Keeping life pretty clean, pretty green, and just plain pretty

There have been a lot changes in my life this past year. Some fairly minor, some more dramatic. Some changes haven't been so great, but I would say that the majority of the changes I've made have been an effort towards making life more positive - for myself and others around me. 

Along with maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my 2nd year of college, I've been getting more involved with the community - on campus and off. I'm a member of the French Club (as an English/Communications major, taking a foreign language is a requirement toward my degree, so I chose French), and I'm also a senior research assistant to a professor working on his doctorate. (We're studying the impact that successful entertainment franchises have on shaping the ideologies in our culture.) I've also volunteered several times recently with local theatre groups and was a team leader for a huge hunger drive a couple of months ago. We packaged thousands of meals to ship off for communities and families in need. 

Below are a few of the other changes I've made towards a healthier, cleaner, and prettier lifestyle:

SLEEP & SCHEDULE:

Being a full-time college student and balancing it with a part-time research assistant job, pursuing an acting and entertainment career, and attempting to finish up the final stretch of my aviation training in the next few months, I've had to make a real effort to prioritize my time and stay focused. I've made a gradual change in my sleep and schedule habits. Instead of the late-night hours I used to keep because of bartending, I now typically am in bed by 10 p.m. or earlier and generally am up by 5 a.m. nearly every morning of the week. I drink a full bottle of water, take a shower (been taking more cold ones lately), do my morning stretches, and start my cleaning, which brings me to...

CLEANLINESS:

I vacuum 1-2 x's per week, dust bi-weekly, put aside recyclable items daily, and do laundry several times a week. I usually try to get the majority of whatever cleaning tasks I've assigned for myself done for the day before I even make my coffee, so that I can sit down and relax with it as my reward for staying focused on first things first. I generally do a thorough kitchen and bathroom cleaning about once per week. As far as recycling goes, I keep a separate bag and receptacle reserved just for recycling. There's always room for improvement, but I'm continuing to get better about having environmental awareness.

WELLNESS, HEALTH & BEAUTY:

Aside from cleanliness and recycling being a regular habit for me, I've also made wellness and simple beauty routines a regular regimen! I'm too frugal for big extravagances, but I do like quality, so I usually start my day with a cup of French-pressed coffee, a piece of dark chocolate and at the end of the day, I like a glass of red wine (usually a Cabernet.) I don't bother with buying bottles as much anymore, because I don't always finish them, so it gets wasteful. Nowadays, I get the little 500 ml boxes that contain 3-5 servings and cost around $5-7. As much as I like to try different varietals and vintners from various regions, at the end of the day, wine is wine, and I mainly drink it for the relaxation and health benefits. 

I don't exercise quite as much as I feel I should, but I bike ride somewhat regularly for long durations (around 20 miles or more at a time), and I'm fairly active in general, so hopefully that counts. I don't withhold anything from myself as far as diet, but I don't overeat either. I get massages about every other week to help keep my back from going out, and I try to stretch several times per day. Also, I paid $30 towards a yoga center, which I will hopefully start attending regularly one day. Baby steps, baby steps.

I get bi-weekly manicures/pedicures, too! Every other month or so, I get my hair trimmed and maybe colored. I kind of like to have a different hair color for every season. (Right now, it's a dark honey blonde. Next month it might be a warmer spicier hue, like cinnamon.)

As far as beauty in the household (other than Melody being in it), I try to buy fresh flowers every 7-10 days to keep in a vase at the center of the kitchen! I'm a big believer in keeping some sort of live plant in the household. They give a sense of vibrancy, color, and warmth to it (along with a couple of kitties, of course!) :)

BARBIE DOLL - a poem analysis on the objectification of women in society

Objectification of Women and Societal Influence on Beauty and Behavior

examined in Marge Piercy’s “Barbie Doll”

The Sixties was a fairly complicated decade for women. While it was a time for the emergence of the “Supermodel”, such as Twiggy, who inspired women to crop their hair into short blonde locks, wear heavy eye makeup and diet until they had the lithesome figure that Twiggy and other models had, there was also a strong feminist backlash against the prototype of typical female beauty standards. This was evident during The Miss America protest demonstration at the Miss America Pageant on September 7, 1968, one year before “Barbie Doll” was written, by about 400 feminists and civil rights advocates. As part of the protest, a collection of symbolic feminine products, including false eyelashes, were thrown into a trash can located on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. There is a dissonance of theme in “Barbie Doll” which suggests how our main subject was influenced by society and the peers around her into fitting a more objectified mold of what a young woman should act and look like and ultimately her own demonstration of how she discarded these outer physical values.

