Blog 5: Playllist

These songs that I have chosen for my playlist all have a meaning behind it that I believe empower women, and portray the message that as women we are strong and can make it on our own. These songs also talk about how beautiful women are no matter what.
The first song is Superwoman by Alicia Keys this particular song is my number one favorite that i think displays women as being a strong individual. That through anything we always come through since we are superwomen. Even when we are down we have to pick ourselves up because as strong women we have to. Another song I chose was was "Video" by India Arie. She is probably my favorite artist. When it comes to singing about being a women, she is not afraid to hold back and to me sings the truth. This song talks about how she is not considered the video girl that most men want. When you think of a video girl you think af a gorgeous women who has everything together with her hair, nails, body, and etc. this song talks about how she is just being her and is fine with that. She talks about how proud and grateful she is for being the way she was made. As women we should be proud of our bodies and be proud to be women. Another song of India Arie that gives the same message almost as "Video" is "I Am Not My Hair". This song to me talks about how we are not our outter appearance but we are who we are by what we are inside. There is more to us as women than just being perfect all the time. "Independent Woman" is another song that I chose that everyone should be familiar with. This song should speak out to all the women who consider themselves as being independent including myself. This song means that we do not have to depend on a man or someone else to get the things that we need when we can do it on ourselves just fine. A woman can be independent and defend and provide for herself just as good as a man could. "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera is a great song for women. The lyrics itself pretty much say it all that we are beautiful in every single way and words can't bring us down. The one line of a song means so much. Everyday a women is getting criticized or judge upon because of being a woman but we must remember that WORDS CAN'T BRING US DOWN NEVER!!!!!!! The last song that I have chosen for my playlist is "Survivor" by Destiny's Child. As women we must not give up on fighting for our rights but work harder to achieving our goals. This is exactly what this song speak about. We have survived this much as women I am pretty sure we can survive anything.


RESPOND TO READINGS
In FIFE it talked about women go back to the workforce and lesbianism. I am all for women working and being able to support their families just as a man can. I believe that the man and woman should work togehter to raise a househould. As for a lesbianism I do not agree in homosexual relationships, but if someone chooses to go that way, that is their choice and I do not look down on them for that. It is just that I personally would not. This is America the land of freedom and we are free to do what we want so with that being said that is a freedom of choice that some people choose. I may not agree with their choose but that is a personal decision that have made and I do not have a say in that.

Blog 4: What's Women's Studies

The Women's Studies courses that are offered at the University of Oklahoma do not really apply to my major right now. I would really be interested in taking Women Creating Social Change course. I gathered a lot information from the instructor when a panel of women came to talk to the class about the particular courses they took for their women studies major. The fact that you get to accumulate ideas and create your own "fake" non-organization made the course even more exciting. My major as of now is pre-dental hygiene, eventhough the course may not benefit my major it may be useful to me in the future. In my line of work gender does not play a major role in the job qualifications, because most dental hygienist are females. In my recent occupations, I have worked mainly with females. Therefore being a female did not effect any of my pass jobs. Although corporate managers prefer to have male management over female management. I have experinenced it in sales associates and optic-technician my employer chose male over a female eventhough they had the qualifications in their field. The only challenge that i will face is the competition for my occupation, because many women are interested in my field.

Response to Reading:
The reading in FIFE talks about how women today are still not considered equal to men. We made be different in some ways biologically, but we should not be descriminated because of our gender. I will say we have come a long ways, but we definitely have a long ways to still go. In Hull's article, is talks about what the stuggles black women had to through. I think they had a double standard to overcome 1) being they fact that they were women and 2) they were also black. To know that racism is still going on in the world is ridiculous to me. Being an Afrian American woman myself I do not want to be judged on just my race and gender.

Blog 3: Iron Jawed Angels

I have to say Iron Jawed Angels was a great movie to watch. I had never even heard about until we had to watch it for class. It went into great details on what struggles and triumphs women had to go through to get the equal right to vote. I also learned that race was an issue with the vote not just gender. I did not know they had to go through so many people and questions to make it happen but they did, and I have to say that I am grateful that the women who did stand up did not give up or I would not have the chance today to have my voice heard and make a decision. The tension of the women was that they were dedicated to getting this law of women's right to vote passed. Even though they were turned down by numerous occasions in the movie you saw how they just kept on moving and never gave up. They overcame many obstacles but still proceeded on getting their voices heard. What surprised me the most about this movie is how the men couldn't even let the women have a simple parade without ruining things for them. It showed to me how superior and better the men thought they were that for a second they could not let the women shine for what they believed in. They finally achieved their political goals by getting the law finally passed.

Response to readings:
FIFE:
This book really opened my eyes to some of the issues feminist stand for or believe in. She talks about the challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. Some issues I agree with her and some I did not believe she had enough facts.

Blog 2: Interview

For this particular assignment I interviewed my mother. My mother's definition of feminism is women taking their place as not being second class to men and that women should not be afraid to speak up for their rights since we are all considered humans. My mother says that she was all for women going in the workforce and being able to work just as a man can, but she also believed that children weren't being taken care of as they should have been. She said it was called "latch key kids" because kids were having to take care of themselves because both of the parents were working. So she has mixed feelings about that issue. My mom's first conscious of gender is when she went to catholic schools and she realized that the nouns did everthing to please the priest and the nouns wouldn't say anything that they didn't like and never questioned him. It always seemed to her the priest were running things even though there was only 2 priest and about 10 nouns in the school. This particular experience made her realize that then nouns did not have a voice. My first conscious of gender would be in elementary when they boys would always pick the boys first and they girl last no matter what and I would always wonder why they thought they were better than us or something. It seemed like I was always proving that I could run just as fast as they could but it never made a difference.

Response to the readings:
Taking Sides
I was on the NO side and it was very hard for me to agree with a lot of the evidence and facts that he had. The researcher did not have a lot of information to prove his point it was more case studies and information then true facts. One thing that I do agree on with him is that women and men are biologically different in certain areas and men have a tendency to feel like they are better women. Other than that his argument was not that strong

F-Word (chap. 3 & 5)
Chapter three stresses on the fact of how birth control, sex education, and abortion are such huge issues in the feminism world. I believe that as women we should have the choice to make the decision to take birth control or have abortions since it is our body. The book expresses that women are increasingly ambivalent about abortion rights, but in the end the polls still show strong support for a woman's right to choose (pg 48).

Chapter five talks about the third wave and what exactly does it consist of and if we are really in another wave. The third wave is much different then the first and second wave because they had specific goals that they were tryin to reach in those waves. This wave I would say is all over they place since feminism is considered to be so many things and have many definitions behind it. But with this move the book even says that a large number of women are active in this wave (pg 89). I believe this is true more women have realized that they have a right to speak their minds, also I believe this generation of women are more independent than they were.