Observation # 4

This past weekend I went home to attend a wedding. The groom in the wedding grew up in my hometown and moved to North Carolina a few years ago. While in North Carolina he met a Latino women that is now his wife. They decided to have the wedding back in Canaan because most of his family still lives there, and she didn't have a very large family. The wedding party consisted of her Latino family and two African Americans. I guess to understand where I'm coming from you have to understand what Canaan is like. We have no diversity in my town, and it consists of typical up north stick people so to have people of different ethnicities partying in one of our local bars was a little stressful at times. The reception was at the Northland a local restaurant/bar that usually fills up with locals on a Saturday night, especially when there is a big game on. The DJ that night decided to play mostly Hip Hop because of the wedding party reception. As the night progressed more and more locals were coming into the bar and looking at us dancing and listening to the "unusual" music that was going on. For the most part it didn't bother the people that this was going on because they knew the local family. There was the few older people the go there every Saturday night to two step that quickly left when they heard the music that was playing. What really caught my attention was this group of guys that walked that I haven't seen before. You could tell that they were out hunting that day and came in to have some beer and watch the game. I went to the bar at one point to get a drink and I overheard one of the guys ask the bartender who the "fucking porch monkeys" were, and they should go back to the zoo. I decided to ignore the comment for a few reasons. The first one was I knew it wouldn't make a difference if I tried to explain what was going on since most people up north have there ways set and aren't going to change them. The second one was I used to think the same way as he did. I'll admit when I went home for the wedding I threw around a few racial jokes because up there it really doesn't matter. I knew that they were good people and I had a blast with them that night. I usually shake things off like racial slurs, but since this class started I've started to notice it more in areas that I didn't usually. This fits into our racial profiling part of class because they profiled them as "jigaboos" and didnt take the time to see who they really were.

Reading Reflection ch. 6

"Although the American distaste for obesity applies to both sexes, it is felt particularly strong by women, who are more likely than men to evaluate their self-worth in terms of their physical appearance" (pg. 201).

In chapter six it discusses the intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Weight, I found the results rather surprising when I read them. My first instinct would have been that there was more obese white women then African American women in the United States. I thought this because of the population difference between African American women and white women in the United States. But in actuality 78 percent of African American women are overweight (a vast majority of them at 120 percent over the recommended weight), and 57 percent of white women are overweight.

One of my thoughts about why the difference between obese women in different races is the pressure differences put onto the different races. When you watch tv, or look in a magazine all the white models are extremely skinny (almost too skinny), so this is what the women strive to look like. All of the women fitness magazines talk about losing weight to where you used to look like in high school. In reality this probably isn't possible for most people. I compare the difference to African American women where they are told to accept themselves as they are. When watching different television shows you always see them saying its okay to be a plus size model, or being a size 6, 7, etc. it isn't a bad thing. One of the leading black models is Tyra Banks, she now has a show on tv that is based mainly for African American women. I was happening to flip through the channels the other day and I came across it, being a guy I stopped to watch because shes rather attractive. In the time span that I was watching she never once told them to lose weight, "just flaunt what your momma gave ya". I think this is probably the main difference between the two different races and the percentage of overweight women.

Newman also goes into talking about dieting in elementary schools. I have an eight year old sister who is in the third grade. I couldn't imagine her being on a diet, or saying she wants to lose weight, unlike 42 percent of 1-3 graders that say they want to lose weight. I feel that most kids are going to be a little pudgy, its part of growing up. They don't need to be on diets to lose weight, maybe a little playing in the back yard instead of watching tv would take care of that problem. Dieting is fine for people that understand what they are doing, and the proper way of going about losing weight. I dont think there are many kids that are in the 1-3 grade that understand of how to properly diet, they will only end up hurting their bodies by doing the wrong thing.

Observation journal #3

This past weekend I went back home for the long weekend and noticed something that we have been talking a lot about in the past few weeks. While in class we talk about how we don't see any diversity in Burlington and how we need to get more to be a more rounded society. While at home, I really started to notice how everyone is the same in my town. We have virtually zero diversity since the one black person in my town moved away, and we all think alike. Every person on the past weekend seemed to be walking around in their work cloths and was getting ready for the winter ahead, myself included. I'm not one bit saying this is a bad thing that everyone in my town was doing the same thing but this is where my ethnocentric thoughts really started to come into play. While I'm home I automatically go back into my redneck thinking and seem to enjoy myself a lot more. I feel like I can have more fun and be free with what I say and do without having someone down my throat yelling at me or calling me racist, narrow minded, a redneck, etc.. When in classes it seems that ethnocentric thoughts and others like them are looked down upon because if you think like this you aren't seeing the world around you and aren't open to new ideas and ways. Well from observing the way my attitude changed just in the drive back to Burlington I have to disagree with some people and say that ethnocentric thoughts are good. While thinking like this it seems like its the only time I'm happy because I can be myself, an individual, which is what most people want to do. However, you cant do this when you have to worry about what your saying or who you will piss off whenever you open your mouth.