Posts by Natalia Tyndall

The Evils of Celebrity

Posted by on Apr 4, 2013 in Passion | 0 comments

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Heidi Klum is probably better known for her stint as a gorgeous Victoria Secret supermodel. Earlier this week she earned her colors as a lifeguard. Kind of. While in vacation in Oahu, she single-handedly saved her son and two nannies who had been swept up in a strong current. The pictures taken from the accident show Heidi jumping in to save not only her son but two other grown women as well. The most surprising aspec tof this story isn’t the super human display of strength but how I even came to know about the story: photographers

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I understand that being a paparazzi is a job and people ultimately need to make money, but a line definitely needs to be drawn in an instance where someone’s life is in danger. I don’t understand how you can watch people fight for their lives and not even attempt to intervene. Because we are focusing on advocacy and taking a stance I would like to take a stance against paparazzi. Really they serve no purpose except to be glorified stalkers. There have been numerous instances where paparazzi have endangered the life of others such as with Princess Diana and even more recently when they almost caused an accident with Justin Bieber.

Even though I wish that we could live in a world without the paps I know that it is probably not a reality. We live in a visual-based world and paparazzi just help us live in that world. Just think, I wouldn’t be able to add pictures with my celeb stories if it weren’t for the paparazzi taking the pictures. What do you all think? Do paparazzi need to go or are they a necessary evil?

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Advocacy Proposal

Posted by on Apr 4, 2013 in Work In Progress | 1 comment

1. Purpose

-I plan to focus my advocacy project on the trend of teens disinterest in current events and the media. Some ideas for the project and the advocacy fair feature a type of bulletin board of the problem, the statistics, and how the problem can be improved by education. I would like my project to make students think critically of how their participation in these matters is essential in today’s world

 

2. Audience

My intended audience for this project are college students like myself who either want to get more involved in current events and the world around them or admit to having no interest at all. This audience is the best choice for this topic due to the fact that young people are the problem and also the solution. The solution requires a change in thinking that will start with young people like myself.

 

3. Medium

I am hoping to create a bulletin board/ poster that can showcase the aspects of the problem surrounding youth not having interest in the world around them. The poster can also show statistics of just how many people don’t watch the news daily or know basic facts of the world (Like how 20% of Americans can’t point to America on a map)

– I hope to deliver this message through the advocacy fair and also draw up flyers to post around my commons

 

4. Strategies

I think that in order to reach my audience I will establish ethos. I can talk about how even I am not exempt from the problem and that we all need to work together in order to make progress.

 

5. Schedule

After I submit my persuasive essay I will have a week to complete my advocacy project. Completing the actual poster will not be difficult I just have to make it visually pleasing. I also need to set aside enough days for approval of the flyers to put up in my commons.

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Baby Kimyesus

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Passion | 4 comments


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I want to kind of connect my passion post this week with what I’ve been focusing my Civic Issues blogs on: Issues of race and diversity.

As you all probably know, Baby Kimyesus is upon us. The baby that will try and probably fail to top adorable Blue Ivy. This child will probably be born with a leather diaper, 5 gold chains and stilettos no matter what the gender is. At least we still have a few months to prepare before the arrival of Kim Kardashian’s child (Am I the only one still amazed that she is actually having a child??). As we all know the father of Kim’s baby is none other than rap superstar Kanye West. Kim was asked during an interview if she would be prepared to raise a bi-racial baby seeing as she is Armenian and white and Kanye is Black.  Kim’s response was,  “the way I want to raise my children is to not see color”. 

I can see where Kim’s good intentions lie. It’s difficult to be bi-racial in this world, especially in a country where everyone obsesses over what race they are and how they’re 177th % this or that. It will be hard for Kim and Kanye to teach their child that discrimination exists for people of mixed races and that there will be inevitable struggles down the road for their child. However, the solution to these problems is not to just pretend that race or racism does not exist. For one it is impossible. If their child won’t learn it at home they will soon be made aware of their race by the outside world. Also the implications of teaching your child to ignore color can be detrimental.

