Masculinity

How important do you think sports and muscles really are to masculinity?

I don't think that muscles and sports really define masculinity at all. When I think of masuclinity I think of someone who is a good role model. A male who is proud of himself and confident. Some men may feel more confident if they have muscles. That's how they feel but as a woman I don't think a male whose skinny is NOT masucline. I know men who are very masculine that have no muscles. However when we were asked in class about what maculinity meant to us, muscles and sports did pop in my head. Maybe this had to do with sterotyping males to automatically have muscles and be into sports to be masculine. But I do disagree with my "fast" thinking. I don't think that sports really have anything to do with how masucline a male is. That's something that some people just aren't into. Maybe a guy is more into hunting or hiking, that doesn't make him less masculine that the males watching sports. The chart that was shown in class on how many people did think that being masculine meant they had to have muscles and be into sports. I'm wondering if this was because we only got a minute to write down our thoughts, or if people really did feel that these things were essential to being masculine.

Past Articles

The past articles have been either very excellent, or either it was very hard to get through the article. I enjoyed reading the articles about how people portray the body. I think that those are the articles that are important to people of our culture. There were a few articles that I've read that I felt were not as important as the rest. The articles that were about the body showed how people and media take advantage of a woman's body. The media does not show most women as a good thing, but more of a sex symbol. I do enjoy reading most of the articles, and I'm excited to read the rest of the up coming!

Pornography

Many people think of porn in a horrid way. Why is this? Is it because of what it shows, or how people portray it? I'm not quiet sure who benefits from porn, besides the people who are getting paid for it. However I don't think people are harmed from it either. Maybe it could harm children and the way they think sex should be or the meaning of sex. I don't see it was being something that will make people kill each other or cause harm to anyone else. If someone enjoys watching porn then that's their own business. I agree that people should be restricted form sites unless their 18 years only. This is only my opinion and many people may disagree and that's ok, but I think people should still have to reach a maturity level before watching porn. People that are young are still trying to discover how they feel about sex. Porn may guide their thoughts into a negative way. Such as thinking sex is not meaningful, and that they can have sex with whoever. Which I disagree with.

Physical Appearance

Our popular culture is not very healthy when it comes to the topic of beauty. Many people have the wrong idea of what beauty is. They look to media and then determine what beauty should be. Not how they think beauty should be portrayed. I believe we do think to much about beauty. I think that people decided what's beauty is from the media or what they hear people saying. People should be able to look at themselves and point out what is beautiful. This weeks discussion on beauty made me kind of happy when I read and thought about how the writer put things. I liked how our reading mentioned media being a part of the way people perceive beauty. I think a lot of people in our culture need to take a step our of the media, stop, and look at themselves. Then they need to think of all the different ways they're beautiful.