Response Essay Blog Post

For my response essay, I plan to give a full explanation for the reasoning behind my preliminary essay. In my preliminary essay I mentioned how unfortunate divorce can be and how it can be prevented, avoided and obstructed. With such a strong topic, this should be fairly easy because I have a lot of information dealing with divorce and its affect on the family. Since my parents divorced, and I have first-hand experience with it I am going to tell my personal story and how I was affected as the oldest child dealing with my parents messy split. I want to end the paper with signs of hope that divorce can be prevented. I have quite a bit of useful facts, statistics and research that I plan on using to give my audience the happy ending I want to finish my essay with. 

Throughout the essay I want to give a background history of why statistics show that Christian marriages tend to last longer than people of other religious affiliations. I want to be very clear that I am not trying to write a paper to persuade readers into Christianity, because that is not my motive at all. I just would like to make the point that generally speaking, couples who base their marriage from a Christian foundation and that are trying to live the marriage according to God’s plan, will indeed be successful. The media can be very deceiving when it comes to love, divorce and marriage. Many times, divorce occurs in movies just because the couple could not seem to be with one another any more, which is not a proper reason for divorce at all and it is implied that the couple gave the marriage no effort to work things out between one another. I want to remind people that what we see and hear from television is not at all the way real life operates. True love does exist but it requires a lot of hard work that is not shown on television and movies. People get so wrapped up in what is supposed to be love, but television is never accurate when trying to depict true love. Directors always create movies where the main characters end up divorcing but magically, everything seems to work out for the better in the end. In movies now, divorce occurs simply because a couple cannot work things out and fall out of love with each other. That is no reason for divorce and I want my response essay to prove that fighting through tough times in marriage is definitely possible and doable if people are willing to work for it. Love can be a difficult process but it has been created and is still possible even today where divorce and infidelity reside. Ultimately, this paper will be a deeper, more in-depth response to my preliminary essay discussing how divorce is portrayed to not be a big issue in movies, how it can be prevented in real life, and I will give proof that it can be done. Even if statistics show that Christian marriages have a longer time-span than other marriages, I want to use that as my argument for why these people are happier in their marriages than others. 

Challenging Media (Killing Us Softly 4)

I watched the video about women’s health because as a young woman, it relates to me the most and I have a strong opinion for this topic. The way women are portrayed to look like is absolutely absurd. Fashion has created a mindset within women worldwide that skinnier is better. It is one thing to have health and wellness articles as a guide for women to remain in good shape and to be healthy for the prevention of disease and death, but when models are nothing but bones wearing the clothes “we” are supposed to want to wear, then what kind of image is that sending women? 

When models are roughly 5 ft. 9 in. and weigh approximately 100 pounds and they are publicly displayed as what women should strive for, multiple consequences are created. Women feel pressured to look emaciated because that is what is advertised as pretty. Airbrush work is also a major problem because it has the capability to destroy any imperfections and flaws women have. Magazine advertisements and television commercials make women look flawless with no visible wrinkles, blemishes, excess fat, cellulite and whatever else makes a woman feel ugly. Most women get so wrapped up in how amazing models look in a product that they do not realize how much touching up was done to make the model appear so perfect. 

This video also made me realize how bad women feel when we see these flawless images of “women like us” looking so elegant, beautiful and skinny. Advertisements not only make women want the product or give them the desire to become skinny just like the models in the ad, but they also give women that feeling of “hmm there’s no way I would ever look like that, I must not have the capability to be a pretty girl.” That is not at all the way women should vie themselves. Media makes it so hard for us to see past it when we are constantly slammed with fashion, hair and makeup advertising. 

Beauty should be characterized by uniqueness, not whoever is the skinniest is the prettiest. In my opinion, looking half dead where you might as well be a walking skeleton does not make a girl pretty. In fact, that is a little but frightening and causes people to worry. I find it very unfortunate that girls and women starve themselves and spend all their money in order to look like what is on television or in magazines. Maybe if the fashion industry would step back and see what they are doing to women worldwide, they would change their whole view on what is hot and whats not. “Dove” products have done a good job recently of using “real” women in their advertisements, which is putting a small dent in this ongoing phenomenon of appearance-related women issues, but simply not enough. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, no we are not all a size zero, but why should everyone look the same? Like I said earlier, beauty should be characterized by uniqueness, and the variety of shapes, sizes and colors women possess, is what makes them truly beautiful. 

