Skim

I really enjoyed Skim, but it wasn't my first time reading a graphic novel. I don't know if Captain Underpants counts, but I read one or two of those as a kid. Last year in my Women's & Gender Studies course, I also read Persepolis and Fun Home.

I love to read, but as a busy college student I don't always have the time or desire to sit down and read a book. With graphic novels like Skim, I don't have to have a whole lot of time. I finished it in about 45 minutes, plus there were images to keep me visually stimulated along the way. Not just your average English reading assignment.

Although I'm not sure I would pick out a graphic novel next time I'm at Barnes & Noble, I do appreciate the thought and talent that goes into writing them, and I think they're a fun twist on a classic concept.

A picture is worth a thousand words

I went to Flickr and typed some of the key terms from class into the search bar. Here are some of my favorites:

This might be a bit of a stretch, but see if you can guess which terms I typed in based on the images. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Codependent Relationship

I love Kinky. I think the poems are not only entertaining but thought-provoking as well. It was difficult to chose a favorite, but I think I'll go with the one on page 37 of my book entitled "Codependent Relationship"

Barbie says to Ken:

You know what chlorine does to my hair.

But if you insist we go swimming

at least have the courtesy

to help me take my head off first.

Short and sweet. If only life were that easy :p

Until next time,

Liz

Under Pressure - Under Cover

For my song, I chose Queen & David Bowie's Under Pressure. This is one of my favorite songs, and when NBC's The Sing Off premiered in December of 2009, they opened with this song sung by all of the groups in the competition. Although the song itself could be interpreted in many different ways, I like how what I feel to be the meaning totally changes when it's sung by a different group. I feel the original version is more about life's hardships, but when it's sung on The Sing Off, it's more about the pressure of the competition. I would embed the video here, but apparently I lack those skills, so I'll just link you. Here's the original, and here's the cover.

Until next time,

Liz

A modern-day Elizabeth Bennett

Let me start out by saying that I should have read Pride & Prejudice in my 11th grade Advanced English class. However, at 16, I had "more important" things to worry about, so SparkNotes it was. My mother is a huge Jane Austen fan, though, so I grew up with the BBC miniseries playing in the background and thus caught the basic storyline.

I've always found it interesting when older stories are adapted into modern-day movies. This happens a lot with Shakespeare plays (10 Things I Hate About You, anyone?) It's always fun to see how much the original plotline shines through. This is actually the case with any book-turned-movie. Bridget Jones's Diary is no different.

I saw the movie before I read the book, so while I looked forward to and enjoyed reading the book, I was afraid what I had seen on screen would ruin any perceptions I had of Bridget in the book. That didn't turn out to be the case, though, and that leads me to wonder whether Renee Zellweger was right for the role of Bridget - for several reasons:

• despite what I thought when I first saw the movie (at an age when I thought a "good" actress was Hilary Duff, mind you), Renee is not, in fact, British. While she does a consistently better British accent than an untrained peon such as myself, I've heard better. Maybe they did this on purpose, though - perhaps the casting director thought casting an American as the role of Bridget would make more Americans want to see it. Who knows what runs through our heads?
• in the film, Bridget is a few dress sizes bigger than she was in the book. I have thought about this aspect probably more than anything else and I cannot seem to think of a good reason. Any suggestions would be great.
• she just doesn't look like the Bridget in the book. I could have beef with this because I saw a lot of parts of myself in book Bridget, so, even though I saw the movie before I read the book, I kind of wish the film Bridget...didn't look like Renee Zellweger. I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but, let's be real - Renee is blonde-haired, and blue-eyed, and on a normal day weighs significantly less than she did playing Bridget. I know it's a movie and it's pretend and blah blah blah, but I think it would have been nice to have a more relatable actress to play the role. But then, of course, maybe then they couldn't have cast Hugh Grant as Daniel and that would have been a huge problem...

I've been thinking about going back and trying to read Pride & Prejudice this summer, and all this talk about comparing the two has been the final push I need. So, if I gain nothing else from this class (unlikely), at least my mom will be elated I'm finally reading Jane Austen.

Men have "fat" days, too

For class, we were asked to compare two magazine articles - one from a women's magazine and one from a men's magazine - that dealt with concepts we were discussing in class. Both of the articles I selected were about body image. Weight played a large role in the women's magazine article, while the other article focused more on smaller aspects of the body: hair, sweat, smell, etc.

