...ecstatic about growing up. I always imagine having a nice sized house and having my own car. I always imagine living the American dream. I had a wonderful family which included my husband, a little girl named Carmen and a little boy named Cameron, and a fluffy dog, named Spot. Together we would live happily in a nice neighborhood. When someone walks in they would be greeted by my massive two tier chandelier in the corridor. It would be filled with painting from world known artist. To the left there would be the den that would have decorated in chocolate and cream. There would be a chocolate leather couch, a chocolate leather chair and ataman. On the couch there will be cream throw pillows and a cream and tan blanket draped over the back of the couch. On the right of the corridor, there will be the kitchen. The kitchen would be the most vibrant room in the house. The walls in the kitchen would be a pale pink with rose lining. The appliances would be stainless steel and black in color. The tablecloth and curtains would change every week, but on this specific day, they were a marigold with pink and purple trimming. Straight ahead is the hallway that would lead to upstairs. Walking up the grand staircase that had 32 plush carpeted stairs you will see the banister that will be hand crafted by my brother who wants to be an architect. On the left of the staircase it will be my children’s room. Carmen would have everything pink, purple and white. She would have a canopy bed that had a...
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...consumerism can be referred to as a consumer culture. Barbie can be used as a tool for consumer culture because she is perceived to be the perfect woman, an unattainable achievement. Barbie has the perfect man, Ken; she has her dream house, and car, and even a dream closet. There are life size Barbies bouncing around in T.V. and print media ads that personify this image. Barbie produces a systematic reproduction of consistency; she doesn't evolve but rather promotes change around her. Barbie’s face or body structure hasn’t significantly changed since her creation. The different nationalities that Barbie is produced in are careful not to lend themselves to stereotypes too heavily. Most importantly, the concept of Barbie hasn’t changed throughout the years. Ultimately, she is still a toy. Barbie promotes change by attaching herself to current trends and issues, such as Presidential Barbie, Olympic Barbie, and Sponge Bob Barbie. By presenting current trends in Barbie form, Mattel successfully promotes these trends to parents and children. The perception of perfection that surrounds Barbie is unattainable; however, consumers consistently find satisfaction or happiness in reaching for these goals. We have a car that works perfectly fine, but we want a new one. Our house has more then enough space, but we want a bigger one. Those shoes match absolutely nothing in my closet, but they're new and in style, so I just have to have them. Who would think that this little doll almost three times my...
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...Part I Victoria’s Secret A. Company: Victoria’s Secret Inc. is the largest American retailer of women’s lingerie and the largest subsidiary of Limited Brands. The company sells lingerie, as well as other apparel, footwear, fragrances, and cosmetics. Founded in 1977 by Roy and Gaye Raymond, their first store opened in San Francisco, California and are currently headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, U.S, with current parent company as L Brands. The company has 1,149 stores including 1,098 stores in the US, 10 in the UK and 41 in Canada. Victoria’s Secret also has 304 franchised stores including 290 Victoria's Secret Beauty & Accessories stores, 13 Victoria's Secret International stores and one PINK International store. In 1983, for $1 million, Victoria’s Secret Inc. was sold to Leslie Wexner, who revamped the look of the company. Transforming a three store boutique into a 346 store retailer. In 1989, Victoria’s Secret Inc. executed an advertising campaign featuring for the first time in the company a ten-page insert that appeared in November issues of Elle, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Victoria, House Beautiful, Bon Appetit, New Woman, and People magazines. Later in the early 90s, Victoria’s Secret Inc. was under it’s current parent company, L Brands. They introduced the Miracle Bra, which was competing with Sara Lee’s Wonder Bra. In 2002 they introduced not only swimwear but a lingerie line, PINK, to target younger women. The Victoria's Secret Designer Collection was launched 2010...
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...with the Author and the Characters Fitzgerald and Carraway Thoughtful young man from Minnesota Educated at an Ivy League school Moves to NYC after the war Found the new extravagant lifestyle seductive and exciting Fitzgerald and Gatsby Idolizes wealth and luxury Falls in love with a beautiful young woman while at military camp Narrator Nick Carraway; he also implies that he is the book’s author Point of View Both first and third person Presents only what he himself observes Tone Ambivalent and contradictory; sometimes he seems to disapprove Gatsby, and sometimes he romanticizes and admires Gatsby, describing events in nostalgic and elegiac tone Background Year written: 1925 (the Jazz Age) American economy soared; great prosperity for majority Prohibition (18th Amendment in 1919) ‘bootleggers’ Money is everything Plot Nick Carraway moves from Minnesota to New York (West Egg) to learn about bond business West Egg: wealthy and fashionable area; where the “New Rich” live Nick has social connections with East Egg, where the “Old Rich” live Nick’s classmate at Yale, Tom Buchanan, lives with Nick’s cousin Daisy in East Egg Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, in the Valley of Ashes Valley of Ashes is a gray industrial dumping ground At one party, Nick breaks Myrtle’s nose because she taunts Tom about Daisy At Gatsby’s party, Gatsby tells Jordan that he was in love with Daisy Stares at the green light...
