http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1161473—is-there-a-cure-for-facebook-itis
This is the question, will Facebook die out?
Most people think not but the way Facebook is running out of ideas could be a start. The site just purchased Instagram, the purchase seemed pretty unnecessary. With Facebook’s new cover photos I’ve heard more negative comments than positive and more people are choosing to sign off the popular site.
This article is so true it’s depressing. Teen binge drinking is extremely overlooked and the stats prove it. During my time in high-school living in a small town I watched binge drinking almost take the life of two of friends. I then took the opportunity to join a group at my school called UP. I went around to other schools and to the municipal government to try to change the way teens spent their free time.
Since my town was so small and didn’t even have a mall or a movie theatre no one knew what to do with their spare time. Kids were starting to drink in elementary school and it was shocking. Our town needed to add more activities for teens to do. Our efforts helped in the construction of the YMCA in our town.
Teens need to find better outlets for their time and this article just proves it. It was so depressing that the friends of the deceased boy that died from binge drinking felt they needed to get drunk to remember and live on the legacy of their friend.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months you know who Kony is. This Youtube video that went viral brought a lot of attention to the media and to the infamous Kony.
Once people were asked to start sending in money though and to “paint the streets ” with posters of Kony, word started to get out about where this money was actually going. Invisible Children an organization the money was supposed to go to had already gotten in trouble a few times for not putting their money into the right hands.
I thought the whole Kony phase, if that’s what we can call it was extremely over hyped there were a lot of aspects over looked and once the maker of the video got arrested for being drunk in public and doing other sorts of questionable asks the whole organization just looked like the latest band-wagon everyone jumped on.
Don’t get me wrong it’s awesome to want to make a difference and help out ,but the war in Africa has been going on for years and I don’t believe putting posters up that will just be taken down the next day will make a huge difference in Africa. It really just filled my Facebook homepage and made people think they were social activist for the day. By now half the people who posted or shared the Kony video, honestly don’t care or find the organization sketchy. Even here at Sheridan we had a Kony gathering to prepare for the April 20th cover the night event and from what I heard the turnout was around 70 people. Pretty sad for an event that hoped to see at least a 1000.
Basically I don’t think what these people did was wrong, like I said it is nice to help out people around you just don’t let it go to head. All this video really proves is that by putting a Youtube video in the right hands it can go viral in a day.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1163246—teen-dating-violence-is-no-joke
This article brought light to an issue I feel strongly about teen violence is something that especially from the woman’s aspect of it gets used as a punchline in most jokes.
Apparently even in ad campaigns, which just shows how seriously society takes this issue.
For a company to name a sandwich after this situation where a women is left beaten and hurt is disgusting it shows their lack of respect for women. And for a clothing retail to sell shirts that allow men to walk around wearing phrases poking fun at this issue is so wrong. Women spend their lives trying to get over situations like this and they don’t need the reminder of past memories coming back to them when they are ordering a sandwich or shopping.
The positive message at the end of this opinion article was refreshing and I also believe mothers should jump on the bandwagon of talking and educating their children on the ways to properly treat others.
Trending all over blogs and magazines has been the shocking images of Romanian model, Ioana Spangenberg.
Spangenberg’s waist is an extremely petite size of 20 inches. After a video of an ad of the model in a mini skirt went viral ,hitting over two million views negative energy from the public followed.
People claimed the model was a walking billboard for eating disorders like, anorexia and bulimia.
“No one seems to believe it, but every day I eat three big meals and I snack on chocolate and crisps all the time. I just have a small stomach,” the 30-year-old model told the U.K. Sun. ”It’s a bit like having a natural gastric band and if I eat too much, I feel sick.”
The model’s self esteem has suffered greatly from all the attention from the media. Spangenberg also commented saying she was a seven pound baby and as she grew up and her body changed and her waist remanded fairly small, due to her tiny stomach.
Spangenberg felt that she could embrace her skinny frame after meeting her husband. The two now live in Germany where she has gained the new nickname, “Human Hourglass”.
“Jan (Spangenberg’s husband, of six years) was the first person who saw me as beautiful and encouraged me to celebrate my body,” she told U.K. Sun.
“When I was 13 my waist was around 15 inches. Someone could put their hands around it, their fingers would touch and they would still have extra room.”
