I am thinking about writing my paper on the stereotypes that sororities face. I wanted to take the normal things that people characterize sorority girls as and do research to show the impact that sororities have made on society. I also wanted to research ladies that were part of sororities and show what they have done in their past and what they are doing now.

            When trying to focus on a media the first thing I thought of was television. Legally Blonde is one movie that stereotypes sororities, but then in the end shows how the girls aren’t just about their looks that there is brains behind them too. I found blogs on Legally Blonde such as this one. http://thankyounetflix.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/legally-blonde/ This showed the plot of Legally Blonde from another’s eyes. I think that this blog did help me because it showed me other peoples opinions of it so that I could kind of see what others thought. The writer of this blog said that normally they would be turned away from a movie like this, but that after seeing it, it actually turned out to be something more then what you would picture a movie about a sorority to be.

            Another movie I was interested in using for my paper is Sydney White. I was unable to find any blogs about this movie so far.  I think this movie fits perfectly with what I want to write my paper on. It portrays exactly what most people would think of when you hear sorority. It shows the girls being mean and cruel to others.  It also shows them only caring about themselves. When people watch this it just shows them that what they have always heard about sorority girls is true. So with my paper I would like to show how the stereotypes aren’t right.

Homosexuality

Society today has turned the topic of homosexuality into a very touchy subject whether it is in a classroom, among friends or even in churches. Even though I strongly believe that homosexuality is wrong and immoral I do not think that that is and reason to treat homosexuals as lesser people.
Now even though I feel this way I really want to look at how the media portrays people in this light and how simple platonic relationships can sometimes be viewed different, like Turk and JD in "Scrubs."
The nice thing is that even though this is a topic that rarely gets discussed openly, there is still a lot of information out there on this topic and surprisingly the majority of the information is reliable. Also there seems to be a good amount of information on both sides of this argument. The fact that I am very involved with a church that has just been through that trials of a split due to the topic of homosexuality, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable one this topic.
I have found great websites that religious groups have put together such as http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibc1.htm which has done an excellent job of giving both sides of this argument that homosexuality is wrong which will make it easier to examine how it is portrayed in the media and specifically the show “Scrubs.”

Are Foreigners Really Always Villians

In my In in mypaper I was going to tackle the stereotype that all foreigners are villains. You might sit there and say hey foreigners aren’t Evil. True but just this last election one of the big issues was immigration. You have people calling for tighter immigration controls I decided to go and look at http://www.usbc.org/ which is the United States board control organizational web site I then decided I needed to look at one for immigrant’s rights and found http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/myths.html these were both interesting to look at because on the border control website you have a set of facts calling out immigrants and on the other web site you have them saying the opposite of the other facts. If you think about it in a lot of movies the villains come from another country or school or even galaxy. The next question is aliens all bad and villainous well this guy here thinks he is 98% sure they are not hostile http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread276918/pg1 first I do not believe we have aliens flying about in top secret spaceships. Yea maybe one crashed 60 years ago but by now with our technology it would be hard to miss them. Nut either way since as to our knowledge now we are alone so really it is ones opinion whether an alien is good or bad. And movies and shows lead us down the road that says they are villains. Movies like Rocky 4, and 300 give these foreigners embellished looks and tries to make them look as if they cannot be defeated or over come so when our protagonist triumphs it is another boost for nationalism. Key example of stereotyping foreigners would be when the united states rounded up all the Japanese people on the west coast and put them in concentration camps, or when we tried so hard to destroy the native American population.

There has always been dispute over athletes and the reason that they receive tournament pay. My opinion on the fact supports athletes and their unrealistic salaries because I have been an athlete for over fifteen years. The amount of work that these individuals put into their respective sports is overwhelming where only a few individuals can achieve the optimum level. But as for everything in this world, there is always a way to beat the system, and there is always a way to fall victim to the system. In this case, I am looking to analyze either the role of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports, or the role of drugs (not related to performance enhancers) in the world of sports. Maybe I will even use a little bit of both. In reading a couple of articles and blogs I have found a lot of information and examples pertaining to my subject. Most recent and memorable instances include Michael Phelps’ controversial picture with a “bong,” and Barry Bonds’ past teammate testifying in court saying Bonds knowingly took steroids. Drugs as advertised can always lead to a downfall, but when thought of in a deeper perspective can lead to glory, if pursued stealthily, and the act of being infamous. The shame I think isn’t in being caught, it’s in the records that were made, broken and shattered, due to cheating. Retrospectively if a athlete is taking illegal drugs that should cause his performance to lag but instead he is doing well (i.e. marijuana) what should make him stop? There are many other questions that I have that I can answer but this blog will be a preview to the actual paper. The sources I found are legitimate, and the way I know is that they are blogs written by people who share my common interest.

