Editors Note: This is a new section of The Lion’s Roar. Feel free to send your letter, dated and including your email address, to faculty adviser Frank D. Quattrone, at fdq1@psu.edu. If the letter is deemed appropriate and ready for publication (with a minimum of technical and no factual mistakes), we will publish it here.
About ‘Miss Representation’
To the editor:
I am an Asian girl who was raised up in China, went to high school in Hawaii, and currently study at Penn State Abington. After watching the “Miss Representation” film, looked at those women and thought about those statistics according to “Miss Representation,” I am depressed as a woman. How can this world be so strict with women? In that popular Netflix special, 78 percent of 17-year-old girls are dissatisfied with their bodies. “Pigface” — that was what a guy called my friend judgmentally on our campus. She had a mental teardown in front of her mother and bought a ticket to Japan and had her plastic surgery done. Does look really matter?
The media affects people’s sense of beauty, especially teenagers. In fact, the International Telecommunication Union estimated about 3.2 billion people would be online by the end of the year. It impacts young people’s personality development and shapes society, politics, national discourse, and the image of gender and sex. Young people grow up seeing ideal stunner by photoshopping and being more judgmental on female bodies than knowing them in person.
Advertisers get benefits from the misrepresentation. Most medias earn their revenues from eye-catching advertising which contain violence, sex and profanity by sensitive images of perfect S curve female body. It not only pushes the total revenue, purchasing desire and demand for skincare, body care products, luxury cars, whatever makes people more attractive but also make men have rape fantasies. Under being affected by these, most women care more about their appearances instead of being a better person.
Women’s participation in the workforce and politics remains relatively low, and women still are expected to perform all household chores, child-rearing activities, and be caregivers instead of trying to become leaders, CEOs, or politicians due to the misrepresentation of women. It’s important to mention that after the Industrial Revolution, women started to participate in the labor force; however, what comes to the next is the inequity.
For instance, female police officers are harder to be appreciated than male officers even if they did a better job; pink-collar workers gain lower salaries; married men usually get higher pay than married women, etc. An old Chinese proverb says that accomplishment is not the virtue for women. I disagree on this. Women’s possibilities are unlimited.
Last but not least, I can see the power of girl is awakening from Snow White to Mulan. Especially when an Asian actress gets to play Mulan in a Hollywood movie, and Asian women don’t have to be like Madama Butterfly on the screen. It is such a great awakening.
An ironic fact in Asia is that most of the parents would be ashamed to know their girl got raped, being aware of reputation and zip the mouth up. I strongly wish the Asian female victims on our campus stand up, speak for the truth, chop off the yoke of feudalism and send the rapers worldwide who still beyond the arm of the law to the jail. You are in America.
Yunzhu(Ada) Wang
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The urge for restriction of e-cigarettes
To the editor:
When there was an increase of using e-cigarettes last year in a number of 78 percent, I knew the government should do something to stop it. According to the statistics, 1 out of 5 high school students have tried vaping in the school. That is shocking to me. It is the time for the government to enact some policy to stop the spread.
Nicotine, one of the most addictive chemicals in the world, damages our brains and it is lethal. It is not only a tool for teenagers’ recreation. It is occupying their lives. Students frequently go to bathroom to hide themselves and start vaping. E-cigarette is controlling them. It is just like an “invisible hand,” grabbing high school students away from good health.
Furthermore, more and more teenagers start to take marijuana after they have tried e-cigarette. No one would know what the end of the story would be.
I urge the federal government to enact a series of policies to prevent teenagers from smoking, for the life of our future generation. As a number of experts said, people would not tend to be addicted smokers after the age of 25. I hope the government could raise the legal age for smoking as high as 25.
Young adults are the hope for our future. In another word, our futures are in their hand. The health of the young adults and our country are connected. At this point, I would urge our federal government to protect the future health of our homeland.
Yiming Zhang
yzz5652@psu.edu
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Death penalty — worthless punishment that should be abolished
To the editor:
It’s a misperception of common thought that the death penalty can save lots of money. I strongly believe that death penalty should be abolished in the United States — not only for economic reasons.
There is not a slightest credible statistical evidence that capital punishment reduces the rate of homicide. Washington state is now using life imprisonment for serious criminals. Cost of manage criminals is decreased and the punishment is also fit to the morality. Human’s life is precious whether he or she is a criminal or not. Therefore, when we consider to punish someone into death, we are also not feeling good at it. Human’s fault cannot be redressed by death penalty.
In California alone, the death penalty has cost the state more than $4 billion since 1978. Research has shown that trying a case where the death penalty is not an issue costs $740,000. A case in which prosecutors seek the death penalty costs $1.26 million. Death penalty is an expensive law that we shouldn’t come into operation.
Our society need safety and the criminal need education and indoctrination. Life imprisonment is real a heavy punishment for criminals also; it is the deprivation of freedom and the criminal gets the punishment he/she deserve.
Ziyi Pan
ZXP5073@PSU.EDU
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Response to physical education
To the editor:
Colleges should offer for-credit physical education classes: not only for campuses in Pennsylvania but also all at the campuses in the U.S.
I am a boy from China and study at Penn State Abington now. In my own country, physical exercise is a daily task from Primary School to University. Students are forced to do gymnastics and run on the playground every day. Many friends of mine disagree with this policy. One of my best friends asked, “Why students need to do gymnastics? There is too many homework that needs to be finished! We cannot waste any time on these useless things.” I had the same idea as him until I study in the U.S.
At the first month in the U.S, I was so excited that I did not need to get up so early and run more than 1 kilometer. Gradually, I became fat and lassitude. Because differences in the culture and thought between the East and West, most of the international students from China will not do enough exercises.
However, if the campus offers credit physical education classes, things will be different. For example, in some Ivy League schools, they offer students basketball class, football class, tennis ball class. It not only encourages students who are interested in it but also help students do exercise and get extra credits at the same time.
Qingtian Zhou (Max)
qvz5096@psu.edu