Media, etc.
I don’t know about any of you but I can’t believe that it is almost December. It has been a long time since I blogged – I have been busy with lots of fabulous and fun education workshops. I have been lucky enough this year to be co-facilitating education sessions with one of our practicum students, Glen. We have both enjoyed working with all of our classes in the different schools and have learned so much from the participants. Participant questions keep getting better and better and the level of self knowledge and ability to articulate thoughts and experiences is really impressive.
One of the areas that we often don’t have enough time to explore in our workshops is the impact of media messages on the sexual health of youth. How do the (most often false) messages that the media put out there about sexuality impact youth? From my experience as an educator, I would say that the messages do have an effect – is it positive or negative? Probably a bit of both! As part of my research on sexual health education, I am asking youth to share with me their opinions on how the media influences what they know. It will be fascinating to hear the experiences and opinions about the media’s influence directly from them! Stayed tuned to hear more about the results in the spring!
Just before I sign off – I came across this great website from Dove that shows a film clip of how they take a young woman in her everyday beauty and use the tricks of the trade including hair, makeup, lighting, digital re-touching to make her billboard material. It’s pretty fascinating, so check it out if you haven’t already at “http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/”:http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
Nice to see such a refreshing and real life example of how the media construct “reality”!
Cheers!