Wicklla Awesome Day.

Weekends: who doesn't love them? I know I'm happy on a Friday.

Today in class, we discussed the portrayal of men and women in popular culture. Men are often forced to be masculine, unemotional, tough and dominate while women are suppose to be lady-like: quiet, disciplined and non-opinionated. Each gender is pressured into fitting into their gender "box". We only discussed this for a while because we tend to discuss TOO M=much in class and although it's good to do so, time is of the essence.

Later on in the day, we watched a short film on women's image in the media. The speaker in the film discussed serious topics like anorexia and thinness in the modeling industry and how a woman's sex appeal is used to sell products. It was only a part of the whole film, so I will google it to watch the rest at some point. It discussed how women's roles in the world are changing, but it is slow progress. I think that the issue was presented in a great manner: informative, direct, effective and mind-changing. I loved it very much and I plan to find more films similar to this one.

From the video, there were many things that confirmed my theories on women's image. Other times, I was surprised about facts mentioned as well. For instance, I knew that fashion industry uses tons and tons of Photoshop to edit an image to create the "perfect woman" even though none exist. A surprising thing was the severe amount of media that position women in a negative and inferior manner. I never thoroughly analyzed the ads that I see every day. Although many were subconscious portrayals, it still affected the mind and the consumer would not notice the effect immediately or maybe not even at all. That was surprising and eye-opening for me.

After class, several friends and I left for the mall to explore. It was fun to bond with other people than just the ILC members. I love the ILC group, it's always to branch out of our comfort zone. But Irene and Lucero were still with me. We came several people. Some split, some left and we were on our adventure. At times, we practiced our different "leadership" styles when directing the group. It was silly, but we somehow managed to apply what we learn in class to the outside world.

To explain the title, wicklla is a word we made up with our new friends from the East Coast and Canada. I tend to ask the other students about their cultures and languages they have. Listeninng in to their conversations, they tend to say "wicked" as a slang word while we Norcal people love to use "hella". We found each other's words very cool so we decided to mix it up and use "wicklla" to combine our slang cultures. In example: Today, kicking it at the mall with our Brownie friends was wicklla cool. We'll be trying to use this word in vocabulary with each other. I notice that this is a form of binding with each other.

Providence is still warm and humid at night so I was a bit disappointed that there was no cool night tonight. As much I love being here at Brown, the humidity is something I am not enjoying. The heat, I can deal with. I guess I can say that there's no better weather than California. The fact that it rains during the summer here also confuses me as well.

Tomorrow, we will most likely go to Newport for a fun trip. I wanted to visit Ms. Pelley, my chemistry teacher, but she has not got back to me.

Sleeping in! Finally!