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Empowering, inspiring, and stimulating. In a world full of beauty do and don't magazines and other superficial publications, this compilation is purely refreshing. Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing allows for teenage girls to read about significant issues that pertain to all, not just what shade of pink is in for this spring. This anthology starts with a bang, and influences readers to get out and actually do something. In the first chapter, volunteering and activism is addressed. It tells of actual things that young women have already accomplished, such as the one with girls assisting with a seeing-eye dog project. This book goes beyond simply telling, it encourages activism, not just dreaming, doing.
Between the pages that bring down feminist stereotypes and help for the mind and soul lay the true feelings and emotions of all girls. Though targeted at the 14-19 set, Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing defies age barriers. It is a collection of illuminating words that evoke dreams, hopes, and stories. Most importantly, it explains that common phrase "if you don't succeed at first, try, try again." Rather then put pressure on women, Blue Jean uplifts and helps girls shape themselves into independent, self-sufficient women. It does not make women feel as though clothes, makeup, and hot-dates define who we are, rather it coaxes our inner spirit and drive to challenge and overcome setbacks.
I was absolutely astonished by how young women, like myself, are making a difference, coping with life, and just simply having fun. Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing is more than just a book; it is a resource that will guide and teach you about situations you may face in this challenging world. It is full of insight that goes beyond fashion and cosmetics and touches on young women's dreams and accomplishments.
Throughout the book, true-life experiences are discussed to inform, involve, and empower you. "Suffering in Silence: Sexual Harassment" gives an outstanding investigation of sexual harassment in schools, while touching on many different viewpoints. My spirit was uplifted and brought to a new level as I read "The Key to Confidence". The story,"Black Feminists Talkin' Back", really touched home because it expressed the conflict of how African-American women feel separated between sexism and racism. The amazing question and answer section, "Dear Dr. Beth", gave great advice on difficult everyday experiences that young women deal with. These are just a few of the many terrific articles that will make you really dig deeper in learning about who you are as an individual.
Additionally, the book devotes a section on how you can publish your own zine, reviews of other zines, and information on how you can contribute your writings to Blue Jean Online ....This book should be in every young lady's collection. After you read Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing, you will have a greater awareness of society, and your perspective on life will truly change.
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It was also interesting to see more about the Queen's "favorites". Overall, I would highly reccomend this book.
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This book is focused on a few, fundamental, issues (excerpts are between "quotation marks").
1 - It explains that advertising works. Most people think they are not influenced by advertising. But advertising works best precisely because people don't think it works on them.
"If you are like most people, you think that advertising has no influence on you. This is what advertisers want you to believe. But, if that were true, why would companies spend over $200 billion a year on advertising? Why would they be willing to spend over $250,000 to produce an average television commercial and another $250,000 to air it? If they want to broadcast their commercial during the Super Bowl, they will gladly spend over a million dollars to produce it and over one and a half million to air it. After all, they might have the kind of success that Victoria's Secret did during the 1999 Super Bowl. When they paraded bra-and-panty-clad models across TV screens for a mere thirty seconds, one million people turned away from the game to log on to the Website promoted in the ad. No influence?"
2 - It makes you understand that the message mass media and advertising repeat us moment by moment ("The average American is exposed to at least three thousand ads every day") is that happiness comes from products. Alas, products are only things: no matter how much we love them, they won't love us back. By the way, didn't you ask why - in the car commercials - there are all those cars entering tunnels?
We are sold models impossible to follow - and just wrong. But effortlessly advertised: you are made up to think they're true. Thus, a sense of strain comes. I think that many problems our society faces (high divorce rate, violence, alcoholism, drugs) come from this split. I'm a pharmacist: it's amazing how many tranquilizers I sell every day.
3 - It lets you to realize that advertising often turns people into objects.
"It is becoming clearer that this objectification has consequences, one of which is the effect that it has on sexuality and desire. Sex in advertising and the media is often criticized from a puritanical perspective - there's too much of it, it's too blatant, it will encourage kids to be promiscuous, and so forth. But sex in advertising has far more to do with trivializing sex than promoting it, with narcissism than with promiscuity, with consuming than with connecting. The problem is not that it is sinful, but that it is synthetic and cynical. (...) We never see eroticized images of older people, imperfect people, people with disabilities. The gods have sex, the rest of us watch - and judge our own imperfect sex lives against the fantasy of constant desire and sexual fulfilment portrayed in the media. (...) We can never measure up. Inevitably, this affects our self-images and radically distorts reality. "You have the right to remain sexy", says an ad featuring a beautiful young woman, her legs spread wide, but the subtext is "only if you look like this". And she is an object - available, exposed, essentially passive. She has the right to remain sexy, but not the right to be actively sexual."
4 - Did you know that we are a product? Mass media sell us to advertisers.
"Make no mistake: The primary purpose of the mass media is to sell audiences to advertisers. We are the product. Although people are much more sophisticated about advertising now than even a few years ago, most are still shocked to learn this."
"Through focus groups and depth interviews, psychological researchers can zero in on very specific target audiences - and their leaders. "Buy this 24-year-old and get all his friends absolutely free", proclaims an ad for MTV directed to advertisers. MTV presents itself publicly as a place for rebels and nonconformists. Behind the scenes, however, it tells potential advertisers that its viewers are lemmings who will buy whatever they are told to buy."
5 - I think this book is also valuable because it re-states the ethical principle that there are no shortcuts to riches, no shortcuts to happiness. There are no free lunches.
