complete the assignment and move on. I also didn't know what to say. I just wrote down what I thought she wanted to hear. But I didn't think about what I had to write to figure out where I was even suppose to go with the ideas she gave us. I have found that my thoughts develop as I go and at first my thoughts seem like a short jumbled up mess but soon as I figure out where I want to go I begin to revise and go in to detail of what I'm trying to say. I've came off as clueless and unmotivated when I really was just lost. As a scientist and writer I can be very intrigued but it takes a bit more out of me to sit down and truly think about how I feel about a topic and to put things into my own words.

I've learned a lot in this class so far and it's already half over. I'm sure we have much more to learn and many more reflections. I've learned to look at the world much more closely and to think about what I have to say before I act on it.