Switched-On :: Blog

Obsessions come and go, sometimes with age and other times with surprise interventions that your family tricks you into attending. People obsess over objects, people, and books for a period of time until they eventually lose interest (hopefully). I have had plenty of obsessions over the year, and they have faded, even the Harry Potter movies that I just wait until they come out on DVD instead of standing in the cold in the middle of the night. Anyhoo, it has come to my attention that I may have developed a new thing to consume my time. That bittersweet drug is called Netflix. Not only do they deliver movies to your door, but now you can watch movies/television shows online. The summer has only increased my appetite for this service. I’m watching complete television series in a matter of weeks and rarely do I get tired. What’s worst is my friends are all hooked, too. One friend watched the entire series of LOST in 2 months. With 6 seasons of hour-long, 20-odd episodes each, this might actually require clinical help. I can stop, but I hope it dies down. BTW, have you heard of Futurama because I just finished the second season and I think it’s really good!
- Ruben

Should there be limits to what get airbushed for a magazine?

A lot of teen magazines (or just magazines in general) these days airbrush or manipulate the way pictures look to make it look like a model has supposedly more-appealing features. In France, there is a debate going on in the government to decide whether this airbrushing should be regulated or even stopped completely because it may lead to unrealistic expectations in youth, especially young women. While I believe that outlawing all airbrushing is a bit extreme (some airbrushing is used to modify photos of landscapes, exteriors, etc), I do believe that magazines, especially those targeted to youth, should consider how their manipulation of photographs affects their target audience. Some people argue that it shouldn’t matter because they don’t feel that anyone would believe those photos are real, anyhow. The problem with this is that there are people who aren’t aware that these photos have been changed since it’s not often explicitly stated that they’ve been modified. What this can lead to and has lead to are unrealistic expectations as to what a body looks like and earlier and earlier pressures on youth to become more sexualized. There is also a really messed up emphasis through the use of excessive airbrushing on being thin and becoming thin instead of becoming or staying fit. Maybe what magazines can do is cut back on their use of airbrushing of models, especially when most of their readers are teens and pre-teens.
- Allyson

Something to say at 16?

Justin Bieber has a book coming out. Yeah…why? Don’t get me wrong. He seems like a real standup guy and a good role model for tweens with his cool, yet clean-cut image. He has a legion of tween girls that will happily kill for him and would very easily beat me up, but isn’t this overkill. This book is obviously a ploy to milk the Bieber cash cow. Yes, his story is pretty interesting, but he’s only 16 years old. How can 16 years of life, which the majority was spent in grammar school, be worth an entire book? A PowerPoint presentation or a nice poster board sure, but an actually published book seems like a stretch. If I wanted to attempt such a feat, I would be laughed at/thrown out of any publishing house, and I have a good 3 more years of living than him. I don’t have any intent in buying the book, although I wouldn’t mind reading the chapter on how to get such amazing hair.

- Ruben