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...the mass poverty in Europe. This new group of immigrants were often poor and uneducated and were likely considered peasants in their own countries. Jurgis Rudkus, a fictionalized character in Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle is an example of such a person. Jurgis is from Lithuania and comes to America in search of the American dream. At the beginning of the novel Jurgis comes to America as any other typical European immigrant. He dreams of America as being a land where a man with little can rise through the ranks and ultimately become a man with wealth and prosperity. Jurgis quickly realizes that industrial America is a land of heartache, where a willing man is exploited and used as energy to fuel the never ending industrial machine. At the end of the novel Jurgis learns that the great land of America has its limitations, but at a cost as he loses his wife and child and spends stints in jail for trying to defy the machine. Thus, the novel, The Jungle exemplifies how immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s could not fully realize and achieve the American dream no matter how hard they toiled and worked in the brutal American factories of the time. A jungle is an area of madness and chaos where animals roam free and one either eats or is eaten. Upton Sinclair titled his novel, The Jungle because urban Chicago exemplified all of the same traits that a jungle possessed except for the fact that the jungle of...
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...Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained...
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...throughout the product categories and how it has extended to other categories as well. Do a case study of its success (or failure) and how it has changed the landscape of product innovations. For example, Thomas and friends has clothes, stationery, household products, jewellery etc. *** She is a successful independent woman, who lives in a world of pink, where she owns a dream house in Malibu. Every day, she wears high-heels to work, and even runs a fashion chain under her name. For many, she was the influential icon of American culture in the late 20th century. Until now, I dare say that her image is still very potent worldwide. Who is she? Never before has she ever starred in a Hollywood movie or performed at a famous fashion show. Surprisingly, she never exists in real life and she is literally a toy. Yes, it can hardly be any other toy but Barbie. Nowadays, girls can be seen wearing Barbie clothing, using Barbie perfume, carrying Barbie backpacks, and sleeping in Barbie pajamas, not to mention cosmetics, sneakers etc. (Morgenson 1991, 66). Mattel, Inc., the mother company of Barbie, should feel proud of her. Because on average, an American girl has ten Barbie dolls, a British or Italian girl may own seven, while five is the number of Barbie that a German or French girl has. It was Mattel’s purpose and will when introducing Barbie that she would become a lifestyle, a fashion statement, a way of life, something sacred more than just a doll. And in fact, she did! This plastic doll...
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...My speech is about Beyoncé. Beyoncé is an American recording artist and actress. She was born and raised in Houston, Texas. She was educated at St Marys elementary school, then she went on to high school for the performing and visual arts. Beyoncé performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child, and rose to fame In the late 1990s as the lead singer of R&B girl group destiny’s child. The group became the world’s best-selling group of all time. Beyoncé then became a solo artist in 2002, her first solo recording was a feature on Jay-Z’s Bonnie and Clyde, which was realised in October 2002. Beyoncé’s first solo album was ‘dangerously in love’ realised in June 2003. Beyoncé has now realised 5 solo albums. During this time Beyoncé has appeared in a few films such as the pink panther, dream girls and obsessed. While filming Jay-Z’s song ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ Beyoncé had started dating Jay-Z, in 2008 Beyoncé married jay z privately. Beyoncé had suffered a miscarriage in 2010. In 2011 at MTV video music awards, Beyoncé announced that she and jay z were expecting their first child. Beyoncé’s pregnancy was the most googled term of the week august 29th 2011 On the 7th January 2012 Beyoncé gave birth to her daughter blue ivy carter. Beyoncé and her mother introduced house of Dereon, a contemporary women’s fashion line in 2005, the collection featured sportswear, denim offerings with fur, outerwear, accessories, lingerie and jewellery. Beyoncé made her runway modelling...
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...Legally Blonde: The Musical Legally Blonde is an American musical with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin and book by Heather Hach. The story is based on the novel Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown and the 2001 film of Legally Blonde. It tells the story of Elle Woods, a sorority girl who enrolls at Harvard Law School to win back her ex-boyfriend Warner. She discovers how her knowledge of the law can help others, and successfully defends exercise queen Brooke Wyndham in a murder trial. Jerry Mitchell directed and choreographed. The original musical stars were Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods, Christian Borle as Emmett Forrest and Richard H. Blake as Warner. I also tried to include all the musical numbers in the sequence that they occurred and they will be in parenthesis. This was my second musical that I have attended, what was really cool was when I attended this one they had the musical production on DVD copy. After the musical was over, I of course purchased the DVD copy. I was fortunate enough to travel to the Palace Theater, in the ninth grade to witness what I still believe to be the best Broadway production yet! I was hesitate at the beginning do to all the critics and their stereotypical views that this production, was going to be a modern chick flick sitcom. It was girly and pink, but I believe that the female to male ratio was around 14:10. Jerry Mitchell did an amazing job directing and choreographing this musical, the only thing that it lacked was...
