Monday, March 4, 2013

Blogg 3: amanda perez



Miss Representation is a documentary that had true facts about how females are not getting a lot of credit for their work and determination to have a higher career or getting full respect. It’s societies that view women only as a mother and nothing more; when we can be both mother and career women. Just like we discussed in class it’s a patriarchy country.  

“Media is the message and the messenger, and increasingly a powerful one,” was stated by pat Mitchell
the media portray women as unvalued; as if the only thing that matter is the body. The media controls young men on how to choose their women and young girls try to be like that and some girls are killing themselves to be that beautiful girl on TV. Just like Marie Wilson said, you can't be what you can't see and we need to make a change and we need to believe that we are beautiful in our own way!

As I was logging on to my e-mail I notice news that amazon is being accused of putting inappropriate words on some shirt so curiosity got to me and I decide to find out what this was all about. It was shocking to what I came upon; the shirts were just being printed to make money.  the shirt are just unforgivable because the slogans used the word “rape” as a joke. This is a serious matter that have affected lots of women and that have died. These t-shirt shows that media and advertisement don’t take women seriously. Michael Fowler stated that it was a computer error; the people did not notice what was being printed on the shirt and that he sorry. He also said "These items sat online and on non-indexed servers for the last year and myself and our company had no idea of the issue." There is no excuse in not always checking you work or what you are putting out there in the market. By selling these shirts it makes it ok to rape, and hit women; showing young people that we as a society are ok with this. It may seem that they didnt sell many shirts but just by putting out there in the market we will get used to this being ok, women being treated poorly.

3 comments:

  1. It's hard to believe that shirt was just a computer error and nobody caught it. I mean c'mon! How does a mistake like that get past everyone and in to the market. I'm sure all he has to do is apologize and everything will be ok.

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  2. Amanda,

    You've chosen a really interesting and recent controversy as the subject of your critique -- it's an original and intriguing subject.

    You put this very powerfully: "the shirt are just unforgivable because the slogans used the word “rape” as a joke."

    You do need to introduce sources/subjects and provide context, though, particularly in a paper. For instance: Who's Matt Fowler? What were the t-shirts supposed to say? What's the nature of the "error" that supposedly resulted in this fiasco? Has he received any backlash? etc. As is, it feels like an unfinished story (but one with great potential).

    I did a bit of research and found that Fowler owns the company that makes the shirts: Solid Gold Bomb, and that Amazon is the primary (maybe only) retailer. He claims he wrote a computer program that generates random phrases with various verbs and that he didn't check the outcomes "carefully" enough. Which is . . . lame, and kind of hard to buy. Who sells shirts with slogans they've never examined, right?

    The slogans are based on popular site Chive's famous slogan "Keep Calm and Chive On" (or KCCO). You can check out the site here (a lot of half-naked women, many of whom are non-famous, non-celebrity women who simply send in pics of themselves in various states of undress): thechive.com

    Here's Fowler's apology: http://www.solidgoldbomb.com/pages/our-apology

    Lastly, though I'd typically agree with Brad's take on the consequences (little to none),Fowler suggests otherwise, stating: "Fowler raced to his Amazon seller’s page and quickly deleted questionable designs, then canceled and refunded the 20 orders that had just been placed. [Read his apology here.]
    But it was too late. The public relations disaster had toppled his business. Fowler, who just had his third child, said Solid Gold Bomb can’t sustain more than a few weeks without sales.
    “I’ll be destitute, but so would my employees,” he said. “They all have children, mortgages. My first and foremost effort is to preserve their jobs.” (http://wtvr.com/2013/03/05/man-behind-carry-on-t-shirts-says-company-is-dead/)

    Do either of you think his company SHOULD go bottoms up as a consequence? Lesson well learned?

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  3. Also, the links are really hard to read in the comments, but I can't change the color. The blacked out areas are links.

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