The first article I selected was from Vogue - the magazine that has more advertisements than actual articles. I don't normally read Vogue because it is so full of ads (ads for things I could only afford if I sold some body parts), but I picked this one up during an errand to CVS because it had Tina Fey on the cover, a woman whom I admire.

Anyway, the article is called "Secrets of the Flesh", and it is written by Sophie Dahl, a model turned food writer. Dahl writes about growing up in Britain and moving to New York, where she was bombarded with new diet trends and eating strategies to lose weight. As she matured into her teenage years, Dahl began developing curves that she learned to embrace. On a trip to Asia, however, she caught a parasite that caused her to lose weight very quickly, and it was then that she started getting compliments about her figure. It made her reconsider her view of her body and how other women viewed their bodies. The article goes on to detail her struggle, her recovery, learning to love her body and rekindling her relationship with food.

For a magazine that has rail-thin models in so many of its ads, I have to admit that I was surprised to find an article like this. In the pictures, Dahl does not look very curvy, which leads me to think about what Bridget Jones portrayed as "fat" in her diary. To many women, 130 pounds is not, by any means, overweight. But it seemed to disgust Bridget. This is just more evidence that supports society's skewed view of what is healthy and what is not.

Moving onto the men's article - which was much more of a task to find than the women's article, let me tell you. I found an article online in Seed Magazine called "The Media Assault on Male Body Image" and can actually be found here. If you read it, you'll see that the media not only has an effect on how women view their bodies, but men as well. TV shows, movies, magazines push the idea that a sweaty, hairless (except in select places), muscular body constitutes a "real" man. Obviously, most men aren't like that, and I'm glad that this article attempts to point that out.

What do these two articles tell us? I think the most obvious is that while there is certainly a great deal of pressure placed on women to look a certain way, that does not mean men are exempt from this. Just something to think about!

Liz

I'm baaaack

Hello again!

In my last post I meant to write about something else, but it slipped my mind and by the time I remembered I figured it was too late and that I would just write about it in my next post.

It's kind of difficult to develop a completely original idea of public vs. private writing after reading so many other of my classmates' opinions, but I'll try my best.

I suppose I think of public writing as writing that portrays us as who we would like to be whereas private writing is who we really are. I don't think that public writing necessarily has to be directed towards a professional audience per se, it just has to have an audience. For this audience we are trying to extend our ideal selves in whatever way possible - whether that be through using bigger words or a different tone. We want to be thought of as competent, intelligent individuals. There can be several variations of public writing, such as professional or familiar or what have you, but it is still essentially public because we expect someone else to read it.

Private writing, however, does not have an audience. The writer is the audience. This is where our- and I think this is a kind of cheesy term, so forgive me - "true colors" emerge. We can just be ourselves and write anything. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else; it doesn't have to be grammatically correct or eloquent. In some ways the writing we do solely for ourselves unveils emotions we might not be able to express in any other way. Of course, there is always the possibility that someone could happen upon this private writing, but when we are writing it, we do not necessarily have the intention of sharing it, and I think that is what allows us to just let go.

What is a writer, though? All of the movie trailers posted on the class blog portrayed different types of writers: academic, fiction, diary. For me, it was a reminder that a writer does not have to fit a specific stereotype, because I often forget that. If the only thing I know about a person is that they are a writer, I picture a single, middle-aged person, maybe wears glasses and has a pet or two. There are books and manuscripts all over their studio apartment or bungalow house, and they take their coffee black. But then I think about myself and how one of the "labels" I have always attached to myself is a writer. I don't fit that picture. I love coffee, but not black! If you think you're a writer, you're a writer. Everyone's definition of a writer changes, but I say if you want to call yourself a writer, do it. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Until next time,

Liz

Beginnings

Well, it's already obvious my name is Liz. I'm 20 years old and a junior sociology major with a psychology minor. I was a magazine journalism major until the end of fall quarter and made the decision to switch over winter break for a variety of reasons.

I was really excited to find out that we would be blogging for ENG 306J because it's actually one of my favorite things to do. I've been blogging sporadically on several different sites since I was 13, but for the past eight months I've maintained a Wordpress blog that I update pretty regularly. Maybe working on this blog will spark some ideas for my personal blog. I'm always looking for inspiration.

I'm looking forward to what this quarter will bring, and I'm so happy to be taking an English class that doesn't involve reading Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. Old Brit Lit was my least favorite English class in high school - I prefer Bridget Jones.