Dissenting Voices Post

I found a pro-abortion article that is perfect for this assignment. Abortion is a strong issue that I have a lot of passion about. It is the one topic I will never change my viewpoint on due to the extensive study I did last year in my “marriage and family from a biblical standpoint” course. The article I read said it is simply the woman’s choice whether to terminate her pregnancy or not because it is her body and she is the only person who is ultimately affected by this. That statement alone is wrong. She is not the only person affected because if she chooses to get the abortion, she has killed the fetus which would have potentially grown into a human being. So no, she is not the only person that is affected, the dead baby is affected because it was not given a chance at life. It also tries to make the point that people are always thinking about what the fetus is to become, not what it is under three months after conception. The article tries to inform readers that an embryo, no older than three months, is cells still apart of the mother and more “primitive” than a frog or a fish. This statement is ridiculous in my mind because as soon as a baby is conceived all it needs is to remain in the womb of the mother until it is carried to term (nine months) and as long as the mother eats and stays nourished the fetus will continue to grow into a human being. So At any point of terminating the fetus, should be considered murder. Granted, the mass of cells may not look like an infant, but it still going to be an infant and in the world in less than a year! It is absolutely absurd to assume it is not a human being. 

This quote from the article is perhaps the most disturbing, “If anti-abortionists object that an embryo has the genetic equipment of a human being, remember: so does every cell in the human body.” What is this quote even implying? If you ask me it is contradicting itself by saying an embryo may have the genetic equipment of a person, but so does every cell in the human body. Of course human beings have genetic equipment, so why wouldn’t an embryo contain the same components? Embryos obviously have genetics hence the reason why they have the potential to become humans! They are people, in the earliest form. It is so sad that people are brainwashed into thinking otherwise. This article found ways to beat around the real issues that are being dealt with today. It presented pro-abortion facts and made the real facts seem as if it was biased information for anti-abortionists. Hopefully more research and scientific studies will be conducted on the issue and begin to prove that abortion is indeed an act of murder, regardless of whether the mother was raped or just does not want to continue with the pregnancy for personal reasons.  

Link to the article: http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/abortion/2404-Abortion-Rights-are-Pro-Life.html 

Online Interaction

So far the online blogging has been a fun way to write openly and freely on the topics that have been assigned for online homework. I enjoy giving my full opinion about the concerns pertaining to the work we have completed in the past. I like to read a little portion of my classmates blogs to find out what they thought of an assignment compared to what I thought of the same assignment. I also like blog writing because I do not feel scared to say the truth and the exact way I feel about the questions I am asked to write about. I like being able to say “I” when I write because I am explaining how I feel and I want to get that across to readers and my very own classmates. 

Although I personally tend to enjoy blogging, I find it to be quite a challenge sometimes. Depending on the topic or assignment, I struggle when it comes to commenting on my classmates blogs. It is hard to communicate via blog posting because the emotion and tone of the writer is hard for me to identify. Sometimes people will comment on my posts and the comments do  not provoke argument nor do they agree in any way with my blog post. Sometimes I feel like my classmates just provide filler writing because that particular student is writing because he or she feels like they have to to get a decent grade for completing the assignment. I know I feel like that sometimes and it is hard to develop an opinion about someone else’s blog post when one may really have no concern for the topic at all. I need to work on getting more focused on reading my classmates blog posts and trying to develop my own argument or just a good way to say I agree with the writer. 

I feel like blog commenting would be a good way to start interesting discussions if the comments were stronger. Sometimes comments do not really say anything so an argument or discussion is hard to get going off of what is presented. It seems difficult to find a way to correct the way people have commented on my blogs in the past, but maybe for future blog posting, there could be a number of sentences required Or, maybe there could be certain questions a student (the commenter) should ask themselves as he or she reads the classmates post. That way, a certain guideline is in place to be followed and all blog comments will make more sense. 

In conclusion, I like blog posting, it goes by pretty quickly and is usually easy for me to form writing ideas while I work on the assignments. I wish the comments I received were a little more thought-provoking and argument inclined, but I cannot complain too much because I at least receive some feedback on my posts. I just wish the comments followed a guideline of some sort so I can get a feel for where everyone is coming from, and why he or she may say certain things.