Last Post Everrrrrrrrr- Ellie Merrell

            I was really impressed with and interested in everyone’s paper topics, particularly Brooke’s, Mike’s, Carly’s, and Josie’s. Brooke’s topic strongly reminded me of part of Miss Representation. I believe that Miss Representation acknowledged gender differences in the media attention received by politicians. The documentary pointed out that people are more likely to be concerned with female politician’s ability to manage their domestic lives than their ability to manage their work as a politician, which is completely outrageous. Additionally, I think the documentary showed articles in which the attention was focused on the outfit selection of female politicians rather than the reasons they had called a press conference (okay, with Sarah Palin I kind of get it- you can’t have serious discussion about her political ideology anyway, but with Hillary Clinton? For real??).

            I though Carly’s topic was really good, too because I feel like we learn a lot about gendered behavior through the TV shows that we watch, and so a study of the evolution of popular sitcoms could be really telling about the progress we have made as a society in terms of equality and the progress we still need to make. I’m really impressed that Josie is tackling sociology from a more global perspective and I’d love to read her paper because I admittedly know very little about the subject.

            I learned a lot from class this semester; primarily that it is really tough to be a guy and that, if I have kids, I should raise them in a media-less bubble. It freaks me out to think about how much our lives are influenced by social factors without our awareness, but it is definitely good to be cognizant of this fact so that we can make more logical and informed choices. 

           Thanks for a great semester everybody!