For the past two weeks, we did a lot of homework about reading and writing. This not only let me know some reading strategies, but also some values about beauty and gender roles. Developing reading strategies will improve our reading efficiency, understanding how to write in a correct formula is also important. Just like Dr. Hass mentioned in the course objective that “Develop habits for engaged reading” (course objective 1), for me, taking annotation is the most effective way to help me understand the article which will record the key idea and make a better connection after reading. For example, when I watch the “Killing Us Softly” video, annotations helped to save a lot of time since I do not need to go back when I forgot the ideas Kilbourne mentioned. Furthermore, when I followed the step circle to read the article “Looking into the Magic Mirror”, it helped me to find the authors’ opinions about beauty and gender roles. Therefore, developing a reading method that works for us is a way to help us save and catch the main idea quickly.
In addition, through the readings last week, I understand the meaning of social construction which is created by people and influenced by culture. Besides, the video and text we read for the past two weeks are about beauty and gender roles, let me know the impacts of advertisements and the changing value expressed by Disney films. For example, advertisements lead the beauty since many girls admire the nice look of the model in advertising, but this will also have some negative influence. Many girls want to be as beautiful and thin as the model they see in advertisements and TV shows, and they begin to take cosmetic surgeries and eat weight-losing products. But the risks of doing these are also pretty, failure of the cosmetic surgery may disfigure the face and excessive weight loss is harmful to our health. Sometimes the content of advertisements is not realistic, we cannot trust them too much.
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