Media Representation: Personal Thoughts. Literature & Language Essay

Topic choice 1: Media Representation
It's been a difficult weekend to consider how media represents issues like race and gender. We're reading a piece like Lauren Jackson's ("We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface") while issues of violence against black men, institutional racism, police abuse, and protest are happening in real time. It's a lot to process. What are you thoughts about Jackson's piece? Have you seen similar arguments about the images that we share? What other issues related to media representation concern you? In the past, this course has also covered issues related to beauty standards, and we've read excerpts from a well-known book called The Beauty Myth - essentially an investigation and summary into how much women are expected to prioritize their appearance and how destructive this can be. In case anyone is interested, writer Jia Tolentino explores and updates the idea of appearances in the age of social media in another article I have assigned in the past, "The Age of Instagram Face". Finally, there is a great, student-created short called "A Girl Like Me". The director, Kiri Davis, was a teen when they created the film, which essentially deals with ethnocentric beauty standards. She also re-examines Dr. Kenneth Clark's 1940s "Doll Test" experiments investigating racism and impacts on children. It's only about 7 minutes long, and I encourage you to watch it as you consider responses to these questions. Be aware, though, that it contains some difficult material in terms of how children confront racism. I'm looking forward to reading through your responses and answer questions if I can!