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Brief Look at Manhunt.net

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Facebook and Me

I’ve had a Facebook since I was 18 years old and a senior in high school. In order to be part of Facebook in those days, one had to have a university or college email account to sign-up. In the five years since then, Facebook has opened up to millions of users of all ages and has become a central part of many identities. In the first couple of years I used the site, I thought of it as a fad. I planned on deleting my account once I was finished with school in order to maintain a professional appearance and make friends outside of the virtual realm. Now that Facebook’s user base has grown to include almost everyone I know, I’m not so sure I will be deleting my account any time soon. Facebook allows me to stay connected with family and friends, network for school and work, and pass the time when I get bored. That being said, since 2006, Facebook has lost its simplistic, intuitive, exclusive, and user-friendly charm. In many ways, it maintains a paper trail on users’ lives that the virtual age had at one time promised to erase.

When it comes to Facebook, I’m fairly open about the information I share. I post my phone number, my address, my email address, pictures, and interests. I’ve never considered myself a private individual, so I feel comfortable about disclosing aspects of my life for others. After all, if I was born thirty years earlier, my address and phone number would have been published in a phone book anyway, right? If someone cares to know what my favorite movies are, my political affiliations, or where I work, those are pieces of information I would be comfortable sharing in face-to-face interactions, even with strangers. However, choosing which interests and pictures I want to include on my Facebook does affect how others will perceive me, and it creates an identity that may or may not be realistic to my true self. For instance, I’m gay, but I do not explicitly publish that I am interested to men on my main profile. Someone may be able to discern my sexuality by looking at other pages on my Facebook, but by not saying that I am interested in men, I am not including myself in the imagined gay community of Facebook users. In this respect, I think Facebook highlights the fluid and arbitrary membership of imagined communities.

Nowadays, I’m not so sure that there are many definitive norms to using Facebook. One probably makes sure that his or her boss doesn’t have access to pictures, especially embarrassing ones, or censors what is posted on walls, depending on who one is friends with, but Facebook is not a particularly well defined space. It could be formal and strictly for business, but it could also be for finding a potential mate. In my teaching, I could see myself creating a Facebook group for each class I teach in order to give students a central space where they can post questions or concerns with a specific class. If that is the case, though, I would have to create a more professional Facebook profile for myself.

VoiceThread - FINALLY

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Media Representation Teaching Activity

This activity gets students thinking about the reality of the images they see in advertising and questioning what altering an advertisement does to one's interpretation of what an advertisement is "saying."

Ensure that each student has computer and Internet access and have them log on to Glenn Feron's portfolio website: http://www.glennferon.com/portfolio1/ . When one clicks on any of the images presented, they are shown a larger picture of the image. If one then scrolls his or her cursor over the larger picture, one sees the unaltered image in its original form. Have the students write a paragraph appraisal for three images presented on Glenn Feron's website (one paragraph per image) in which they discuss what altering the photograph for an advertisement does to the viewer's interpretation of the advertisement, what the picture is trying to sell, and what ideology is being sold.

Beyonce and the Hair Dye

L’Oreal’s 2002 television advertisement featuring Beyonce for Feria poses several problems in how it perpetuates the hegemonic construction of gender and the way it promotes an unrealistic image of Black beauty.

The advertisement takes a clear stance on how the desirable, feminine woman is supposed to appear and act. The product itself, a hair dye that promises “pure color,” highlights (pun intended) the fact that to be a woman is to be inherently inadequate. Beauty is not natural; it is something to be achieved superficially – more specifically, through consumption of chemical concoctions. L’Oreal pushes their consumer agenda masterfully by having Beyonce, one of the most glamorized celebrities of our time, speak to the synthetic sisterhood of women as a knowing participant in their quest for beauty. She too needs Feria to achieve perfection, the advertisement points out; never mind that she actually serves as a pawn in L’Oreal’s capitalist quest to make other women feel inferior. Furthermore, the image of the modern woman is one of sex appeal. Beyonce and her fellow models wear low cut dresses, tank tops, and skin-tight jeans that showoff their bodies’ curves, accentuate their breasts, elongate their legs, and compliment their highly airbrushed faces. In essence, these women become an assemblage of body parts and makeup instead of real, personable human beings. With a multitude of medium long shots, one is invited to look at figures and bodies rather than what the advertisement is actually selling: hair dye. L’Oreal is, in short, trying to sell an idea of womanhood, not just perfection in a tube.

The 2002 Feria commercial also promotes an image of Black femininity that is particularly troubling in terms of race politics. When it comes to Black beauty, hair matters; and Beyonce, depending on how one sees her, is either lauded or demonized for hers. In the case of L’Oreal’s commercial, color isn’t the issue, authenticity is. While Feria promises to contain “super hydrating conditioners,” Beyonce’s straight, feathery, and, quite frankly, White hair, points to an epidemic of Black women being told that thick, black, kinked hair is undesirable. Their Blackness, in other words, must be exorcised in some way. In fact, the sole Black woman in the commercial who appears to have kept a natural, close cut afro is only featured on a box of dye, and even her hair is bleached to a shockingly abnormal color. Finally, it should be no surprise that even Beyonce’s skin is lit in such a way that her race becomes ambiguous. She could easily pass for a White woman. It begs the question, then, is Black really beautiful when it looks just like White?

To get my students thinking about how feminism and race politics work in advertising, I would first pick out several beauty advertisements for the class to screen and have them discuss who the advertisements are made for and the reason why a company would want to make that particular advertisement. In groups of three or four, I would them have them storyboard their own advertisement for a beauty product to have them see how images and concepts are broken down to make meaning. Finally, I would have them shoot the advertisements and screen them to the class alongside a re-screening of the original, real advertisements I had shown earlier. Then, the class could vote on which group had the most convincing advertisement, and I would have them discuss what made their choice so believable, particularly in terms of feminist and race politics.