Guidos and Guidettes

Just a few weeks ago I started watching a show on MTV called “The jersey shore” and I think it applies very well to popular culture. The show is about a group of people who move to the jersey shore over the summer to work and have fun and have their experiences filmed and then aired on television. It is a reality show and apparently all the housemates are of Italian American decent, I had no idea about this new form of stereotype called guidos for males and guidettes for females. During the first episode the cast member talk about guidos and guidettes, and I was curious to know what this was. A guido is a slang term for someone that is from a working class or lower class urban Italian American, in the show guidos are portrayed as having a tan, muscles, flashy clothes, listening to techno music, clubbing among other factors that make a guido. A guidette is someone that like the guidos takes care of themselves, dresses with heels, and has nice hair; sometimes they have puffy hair too. Apparently it is considered a complement to be called a guido or guidette.
The show has sparked some controversy because the influence the show has on the viewers. Based on the actions and behaviors of the cast members this creates possible manifest and or latent consequences. The cast members love to tan, some of them even own a tanning bed and this has been criticized for portraying tanning as a good habit, when in reality tanning is very bad for ones skin. One of the cast members called Snooki has a particular puffy hair style that apparently has been copied by girls all around; Snooki is even launching a “Snookit” with fake hair so people can easily get her hair look. The show is very open to sex and especially the guidos go out during the weekends to clubs to bring home a different girl every night. This has not created much controversy, but I think it comes to show that sex is normal in popular culture, when perhaps openness to sex should not be portrayed this way as it creates latent consequences; young people engaging in sexual behavior when they are not ready, infections and other negative factors. Another controversy of the show is the stereotype of Italian American young people. The cast members talk about guidos and guidettes all the time and they are in fact guidos and guidettes. Elder Italian Americans are not happy about this stereotyping, but the cast members claim that it is a positive stereotype. The show even stirred legal debates between MTV and the New Jersey Italian and Italian American Heritage Commission, MTV responded by saying “Jersey Shore is a reality series that follows eight young adults spending their summer at the beach. The show continues MTV's history of documenting various subcultures, rites of passage of young people, and the ways they self-identify. The Italian-American cast takes pride in their ethnicity. We understand that this show is not intended for every audience and depicts just one aspect of youth culture.”
Personally I really enjoy the show and watching other people’s way of life. This guidos and guidettes is all new to me, I knew about metro sexual people; people who take care of themselves but I did not know about the Italian heritage connection. I agree that being called a guido or guidette is probably a complement. The show is rather simple; all the cast memebers work on a T-shirt shop, but for being such a simple show I was shocked to see that the guidettes appeared on “Harpers Bazaar” one of my favorite magazines and the guidos had a photo shot with Bar Rafaeli, one of the top models of the world. I googled guidettes and so many pictures of girls that fit the stereotype came up; also on youtube there are even videos on how to become a guidette. This show is definitely part of popular culture, and it was neat to also learn a little from it.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_%28slang%29
http://www.hollyscoop.com/bar-refaeli/jersey-shore-guidos-pose-with-bar-rafaeli_23570.aspx#axzz0la31LHIj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAj_5UXs4z4&feature=related

Native Americans

1. For this assignment I decided to focus on race. The first article is Culturally Appropriating Native Americans: A “Hands-on Approach to History”. The tile of the report by Gwen is disturbing because it denotes a racist approach to it by making native Americas become “appropriate”. The book is not a guide for Native Americans to preserve their culture, rather it is a book to guide white kids how to mimic and play natives.
The information in the book is vague regarding Native American culture and the purpose of describing different aspects such as tattooing, clothing, and hats are so that children create stereotypes about Native Americans and then copy the styles in this crafts book. A stereotype is an oversimplifies generalization by which we attribute certain traits or characteristics to a group without regard to individual difference, and this is exactly what this book aims to do. When a child sees a person with a bow and arrow, he or she will immediately believe this person is a Native American.
The author of the article states that “throughout the book, only the past tense is used, as though Native Americans are relics of the past, no longer in existence (or at least, no longer interesting).” Overall the book Romanticizes Native Americans as courageous, noble, but ultimately tragic figures of the past, this is the last stage of discrimination extermination. At least in this book extermination is seen by creating Native Americans “nonexistent” and figures of the past no longer alive. Examples of this discrimination are seen all around, for example when aboriginals put “stage shows” that tourist pay to go and watch, in Hawaii when people go to watch hula dancers, books that have a “how-to” do or play traditions of other cultures. Here is the link; http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/04/05/culturally-appropriating-native-americans-a-hands-on-approach-to-history/.
2. This article again is by Gwen it’s called IMAGES OF NATIVE AMERICANS. It points out that Indian names follow the pattern of ‘Present-Tense Singular Verb + with + Noun’” idea. Indian names are always funny and weird and show what the person does, or so do most people think. In addition, the article has a variety of different t-shirts people wear to Romanticizes Native American’s love for nature.
This article does not particularly show a pattern of discrimination but rather a pattern of prejudice, because it is an attitudinal system. In addition it is not negative but positive. From a cognitive level of prejudice it could be said that “native American are nature lovers and have funny names”.
Examples of this are abundant because it’s simple stereotyping, when people think that Chinese speak a certain way “me good”, “you like not” and so on, there is even a website to make your name Hawaiian http://hawaiiannames.hisurf.com/. Here is the link; http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/11/09/images-of-native-americans/
3. This article by Lisa “The Neutral And The Marked: A Primer For Your Kids”, it shows a variety of toys that are gear to make children be socially aware and expand their horizons. They have set of families of different races, for example the African American family has the mom and dad, two children, dog and basketball. The Asian family has mom, dad, two children and the dad is holding a camera. The Caucasian family has medical instruments as to show they have a good profession.
Overall the toys are not discriminatory, they could have been made even harsher assumptions on the races, but the problem comes with the instructions. The instructions say that “Children can imagine and tell stories about Red Indians, helping to stimulate their imagination and expanding their horizon.”, I feel there was no need to say “Red”, the article does not put the instructions about the other races, I wonder if they are too prejudice. The toys could lead children to develop socialization process, in which individuals acquire the values, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of their cultures including religion, nationality, and social class based on these toys.
A clear example of this type of prejudice is experienced by many girls when they play with Barbie’s, as they often feel ugly and different because they don’t have blue eyes and blonde hair and although these toys are aiming at reducing segregation, perhaps they will have a positive outcome in future less discriminatory societies. Here is the link; http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/04/01/the-neutral-and-the-marked-a-primer-for-your-kids/