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/

Global issue: Education around the world

A global issue that affects everyone is the fact that education is still not a reality in many areas of the world. Education is truly a privilege, and one that sadly many children lack of. Girls are specially the victims not being able to attend school. Often, it is boys who are given the chance to pursue education. In many cultures, young men are more likely to stay close to home, to bring a wife into the family, and to support their parents in their later years. Girls may marry out to become part of another family, and so educating them is seen as a poor investment, when in reality education for girls is necessary around the world.
Quality education for girls, who go on to be workers, mothers, and community leaders, is one of the best predictors of population stability, family well- being, and hope for the next generation. Nations with little access to education for women also tend to have exploding populations, high infant and maternal mortality rates, low levels of family well- being, and high rates of worker exploitation (Sernau). Societies with marked differences in educational access and quality also tend to be marked by poor growing social predictors. It is because of these reasons that education around the world is so important, and the fact that today many children do not have access to education only predicts a vulnerable future for such nations.
Around the world about two- thirds of all children never receive a high school education or its equivalent, (Sernau). Many cultures around the world instruct that men should go to school and learn as they will need education for math skills, reading and writing and women should not go to school because such skills are not needed to stay home. However in today’s growing globalization both girls and boys need educational skills. The World Bank often discourages what it sees as wasteful government spending, but encourages governments to spend on education (Sernau).
Lack of education is a global issue. In India most children receive some primary education, but classes are often very large. Many children, especially girls, have to work to help support their families. In some states of India, the female illiteracy rate is very high and in others the educational levels of girls and boys are much more equal. In places all across Asia education is seen as a strong investment and it has been key to rising standards of living of countries such as Japan and Singapore (Sernau). In Kenya, many of the girls are homeless, some have children of their own, many have been exploited by various employers and few have any other resources. Rather than keeping the girls in school, family members may try to pull them out, especially if their incomes are needed by the family. Given the examples India’s future would be one of prosperity in the south, but poverty in the north, in Asia given the actions taken by the government one would predict that Asia will continue to grow in the future. Unfortunately given the example that is not the case for Kenya.
Education is crucial for a better society. One aspect of interactionist theory states that better communication and intercultural awareness improve majority minority interaction patterns, and if more people become literate and educated, then better interaction could become an actuality.
Thankfully organizations are taken action in ending education poverty. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF 2005) has implemented several programs that share the goal of eliminating gender disparity in education. One program, called the 25 by 2005 Initiative, focuses on improving educational opportunities for girls in twenty- five of the countries judged to be most at risk of failing to achieve this goal, including eight West African countries. Also the United Nations has set a date for the millennium goals in hopes of ensuring that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Hopefully with globalization growing consensus of the importance in education, more nations will invest in this human right and less social gaps will be created for a better world.





Sources:
Parrillo, Vincent N. (2008). Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations. Boston: Pearson
Scott Sernau. (2009). Global Problems: The Search for Equity, Peace, and Sustainability, Second Edition. Boston: Pearson.
The United Nations. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml

Divorce and Poverty

As major contemporaneous issues affecting the United States, those of divorce and poverty come to highlight the complex relationships between man and women in a society of permanent, diverse and developing changes. Divorce increasingly is affecting women and children especially, although at times men as well can be victims of this issue. Divorce often leads people into to poverty. Society promotes marriage. Marriage is a socially shared conception of something good, a value (Parrillo pg 24). Little girls play with dolls to someday become mothers, little boys are encouraged to do well in school to someday become professionals and support their families as excellent fathers. However increasingly divorce is becoming more acceptable and creating issues affecting all the parties involved in the subject and the American society.
The issue could be analyzed through the ‘functional theory’ because “this perspective emphasizes that society is a structure of beliefs and traditional ways of doing things. A society contains values, status positions and institutions” (Parrillo pg 9). In this case the functional theory is that the American society has the tradition of marriage, and holds values that men should work meanwhile women should take care of the children due to the institution of marriage. People usually marry forever and for love, consequently divorce does not fall as an option but much too often it is becoming a reality.
Over one million married couples are divorced each year in the United States, and this not only brings about social, psychological but also economical consequences. The income of single parent families drops by more than one third within several months after separation. Thus marital dysfunction frequently leads to a latent dysfunction; poverty for divorced women and children (Peck, and Dolch). According to the functional theory, the manifest functions, or obvious result, would be the separation of the two people. The latent function or hidden and unexpected result would be that due to divorce many women and children fall into poverty. Surprisingly, divorce is the number one cause of poverty for women and children in the United States.
Some divorce people chose to re-marry, and for women sometimes this is good because it is a way to pull themselves out of poverty, two incomes are better than one, but this is not always an option and it is also rarely a fast solution. For men, sometimes they continue to pay child support, but others chose to discontinue paying for child support which makes it even more difficult for divorced women. Our culture has a clear mode of norms regarding marriage, but lacks a strong mode of behavior for divorce, which more than often result in unforgiving consequences.
Divorce affects men and women differently. While men do not usually change jobs after divorce, most divorced women do and if they did not work when married, divorced women find a job out of necessity to cover their needs, even if they had been married for decades.
In many ways the divorce phenomenon can also be observed in the conflict theory because “the pattern is usually that of those with power, men, seeking to protect their privileges and those lower on the socioeconomic level, women, struggling to gain a greater share than they have” (Parrillo pg 11).
A common ideology in many societies including the American society is that it is a female role to take care of children and therefore many women sacrifice their professional goals in other to sustain this ideology. However, due to our ever growing and evolving society and some may argue that due to globalization as well, women are becoming more educated, acquiring high position jobs that were once considered only acceptable for men and as a result women are becoming less dependent of their husbands income. “Through cultural transmission, each generation transmits its culture to the next generation, which learns those cultural definitions at an early age” (Parrillo pg 37) hopefully women will teach future generations this positive habit to learn to become more independent.


Sources:
Parrillo, Vincent N. (2008). Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations. Boston: Pearson.

Peck, Dennis, and Norman Dolch. "Extraordinary behavior: a case study approach to understanding social problems." (2001): n. pag. Web. 8 February 2010. .

divorce and poverty

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