I'd like to start this off by saying I swore I would never start a blog. I know they're useful to a lot of people and I'm not saying I don't read them. I just never considered my opinions important enough to want to send them out into the abyss for other people to comment on and/or judge. If people want to know what I think they can call me. However, since I wasn't really given a choice this semester I decided to dive into this with an optimistic outlook. Let's see if I can retain it throughout the semester.

So for this week's reading Gorham basically held our hands through the definition of the stereotype. Something we're going to be talking about A LOT. Gorham says, "The cultural stereotype seems to play an important role in how we process information about people from various groups regardless of whether we endorse it." In class on Thursday, some of us talked about the various ways that we ourselves are stereotyped everyday, simply because of race, class, maybe even hair color. This caused me to consider the various ways people might look at me and stereotype me ie: put me in a box, form their own idea of who I am based on the smallest type of interaction. There are the obvious ones, gender, race, class etc. However with the anniversary of September 11th coming up I started thinking about one of the components of my identity that could easily fall into certain "categories" or stereotypes and that is my nationality. Americans are perceived a certain way all over the world. You can find differing opinions depending on who you speak to. Lets think about the popular culture side of it. Our music, TV shows, movies and endless celebrity coverage is broadcast all over the world. This says something about our value system as a country.
What does it say about us when we invite Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers into our living room's to influence our youth and if nothing else teach them self absorbtion and materialism?




Then on the other hand, we are living with the negative ramifications of President Bush's administration and the harm that has done to our national image. I'm not looking to start a political rant but I can say this man's leadership did not enhance our image as a caring or compassionate country. I don't mean any disloyalty but this sense of disapproval, even hatred, is something I have experienced first hand. You can't dispute that the poor choices of elected officials reflect on us as citizens. Therefore when a wrong step is taken, the blame falls to all of us.




So what does this have to do with how stereotypes are portrayed in the media? I'd like to make this entry about how we portray ourselves. Sometimes people only know what they see. This is why the common perception of Americans is that we all lead glamorous, affluent lifestyles. "Stereotypes clearly don't give us 'the whole picture' of a group, as if such a thing is even possible, and they aren't neutral in their evaluations. Instead stereotypes give us highly edited and distorted images of groups that tend to support the way groups are treated in society," Gorham writes. I realize this post leaves much to be desired and there is a lot of room for push/pull here. This is just something I've been thinking about for a while.