Creative Project

Significant Experience in my Life:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/tootdood/569109374/

Our Song By: Taylor Swift, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb2stN7kH28

When I think of one moment in my life when I really felt like I was coming of age/ grown up, I would have to say it was when I had my first real boyfriend. It was the time in my life right before I went to high school with all the people that I looked up to. I had a permit in my hand and was almost old enough to have my license and feel free. Looking at all of the older kids in town and looking up at my sister, I finally felt mature as all of the upper classmen had boyfriends and now I did too. In the above picture that I found, I thought that it fit the exact way that I felt. Growing up you want to feel accepted and as a girl you want to look your best and be noticed for it. Having a boyfriend you get all of that in one. I never wanted to leave his side because he made me happy, he made me feel good about myself, and he made me feel accepted.
Also, the link I have posted is to the YouTube video of Taylor Swift performing Our Song. I chose this song because some of the lyrics in this song correspond with the way I used to act when I had my first boyfriend. Since he was a year older than I was, he already had his license, so when I was able to ride in his car to school it was so much better than getting a ride from your embarrassing parents. It made me feel like no one could break me down. And in Taylor Swifts song her lyrics say, “I was riding shotgun with my hair undone In the front seat of his car,” and riding in the front seat of his car made me feel like I was grown up. Another part if the song is, “Sneakin’ out tapping on his window”, and this is the perfect way to describe me. Since I lived so close to my boyfriend, it was easy for me to spend a lot of time with him. But since my mom thought that it was still a childish fling, she didn’t understand me and thought that I was spending too much time with him. So to see each other we would sneak out late at night when our parents would fall asleep and go lay out in the field between our houses staring up at the stars. And we would lay there talking until the sun came up.
Having my first boyfriend was an experience in my life that I will never forget. After many years of growing up and having to deal with whether or not I looked good, or whether or not people were going to accept me, I finally felt like I was grown up and mature. I felt like I was on top of the world!

Slumdog Millionaire

I chose to take a look at the movie Slumdog Millionaire to compare what teens deal with growing up in the slums of India compared to teens growing up in the United States.
To begin my first point, a quote I took form Bordo’s article Never Just Pictures states that “Children in this culture grow up knowing that you can never be thin enough and that being fat is one of the worst things one can be” (445). I felt that this quote relates to one huge difference between growing up in the slums of Mumbai compared to growing up in the United States. The quote shows how here in the United States, teens starve themselves on purpose to lose weight and worry about eating too much so they can try to look better. But after watching the movie Slumdog Millionaire you see that there are no eating disorders, there is just malnutrition. People there worry about being too skinny and are fighting to get food to ease the pain of hunger.
Next, I thought that it would be interesting to compare the differences between what teens do on a daily basis when growing up in the United States or in the slums of India. First, when you are a teen in the United States, that is usually when most people get their first job, you are going to school, and having fun with your friends. As shown in the movie, there are actually a lot of similarities, only they aren’t to the same extent. For a teen in the slums, most don’t have a job. In order to get money, they go around begging and if they don’t get money they will steal what they need to buy. As far as schooling goes, Teens attend school, but there are many more illiterate adolescents in India than there are in the United States because they don’t have all the same laws for children attending school until a certain age. And last, teen in India make time to run around with their peers and play games just the same as those in the U.S.
Last, in Tolman’s article, Getting Beyond “It Just Happened,” Tolman makes different points about how girls should be sexually mature before giving up their virginity and being sexually active. Growing up in the United States, being a teen girl, you have the right to have sex with who you want, choose when you are ready to start having sex, and you also have the right to say “No” to having sex, and if someone takes advantage of those rights, they are punished. But in other parts of the world, there are people who kidnap girls and force them to have sex and are considered “property” and are sold as sex slaves and don’t get to chose when to have sex; so if these girls don’t feel that they are sexually mature, then it to bad so sad for them. An example in this movie of a girl being taken advantage of is Latika. Latika was taken at a young age by bad guys and she grew up being forced to dance for money. Also in the movie, she was forced to have sex with Salim in order to save the life of her loved one, Jamal. So as you can see, in other parts of the world, women are denied certain rights and men have a stronger influence over women.