For one, if Kim does not show her child what race is she will be denying the cultures that herself and Kanye both come from. Cultures that have gone through tremendous hardship but also are beautiful and rich in culture. Raising someone to be “color blind” makes them just that, blind to influence of race on a person. Your heritage, culture, and language  shapes their past, present, and future and this is a lesson that no one should be denied of.

I consider myself proud to know my heritage and how my race overcame and went through struggles and still is beautiful. Even though I did struggle with identity when it comes to my culture at times I can say that I’m glad that someone took the time to sit me down and tell me of where I came from and the experiences of others like me. I hope that Kim and Kanye come to the realization that denying race does no good, even with the best of intentions.

Comment below with your thoughts!

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Global Diversity

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

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In my previous post I examined how diversity plays out across the nation on various types of college campuses. I explained the differences between Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Predominantly White Colleges and how the different experiences that a student might have at each type of school would affect their life past college. Now, I want to examine how diversity plays out on an international scale. Do other countries value diversity and consider it an issue as we do here in the states? How diverse are other countries compared to America? On a scale where diversity is measured in the difference in ethnicity  language, and religion America gains a very high rank while countries such as South Korea are described as ethnically homogeneous and those who are not Korean are discriminated against or shunned. .

In America and other countries such as Canada and England, there are organizations that work to promote diversity not only in everyday life but also the workplace. Foundations such as Global Diversity (The company and the organization). These organizations believe that diverse societies are the only way that people can truly express themselves in a society. How is diversity seen in places such as third world countries? There are countries where there simply is no word for diversity due to the fact that on the grand scale of issues, diversity does not rank so high. It sounds harsh but in a place where food and water are not always guaranteed I don’t think the citizens are going to be too focused on how high their country ranks on the diversity index.  It seems that the view of diversity as a cultural issue is something that only first world countries deal with.

If we as a society are to come to terms with how diversity is looked at and dealt with it seems that first there should be a recognized, worldwide view on what exactly a fundamental right is. We need to gauge if by “diversity” some countries mean in terms of gender, race, or other terms. There also needs to be a re-examination of how important diversity is in other cultures. In some parts of Europe, diversity is sometimes an illegal issue to talk about and not at all discussed like it is here By doing this we can then begin to address the various problems that come along with diversity.

After reading various articles on the subject of diversity on a  global scale, I feel that the issue should be kept on more of a regional scale. For instance, each country or state should choose how they want to deal with diversity. The reason for this is that because there can really be no way to move forward in terms of diversity if not everyone views the issue the same way which I mentioned is the case with third world countries.

 

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Modeling with a side of Reality

Posted by on Mar 21, 2013 in Passion | 4 comments

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“The Face” is  a new modeling show on the Oxygen network that tries to find, well, the new face of modeling. I don’t pay much attention to the show but it comes on after Bad Girls Club (which I love!) and so I’ve seen snippets of it from time to time. What happened on this week’s episode has everyone up in arms. The girl pictured above is a model on the show named Devyn. During a deliberation with guest judge Wendy Williams, Devyn was asked if it is hard to be a black girl model and Devyn’s response shocked all of the judges.  Devyn responded that she does not see herself as a black girl model because she is fair skinned with an “international” look. World famous supermodel judge Naomi Campbell said in an outrage that Devyn is black and that it’s a disgrace for her to claim otherwise.

Devyn’s comment’s on the show bring up a lot of sentiments of women of color and the modeling world. Most modeling campaigns feature either fair skinned white women and if there are black models they are extremely light skinned. Go on to your favorite clothing website and look at the different models; How many are black? Hispanic? Asian? It is no secret that the fashion industry is incredibly and blatantly racist. Is it a surprise that Devyn chooses not to identify with a race that is continuously ignored? Even though Devyn does not identify herself as a black girl model, others will and that is a problem that she will undoubtedly face during her career. Perhaps Devyn should have a sit down with Naomi Campbell who made a living and a name as a dark skinned black model.

What do you all think? Is the problem with Devyn’s comments or the fashion industry that creates the racism? Comment below what you think!

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