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...The group in society I have decided to focus on for this internal are teenage girls/young women and how they are represented as sexualised/beautified to market a product to a viewer. Also how they are shown as promiscuous, beauty driven people who are obsessed with achieving physical “perfection” based on their favourite celebrities throughout the media. The three media texts I have chosen that I think best portray the idea of teenage girls and how they strive to be physically perfect are; the film ‘The House Bunny’ , the television show ‘Gossip Girl’ and the magazine ‘Cosmopolitan’. (Mainly the cover) My first example is the television series ‘Gossip Girl’ The first image is a photo from the March 2011 Cosmopolitan magazine of Blake Lively portraying her character Serena Van Der Woodsen in the T.V series ‘Gossip Girl’. Serena has been styled based on her character, beautiful and desirable (mostly due to her wealth and social status in the show). She has been dressed in entirely white, surrounded in a completely white background, this allows her skin to be the main aspect of focus, and it portrays perfectskin and skinniness. Most girls who see this aspire to imitate these images and may inspire feelings of failure when they do not achieve the exact image. Her lips in the picture are pouting making her look sexy and draws attention to her lips by also making them look glossy and shiny. Her face has been ‘retouched’ (or photoshoped) giving her a look of perfection and...
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...There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice. In, “The Great Gatsby”, Jay Gatsby the main character has this false hope of trying to relive his past again with his one true love, Daisy. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows the heroic elements of him being the tragic hero because he goes through this continuous cycle of false hope of getting the love of his life. Jay Gatsby came from a necessitous family and in rural North Dakota and wanted something much bigger from life. Gatsby absolutely despised the idea of him being in poverty, he had even worked a janitorial job to pay for his tuition but had to give it up because he was so embarrassed by it. As his dream was always to be rich, the only thing that really helped...
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...Class clowns have bad taste, lack of intelligence, intransigent politics, poor work ethics and dysfunctional family values. Bad taste usually led to lifestyle of a junk culture such as those seen on sitcoms where the husband came late from work to watch television with a beer in his hand. Some television shows demonstrated that families prefer living with a lower income and buying cheaper brand than expensive ones. Class in reality however, is not the same since it is powerfully structured by social forces. As publicized in the film ‘Class Dismissed,’ shows like Joe Millionaire, The Nanny, Extreme Makeover and Extreme Makeover House Edition all tried to show how lower classes have attempted to fit with upper and middle class. Another show known as ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ argued that it was their main intention to focus on the body and the house. It was known as one of the rare shows that aired on television because of its gay representation, stereotypical white male and actors representing upper middle class. Males were seen in the show were concerned with looking beautiful compared to women who were concerned with getting people to recognize their social ability. Nonetheless for a class makeover to exist, the economic system will have to change drastically. 2. How do race, gender, and...
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...with racism today there are still too many people that roam this earth that think it is okay to call someone a slang name in an offensive manner. What is the true definition behind racism? According to The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (n.d.) “The belief that some races are inherently superior (physically, intellectually, or culturally) to other and therefore have a right to dominate them. In the United States, racism, particularly by whites against blacks, has created profound racial tension and conflict in virtually all aspects of American society. Until the break through achieved by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, which domination over blacks was institutionalized and supported in all branches and levels of government, by denying blacks their civil rights and opportunities to participate in political, economic, and social communities” (p.1). From an outsider, one may think that the United States has rid itself of the majority of racism with not only one but two elections voting Barack Obama as the President and Leader of this country but this is far from true. As Donna Brazile (n.d.) (a black columnist, professor at Georgetown University and author of “Cooking with Grease”) explains, “According to the poll, 51% of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes,...
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...Falls Convention in 1848. The convention sought to address the concerns about the political, social, and civil rights of women. The focus of this stage of feminism was on legal issues, the most known being suffrage, or the right to vote. At this time in history, women were not allowed to own property, write wills or sign legal documents, serve on a jury, vote, refuse to have sex with their husbands, attend a university, have legal custody of their children, or divorce their husbands. These women wanted a change, and rightfully so. Women in this century were fighting for all the rights we have today, and they accomplished a lot. They created the first co-ed public school and university, they established female nurses in the military, the American Medical Association began to admit women, and the nineteenth amendment was passed granting women the right to vote. This wave was the first step of many to achieve equality and create reform in...
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...Gender equality is a dream for millions of Americans, yet many do not know the depths of this movement that makes reality clearer. Articles like “The End of Men” will obscure the public’s opinion because of how it presents women receiving college degrees and PhDs in numbers significantly higher than men. Yet due to the various articles I have read in class I do not believe that the United States will be able to achieve gender equality in twenty to thirty years. Women’s representation in higher positions is so low that it is very difficult to pass laws and change social ideas. There are also too many obvious prejudices that have not yet been fixed even due to decades of protesting, like the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement took...
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