Gender Communication is not about Vogue.

I teach  a gender communication class. What is it? It discusses how the media shape gender stereotypes and how we, the audience, perceive these stereotypes as norm of our society (e.g. women serving as sexual objects; men being macho at all times, etc). I have 10 students, all of which are female. Today we discussed briefly the effects of fashion magazines and I was surprised to find out that my students do not really buy Vogue or Cosmo or Allure; neither they consume much television. They do watch a lot of reality TV shows and avoid fictional TV shows like How I met your Mother or The Modern Family. I was shocked and happy. My students are very smart, articulated and different from all the stereotypes of youth that I have been reading or studying about. As a scholar, to see that change for the better is occurring is a great sensation and conquest. Because it means that we are not doomed; we are not puppets operated by media conglomerates. I just hope the class gives them what they give me: an understanding of culture, life, social relation, power relations, class gaps and more. I wonder what they think of me.....(that I am a crazy foreign chick?Mmmmh).



"I am eating strawberries and I am sexy and I am going to sex you up, because that is what I do everyday I eat strawberry" (sorry, I got carried away). I was trying to find inspirational pictures from Vogue magazine so I did an image search for Vogue Russia, Italy, UK, USA, Brazil and Paris. I noticed two trends: (1) most models are white and blond (Vogue Italy had the most diversity in ethnicity); (2) most models posed in sexual, erotic, provocative positions. I just could not find inspiration for this blog because I just could never post a picture of myself that sexualizes me. I mean, even if I did not have a problem with that, the effects of my pose would be "priceless" (sarcastic tone). Which brings me to wonder why in the heck do we need to commodify and sexualize our bodies? It rapes creativity of a photographer. How boring to see the same sexual poses? Can we go beyond that? If you can't make a dress look cool and awesome on a conventional woman than it probably means that you suck as a designer. Let's not forget that art does not equal a formula (this formula being caucasian model in sexual position). Real art incorporates the real world into our imaginary world and my imaginary world is not made out of sexual objects. How boring would that be?



I am particularly boring and lazy today. I just did not feel to dress or put make up on. I am wearing Fiorucci jeans, an organic t-shirt and that's it.