Works Cited

Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: the Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J.
Berkeley: University of California, 1997. Print.
Slumdog Millionaire. Dir. Danny Boyle. Prod. Christian Colson. By Simon Beaufoy.
Perf. Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan. Fox
Searchlight Pictures, 2008.
Tolman, Deborah L. Getting Beyond "It Just Happened" 20 Aug. 1999.

Freaky Friday

The media I chose to look at was Freaky Friday. In this movie, mom, Tess Colemen, switches places with daughter, Anna Colemen, and they overcome their differences by finally understanding why teenagers and parents act the way they do by seeing what each other has to go through on a day to day basis.

One of the first ways that teenager Anna is portrayed, is as disrespectful. This is evident when Anna comes home from school after getting many detentions during the day; and it is hard for her mom to understand why. Her mom sees it as Anna going to classes late, talking back to her teachers, or disrupting class. But when Tess is at school taking the classes that Anna usually does, she finds that it is not very hard to get detention when she receives one herself. Another great example of Anna being disrespectful is when Tessa asks Anna to turn her music down. But instead of turning down the music Anna turns the music up even louder. Tess didn’t understand the reasoning behind all the noise but really all she was trying to do was practice for a gig that she had coming up in a few weeks.

Next, Tessa finds Anna to be annoying, loud and childish when it comes to her band. Since Anna and her mother have two different views on what is “good” music, it is hard for her mother to enjoy what Anna is playing. So the movie shows Anna as being annoying. There is even a scene in the movie where everyone in the house has a hard time hearing each other talk because the music is so loud. But really Tess just doesn’t understand that music is Anna’s passion and it is what she is talented at.
Last, Teenagers are viewed as rebellious and irresponsible. One example of Anna being rebellious is when Anna is in her mom’s body and she has free run of the credit card. Even though she knows that what she is doing is wrong, she does it anyway. Here Anna cuts her mom’s hair off, and she gets her mom’s ear pierced when she knows that her mom is getting married later that week.
Next, an example of teenagers being irresponsible is when Anna wants to get on the back of a motorcycle with a guy that she likes. In a parent’s point of view, they see motorcycles as dangerous and for the “bad” boys, so not many parents want their children hanging out the wrong crowd and being irresponsible. But after Tessa is stuck in a situation where she is in dire need of a ride she catches a ride on the back of his motorcycle, and she realizes that Anna’s crush is actually a kind, responsible student. The last example that I have of teenagers being portrayed as irresponsible is when Tessa never lets Anna drive. Having a drivers permit, it allows you to drive with a parent so they can practice until they are ready to drive on their own. But for an adolescent to be prepared to drive on their own they need to PRACTICE. But this is not how it works for Anna. Tess thinks that Anna is irresponsible and is not ready to be in control of a car so she never gives her the chance to practice.

Throughout this move, teenagers are portrayed as rebellious, irresponsible, disruptive, etc. But in reality it tends to just be a big misunderstanding. In the end of the movie, mom, Tessa, and teenager, Anna were able to see where each other were coming from when they had differences. They just needed to take a day to walk in each other’s shoes to see that when Tess was an adolescent times were different and things have changed to now when her daughter Anna is an adolescent.

I thought that this movie also directly relates to the first reading that we had to do. The quote from Raby that really stuck out to me is "Adults know and understand children and teenagers much better than young people know and understand themselves.” And through out the movie Freaky Friday we see that Tess doesn't understand Anna at all until Tess actually lived a day as Anna.
Another thing that I thought that this movie related to was our Kearney reading. In the Kearney reading it talks about how years ago girls were expected to be the media consumers but as things changed, today girls are more media producers than media consumers and in Freaky Friday, the two main characters are girls which goes to prove that the roll of girls has changed over the years.
Sources:
Freaky Friday. Dir. Mark Waters. Perf. Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, and Mark
Harmon. 2003. DVD.