http://germanarca12.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/doping-in-sport-a-deadly-games/
http://rammy90.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/michael-phelps-judgment/
http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/the-team/

The Amazing Asians... Bet There Smarter Than You

How many times have you stereotyped an individual? Or how many times have you been stereotyped? The one stereotype that I’ve found to be the most interesting is “all Asians are smart.” I must admit that I’ve had that same mindset as well. During my research, I’ve uncovered a lot of information about Asians and the emphasis they put on education. Although all Asians aren’t computer and technology wizards, education is a primary element in most Asian families. I’ve discovered a few articles from online newspapers and articles. I have confidence in the sources that I have chosen because the NY Times is a major periodical. Thus, the authors in these sources are more than likely to be credible. As for the blogs, I don’t think they are reliable in the sense of factual information. However, they are reliable when it comes to seeing the topic in different perspectives. I visited http://www.progressiveu.org/051720-why-are-asians-smart and I wasn’t able to post a comment without an account. Nonetheless, there was a comment posted that said,

“Some people are clearly born with more raw intelligence than others. They seem to be able to get A's in school and solve complex analytical problems without effort while others struggle to achieve the same results. These people have a genetic gift. That does not make them better or worse than anybody else, just a little different. They may be brilliant but in other ways they may have genetic challenges. Google Steve Hawkins for an example.”

My question to this post is do you think people like Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla also possessed this genetic advantage? Do you think that they possess Asian genes as well?

Among other sites that I visited were:

• http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/multicultural/le.htm

• http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7DD113AF93AA35752C1A96E948260&scp=1&sq=asians%20and%20education&st=cse

• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/education/10asians.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=asians%20and%20education&st=cse

These sites provide some background information on the Asian-American culture and some statistics of Asians and higher levels of education.

stereotypes of the mentally handicap in the media

The stereotype that I am contemplating doing for my research paper is the stereotype of the mentally handicap in the media. I have chosen a few movies, some of which purely make fun of the mentally challenged and others that actually show them in a good light. The two movies that my main focus is going to be on are Radio and the Ringer. As much as I would love to do this topic I am worried that there is not that much information on it. As I began researching I found that the information is pretty repetitive. I was unable to find a running blog about my topic but I did find one really good website. It focuses on every stereotype in the media but allows you to narrow your focus. The website does have a blog on it but I couldn’t find a blog post that had anything to do with disabilities. I tried to find a blog about my topic but had no such luck. I am sure as I put more effort into the research I will be able to come across some more specific information. The website is http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/persons_with_disabilities/index.cfm and may be helpful to other topics about stereotypes in the media.

Research Paper

The topic I am researching for my paper is the different stereotypes on men, and I will be using one of my favorite movies, She's the Man. I have been looking online and have found more information than I thought I would but I am still worried that I will end up stuck or not finding enough. I found a Yahoo blog that asked the question "what stereotypes do men have?" and then a bunch of answers but half of them were like bitter women who clearly have a history of bad relatonships and think they are somehow offending their ex's by listing some random and outrageous "stereotypes". Now that was just on one page, my other pages seemed to be pretty legit and helpful so hopefully I wont have the problem of finding false information. Some of the pages were articles so obviously I couldn't really post a reply on it or anything but the blog page I could easily ask a question or even start a new blog of my own and get some... intelligent answers hopefully. Unfortunately, the one blog I did look at was aobut 2 years old so I assumed that blogger's research on the topic was probably over and I didnt comment on it but I am in the process of finding a new page. The one I was using is http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061012162456AAA4QcX.