Susan Bordo: "Beauty Rediscovers the Male Body"

Spindler, Amy. (1996). “It’s a Face-Lifted, Tummy-Tucked Jungle Out There,” New York Times, June 9.

In Spindler's article, "It's a Face-Lifted, Tummy-Tucked Jungle Out There," she discusses the recent trend in which males are becoming more and more concerned with their appearances.  As one man in the corporate world suggests, "packaging is important." This idea is becoming more and more prominent, as emphasis on youth and appearance is becoming more and more important in the workplace.  "The 50-year-old is in competition with the 30-year-old," according to the vice president and fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue.  Nowadays, it is not difficult for a man to find ways to make himself look younger and more attractive.  There and numerous products aimed at this goal, from "Super-Shaper briefs" to plastic surgery.  These improvements in appearance are marketing tactics, as they are good for business, supposedly.  Men are currently the targets of a formerly female-dominated industry.  In line with Bordo's ideas, Spindler presents the shift from female beauty enhancement into male beauty enhancement.

David Foster Wallace's Address to Kenyon College

This was my favorite piece of reading that we have done thus far in this course! I loved that Wallace used a no-bullshit approach to the speech, going against all the stereotypical commencement speeches. The part that particularly stuck out to me was the analogy of the working individual in his day-to-day life, specifically at the supermarket. The scenario of him seeing all the people around him, in his way, and him choosing how he wants to think of them is a really great example of the fact that we, as individuals, do have control over what and how we think.  We can see the "fat, dead-eyed, over made-up lady" or we can see the woman who has "been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer." Unfortunately, our tendency as humans is to be completely self-absorbed and only see things the way that we want to see them, but the way we want to see things is certainly not always the right way. It is important to think about what could be going on in a person's life in all situations, because it will enable us to be more understanding or empathetic when an individual isn't acting like him/herself. We never know what is going on in someone else's world, so we need to choose to think more creatively, instead of thinking things from a self-centered and completely self-absorbed point of view. According to Wallace, this is the real purpose of education.

Blog 4: The "Banking" Concept of Education

The idea that in education, students are depositories or "containers" and teachers are depositors really irks me.  While in a lot of ways, it is true that teachers are depositing information into our brains, hoping that we will retain it, this is not the real purpose of education.  The real purpose of education, in my opinion, is to learn from teachers as well as to teach them new things that they do not know.  I have an appreciation for problem-posing education, in which "the teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach."  Although it is certainly true that teachers have a great wealth of knowledge, it is also true that students know things that cannot be learned from a book or in school.  Each and every individual has his/her own life experiences that they can use to teach others about the world.  The classroom is a place where exchange should take place, not just teachers talking and teaching at their students.  In this type of classroom exchange, both the teacher and the students learn things that actually apply to their lives as well as the basic knowledge that all students can experience in the classroom situation.  In  problem-posing education, everyone wins!