The pressure of beauty

Recent media images have increased my concern about what is understood to be female beauty. Apart from a couple of celebrities who featured on the red carpet at the recent Oscars (Kate Winslet and Beyonce), the rife image of beauty is scrawny. At Hollywood's most eminent event, most looked decidedly emaciated and unhealthy. The definition in the arms suggests a very low body fat percentage. The demise of the bosom and curves perpetually provides an unachievable ideal of poor health. How can something be ideal if it is harmful to you?

This is a sad state indeed. These unattainable (well, it could be attainable for me if I exercised for 2-3 hours a day, and ate half of what I normally do) ideals are extremely problematic and something needs to change. I am not willing to pay the price for scrawny beauty, if it can be called beauty at all.

Actor Network Theory

I came across this article

Prior, N. (2008). Putting a glitch in the field: Bourdieu, actor network theory and contemporary music. Cultural Sociology, 2(3), 301-319.

of which the title is quite informative. This article has helped me understand ANT a lot better, especially these quotes.

From p. 313
Actors like chemicals, airbags and door knobs impose their presence in all sorts of ways that make them partners in interaction. This means that action is no longer perceived as the sole realm of the human actor, but also the realm of the non-human actor, including the technological artefact.

From p. 315
This is precisely the reason why the best work in actor network theory alerts us to how the technical and the social are inextricably linked, in turn sensitizing us to the fact that instruments and associated devices are not passive intermediaries but active mediators.

current ideas

The notion of a personal learning environment (PLE, http://members.optusnet.com.au/rlubensky/2006/12/present-and-future-of-personal-learning.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Learning_Environment) and a personal learning network (PLN, http://creatingapln.wikispaces.com/) was recently introduced to me by Darcy Moore, a deputy principal at Dapto High School. His blog details these concepts at http://darcymoore.wordpress.com/

Darcy is a big fan of Wordle and Twitter. I love the Snapshots feature of Wordpress, and though I like all these features, I’m quite content in not taking up every new Web 2.0 feature. I’ve decided that one should have a limit on what technology one embraces. Email, Facebook, and my iPhone keeps me busy. Yes, I got an iPhone for Christmas, so I no longer have the conundrum (see previous post) of whether to get one or not, only the conundrum of whether I do away with my paper diary (as I have an electronic calendar on the smart iPhone), which highlights my propensity for lists in hard copy. Paper that I can feel, move around, and enjoy the tactile experience of writing upon.

Unlike my laptop, I think that I could probably curl up on the couch with an Amazon Kindle 2. Thanks Darcy for sharing your knowledge! I’ll be introducing these concepts to the students in EDIC101 later this session.

The ongoing cycle

It is an image that is ubiquitous – that of the male academic Professor who not only is socially inept, but is very successful. He is mesmerized by notions of grandeur and intoxicated with greed. Not only out of touch with reality and normality, he is absent in mind, though present in state. The ubiquitous image of Professor Male tends to be a balding, aged, glasses-wearing ditherer.

While popular culture and media texts (especially television shows) expound this common stereotype, it is obvious that men are not the only players in academia. It remains that women are distinctly positioned within academia by their actions, commitment, and proven success. But images of the female academic are rarely played out in popular culture texts. They do not rate many mentions as men continue to perpetuate the ‘ditherer’ image.

However, why is it that academics in general are perceived to be out-of-touch? Perhaps it is because we are. We write about our work for other academics and we are deemed successful if other academics cite our work. What impact are we having on the ‘real world’?

Online predators

I watched the breakfast show 'Today' this morning and don't do this usually because it tends to annoy me, especially when the 'Technology Editor' comes on. What was the topic? Of course, internet safety. The top tips for children's use of the internet were, 1) avoid social networking sites, 2) always supervise children's Internet use, and something about privacy filters not actually working.

There are so many good things that the Internet offers that the mindset of looking for the bad, and making blanket statements about every child's usage, invokes a sense of frustration in me. Yes, we need to educate our children about online predators, and teach them what are appropriate sites and what the dangers are. This is paramount, but never letting your child go on the Internet unsupervised seems to be a simplistic and for many parents, an unmanageable solution. Banning social networking sites would probably make some children want to use them more and hence look for ways to disobey parents' instructions, especially if 'all' their friends use them. What wasn't mentioned was the fantastic privacy filters that one can choose for one's profile (available both on Facebook and MySpace). My stepdaughter has never had any problems because she has these private settings. More education about the great and various filters available needs to be provided rather than stating that the solution is to ban sites and disallow unsupervised usage.

Book launch

Thursday 26 March, 12:30pm, Unishop, UOW