The first example of how the author views society as objectifying women is in the first stanza “This girlchild was born as usual/and presented dolls that did pee-pee (1-2). The use of the word “girlchild” seems very objective and almost as though she does not have a personal identity of her own but rather could have just come off the assembly line, similar to the way a doll would. Early on, she is influenced to be what is considered a proper little girl should be when given household items that are thought to be feminine, such as "miniature GE stoves and irons/and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.” (3-4).  Puberty is an especially sensitive time for young people, particularly girls, because they are so receptive to the criticism of society around them. “Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:/You have a great big nose and fat legs.” (5-6). This marks the beginning of the girl not feeling as though she measured up to what the standards of beauty were considered to be.

In the following stanza, we see important information that shows how the qualities that a man might have, such as intelligence, strength and sexual drive, are not considered to be as valuable in a woman: “She was healthy, tested intelligent,/possessed strong arms and back/ abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.” (7-9). The term “manual dexterity” shows that, being quick and skillful with her hands, she could have excelled at being a surgeon, dentist, mechanic, or even a bomb diffuser (explosive ordinance disposal technician) - all highly skilled and noble professions which would not require one to be especially good-looking or possessing dainty manners and charm. Rather than pursue a course that would have tapped into the strong skills and resources she had, she relied on good manners and sweetness as a way of compensating for what she felt she lacked in society’s eyes regarding good looks, as examined when reading the lines at the end of the second stanza: “She went to and fro apologizing./Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.” (10-11). She discarded her own personal worth, because she felt society discarded the other values she had; they were canceled out by the physical features which were more prominent as shortcomings.

She further slipped down a sliding scale of moral ambiguity by trying to become the model perfect “girlchild” inside and out by listening to advice on how to flirt, charm, use feminine persuasiveness and continue to adjust her looks by diet and exercise to win approval rather than on merit of intelligence and hard work. This can be seen in the third stanza in the lines “She was advised to play coy,/exhorted to come on hearty,/exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” (12-14).

Eventually, she breaks down and becomes the "perfect", lifeless Barbie doll that society influenced her to be, by losing the vivacious personality she likely once had and sacrificially offers up the vilified features she possessed that were unique to her: her nose and legs. “Her good nature wore out/like a fan belt./So she cut off her nose and her legs/and offered them up.” (15-18). Lying in the casket, with full makeup, a doll-like putty nose and a feminine dainty nightie, she finally fit the image everyone had of what she should be like. She possibly killed herself literally or died symbolically by letting the inner fire she had as a unique human being go out.  The very last lines, “Consummation at last./To every woman a happy ending/ (24-25), suggest that the final result was bittersweet, after a painful process and crossing over a boundary that could never be crossed back. Her transformation was complete and irreversible.

When examined closely, it is evident that Piercy shows that she recognizes how important physical looks and dainty manners were for women at that time but how she ultimately throws those values out by killing her main subject.

Works Cited

Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” Literature: Reading to Write. Ed. Elizabeth Howells.
New York: Pearson, 2010. 233. Print.

EMPOWERING WOMEN: Beauty vs. Intelligence

It is difficult to recall the day I began to think that being pretty was something many considered more important than being smart. I became a film actor around 2005 and officially joined an industry that places heavy value on young, beautiful people. In particular, young beautiful women. Concurrently with my acting career, I have also pursued training and careers in industries where learning and being taken seriously as an academic are important, like mathematics and aeronautics. I have experienced both sides and realize they are both challenging.

My parent’s opposing views of what is considered beautiful influenced my own polarized views. My mother was a fan of Hollywood's Golden Age of screen performers. Her expression while gazing at Vivian Leigh’s lovely visage as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind could accurately be described as rapturous. Her praise and appreciation for screen greats like Gene Tierney and Elizabeth Taylor shaped my own perception of what is beautiful. My father, in contrast, was an aging undergrad student of astrobiology who instilled in me a fascination for space and aviation sciences. He passed on to me an appreciation for female astronauts, like Sally Ride who, when compared to a screen gem like Angelina Jolie, could arguably be called “plain” or even “unattractive”. However, in terms of sheer mental and professional accomplishments (a physics degree from Stanford and the first female astronaut to travel in space), she could hardly be called unimpressive. An interesting consideration came to me recently when I realized that, should Hollywood decide to dramatize Sally Ride’s life on screen, there is little doubt that the producers would find an actress who, though talented, would be cast more on the basis of her visual appeal than her physical resemblance to the real Sally Ride. After all, you would want the broadest audience to watch your film. And, it would seem, beauty is easier to recognize than intelligence.