"Today the promise is that we can change our lives instantly, effortlessly - by winning the lottery, selecting the right mutual fund, having a fashion makeover, losing weight, having tighter abs, buying the right car or soft drink. It is this belief that such transformation is possible that drives us to keep dieting, to buy more stuff, to read fashion magazines that give us the same information over and over again."
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If interested in the glazed Malibu tiles seen throughout the book, check out "Ceramic Art of the Malibu Potteries: 1926-1932" by Ronald L. Rindge.
Overall a beautiful and helpful book, and I do think it was worth the money.
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If you've ever been enchanted by ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL by Dr. James Herriot, an English country veterinarian, then A FORTUNATE MAN starts out promising enough with a half dozen or so brief accounts of Dr. Sassall's interactions with his patients. Then, the remainder and greater portion of the text is a lengthy Berger essay based on his observations of the physician and his place in the community. Sassall himself, as might otherwise be revealed by his very real and illustrative day to day rounds, is reduced to the introductory cameos.
Berger mixes philosophy and social commentary as he explores such subjects as the doctor/patient relationship, the art of diagnosis, the physician's social standing in the community, and the physician's view of suffering. The flavor of Berger's dissertation can be sampled from this snippet regarding suffering:
"The objective co-ordinates of time and space, which are necessary to fix a presence, are relatively stable. But the subjective experience of time is liable to be so grossly distorted - above all by suffering -that it becomes, both to the sufferer and any person partially identifying himself with the sufferer, extremely difficult to correlate with time proper. Sassall not only has to make this correlation, he also has to correlate the patient's subjective experience of time with his own subjective experience."
The book is less about Dr. Sassall then the author's discernment of the man, and the two are not necessarily the same. This volume would be well-received as part of any medical school curriculum - Theory of Bedside Manner or Medical Ethics 1A, perhaps. For myself, as one who is grudgingly granted 10 minutes of a doctor's distracted attention during the annual physical - the HMO's time is money, after all - I wanted to be presented with first hand evidence that real doctors (like my father the GP who made house calls!) still exist somewhere in the world. Berger's lecturing, while well-meaning and perceptive, didn't do that. It just bored.
If you care about people and health care systems, read this book!
This is not to say that John Berger's observations of Dr. Sassall's life can be applied to all people. Much is specific to Sassall's identity as a doctor. His depression, Berger claims, is a result of "the suffering of his patients, and his own sense of inadequacy." But there is a theme of existentialism that underlies the book, and it is ultimately about, I think, the pain of searching for purpose after one has faced and understood absurdity. Berger cannot conclude his essay because Sassall's essence cannot be truly captured, and his existence is not yet finished.
Besides being a philosophical book, it is also very personal. It is difficult to categorize FORTUNATE MAN into nonfiction categories because it is very intellectually intimate. It is a unique and thoughtful book, not only to be enjoyed but appreciated with effort and time.
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When I first received my copy of Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing in the mail, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. On one hand, I had seen the creative talents working on Blue Jean Online but on the other hand, I had read many paltry attempts of young women attempting to address issues they knew little of. I should have known better than to doubt Blue Jean.
Numerous young women individually mold subjects that are close to their hearts ranging from the meaning of feminism, the attention deficit disorder to the dilemmas of mixed parentage. The success of their writing lies in a simple formula that each young woman adopted and that was to write about something that they knew and felt intimately about. Dina Rabadi, 21, dispells the myths of studying in a women's college through her honest insight into the hidden benefits of studying at Smith College. I find myself re-evaluating my own choices for college and wondering why a women's college is conspicuously absent from my own list. It is this kind of writing that compels me to look inward and to reflect instead of simply heaving a sigh of relief at the end of an estrogen pumped collection of works. Erica Bryant, 16, reaches beyond the pages of the book through her mature outlook on "Black Feminists Talkin' Back". Being an Indian, I found myself unconsciously nodding my head as I read her piece that tackled the double prejudice of being a colored woman. When I read the various pieces, it wasn't so much the writer's creativity or fluency that captured my attention, but the sincerity with which they wrote. With Lida Haber-Thompson's piece on the attention deficit disorder, there is a conscious effort to take this condition out of a medical journal and put it into the words of a teenager. What made me want to know more about the disorder was the turmoil within Lisa's that is reflected in her words. Anne Preller, 15, presents an informative and passionate piece on sexual harassment that made me stop to think of the times I may have dismissed something I was not comfortable with for fear of being called school marmish or priggish.
Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing is crucial in creating a sense of solidarity amidst young women who are separated by geographical and cultural boundaries. That leap in one's heart to see that "I'm not the only one who feels this way" is what a collection of such works offers young women everywhere. It's captivating to read the way young women have jumped at the opportunity to defend their own beliefs and to stand up to the flawed images of women that one is constantly bombarded with by parents, boyfriends, tradition and the media. Sarabeth Matilsky and Danielle Kabelle, both 16, look at the manner in which gender stereotypes are instilled in us from childhood and whether size determines beauty, respectively. Such writing is living proof that while there is a majority that strives to achieve Barbie-like proportions, there is a significant minority that determines success and beauty by their own standards.
Alongside these key issues, Blue Jean: What Young Women are Thinking, Saying, and Doing showcases young talents in creative writing that build new worlds for us to venture into through the words on a page. If I could, I would go on and on about what a feast this book is for the reader, but I think Julia Rodriguez sums this book and what it represents beautifully in the last two lines of her short story "Lilacs Bloom Every Spring". "We will find our right to be. Until then, lilacs bloom every spring".