Spangenberg spoke out also on how she suffered through bullying while in school due to the beliefs in society in Romania. In Romania being overweight is a sign of wealth and respect.
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Opinion
After writing this article on Spangenberg, it kind of left me questioning the likely-ness of this story being completely true. Of course the whole thing could be a Photoshop scam, but I did watch a video of her and her six year beau ,where she was shockingly small.
Personally even if this is natural and Spangenberg was born with a 20 inch waist, the publics reaction makes me glad.
Society in North American has shocked me with the way curvy girls have been shot down. I grew up with a lot of friends , friends that were extremely beautiful, that felt that their weight defined who they were. Causing them to turn to cutting meals and throwing up to change the way people seen them. Many felt it would bring them the love they craved, the boy they wanted or the popularity they desired.
Mostly though it brought extreme health problems and psychological battles. Tearing them apart from family and the friends that loved them no matter what.
For people to finally talk out on extremely small model and not want her to be the face of clothing that younger teens may want to purchase , is a positive message to me. Maybe society is changing ?
Although there are two sides to this story. Even the girl who is naturally skinny,( well possibly).. gets negative attention.
Personally I feel the moral of this story is that we all have to be happy in our own skin. It’s clique to say, but it’s very true that we all just need to be happy in our own skin.
If you’re confident and the people around you bring you moral and positive support than that’s all you really need.
I found this really interesting and unbelievable. From what I had thought our fast food products here in Canada were remotely a bit healthier than those in the United States. From what I had always thought since I seen the movie Super Size Me was that America’s portions and calories were bigger and higher than ours.
Which I was suppose I was wrong. Salt is one of the worst ingredients in our fast food due to the fact that heart disease is one of the biggest killers in obese people. The fact that a journalist uncovered this was astonishing to me and I always wonder how they uncover facts like this. Makes me think twice before ordering the large fries I get every Monday from McDonalds.
Toddlers and Tiaras, 3-year-old Paisley wore a pageant costume based on Julia Roberts’ prostitute character in Pretty Woman
This was down right disgusting.
I actually seen this episode of Toddlers and Tiaras a show I try extremely hard not to watch for reasons like this. I don’t know how a mother can think this is at all appropriate for her three year-old daughter to wear. I feel as though pageants are ways of degrading your child’s self esteem. You are putting them in a contest judging their beauty in a false and fake way, applying make up , fake tanner, fake hair, and even getting their eyebrows waxed. Each one of those child deserves to be called beautiful without all that make up on and none need to be judged in a competition of beauty. All child are beautiful. I believe those mothers live through the trophies their daughters win and this outfit and choice of presenting her daughter seemed to take the cake for me as extremely inappropriate.
The Star decided to mark the 100th year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by researching the stories of three Canadian’s on board when the Titanic went down that April evening.
The first story of a woman named Eva Heart who lost her brother and father on the ship when they were immigrating to Winnipeg from England. Her family had plans to open a drug store which went unfulfilled. A quote from her story really stuck out to me and was extremely powerful when she begins to talk about her mother.
“One of the most pathetic things the next day, was these poor women, including my mother, roaming about the ship to see if they could see the husband they’d left behind —but never finding them.”
The way Hart chooses to use the word pathetic makes it seem as though she still has anger built up that her father and brother never made it out alive. It’s a powerful quote since it also shows how many women made it off the ship but how many men went down with her.
The infamous Eggman, Eric Burdon of The Animals
I came across this article near Easter and it really made me chuckle. I thought the idea to take a lyric like this, research it and work it in to an article at such an appropriate time of the year was so smart. Being a huge Beatles fan I had always wondered myself what those lyrics truly meant. Who hasn’t ever blasted a song , sang along and had no idea what the heck they were singing along to or what it even meant?
For the journalist to get a hold of a professor who studies The Beatles lyrics was even more immpressive. I just thought over all the article was witty and smart and a great pun on Easter. Using the idea of the ’ Eggman’. Eric Burdon seems like he was quite the character and this article just left me picturing all the insane times that the band possibly had on the road, those times most likely involving some psychedelics. Even though most will live on not knowing who the ‘Eggman’ was those who picked up the Star are now aware of the infamous egg breaking Eric Burdon and I find that utterly hilarious.