The ideals of what is considered attractive have changed throughout history and civilizations, but there is little debate that physical attractiveness has always had a dominant appeal in society. The practice of enhancing or altering one’s physical features to fit the current standard of beauty has long been prevalent. Cleopatra is noted for using crushed carmine beetles to color her lips (Valdesolo) and Queen Elizabeth I for having thick white makeup applied to cover up the scars on her skin left by smallpox (Skerrett.) Though these were two of the most politically powerful female figures in history, each felt compelled to put their best face forward. A small but curious consideration.

Jumping forward to modern times, we see various pop culture celebrities peering flawlessly back at us from magazine covers. The majority of them share some great levels of success in careers creating and promoting films, music or, in most cases, beauty itself. Yet, each could scarcely represent a larger cross-section of ages and nationalities. For some, it is easy to think of these people, as the cliche goes, as nothing but pretty faces. Such as Natalie Portman, a published Harvard psychology graduate. Or Geena Davis, a long-time member of MENSA. But few of these articles or ads are created to encourage readers to pursue an academic career in psychology or join a national group dedicated to bring awareness to intellectual enhancement, but rather to buy the same cosmetics or beauty tips as each of them have endorsed.

There seems to be a revolution of sorts building in recent years against the use of digital editing, evidenced by celebrities and musicians being more transparent about their skills and techniques. In Meghan Trainor’s hit song, “All About That Bass," she sings “I see the magazine workin’ that Photoshop...c’mon now, make it stop.” To that point, it seems and more celebrities, like Kate Winslet and Jamie Lee Curtis, have begun speaking out against the unrealistic standards of beauty that such manipulation allows. In 2014, Keira Knightley posed topless, sans makeup or hairstyling. Rather, she highlighted her naturally small breasts and rather simple shape. Her point was to cast contrasting visuals to how her body had been augmented and presented so many times in the past (Dokterman.) In a sign of how public opinion may be shifting, the great majority of social and media response praised her for so cleverly designing and presenting an easy to understand commentary about the corporate sales of beauty products, while also expressing the genuine appeal of her beautiful natural form.

In keeping with this shift of beauty vs. brains, there is a growing list of celebrities such as Tiny Fey and Mindy Kaling who are known more for their shrewd intellect and wit first, while also highlighting their attractiveness. Equally, renowned beauties such as Angelina Jolie seem to be taking a genuine interest in promoting their humanitarian and leadership efforts rather than overly touting their interests in beauty. But overall, it is somewhat evident that pointing out such intelligence is meant mainly to enhance and support physical beauty, first and foremost. I think of the media surrounding superstar George Clooney’s wife, Amal Alamuddin. Her impressive resume includes being a human rights attorney, former clerk for a Supreme Court Justice, and fluent speaker of three languages. Yet, a Google Image search of her name results in her top photo groupings being of her wedding dress and her fashion shots. To find any photos of her in her day job (prior to being Mrs. Clooney), one will have to be more specific about their search.

It is refreshing to think that a genuine shift in favor of a woman’s beauty complimenting her intelligence rather than her intelligence complimenting her beauty could in fact take place. Perhaps it could even happen within my lifetime. So much that we are seeing socially suggests it is possible or at least conceivable. However, it is also difficult to conceive a throwback leading man such as Clooney marrying a junior version of Margaret Thatcher. Perhaps this is because beauty is simply something that mentally takes priority when it comes to our own intelligence. But then, it may just be awkward hooking up with a mate who you not only consider smarter than you but that eventually to whom you may have to pay taxes.

Works Cited

Dockterman, Eliana. “Keira Knightley and 7 Other Celebrities Who Protested Photoshop and   Won.” Time, 7 November 2014. Web.
Skerrett, Victoria. “The Death of Queen Elizabeth I." Tudor Stuff: Tudor History From The Heart of England. 3 November 2009. Web.
Valdesolo, Fiorella. “The Red Army." The New York Times, 27 August 2006. Newspaper.
Fey, Tina. Bossypants. 5 Apr. 2011. Autobiography.
Trainor, Meghan. “All About That Bass.” 2 June. 2014. Song.