Like it or not, pretty much everyone has been up late at night and seen the Girls Gone Wild, commercials with girls showing their breasts to camera men along with doing various sexual actions in the back of a tour bus or hotel room bathroom.  Late one night while watching tv, a commercial came on that was similar in nature.  I was about to change the channel when I heard the Jamaican music when I realized that it wasn’t Girls Gone Wild, but rather Guys Gone Wild.  I found the commercial hilarious.  I could not help but watch.  At first I thought it was a joke.  I really did not think that it was a serious commercial.  But after the commercial ended I realized that it was for real.  I found it just strange.  It was not like the girl ones where girls were flashing the camera, it was guys wrestling and then randomly taking showers or showing their penis’s.  It just seemed really strange.  It seemed totally staged compared to the girl ones where it seems more spur of the moment.  I began to think, if I found this commercial funny, rather than a turn on to make me want to purchase the product, what did other girls think?  The idea of guys wrestling on the beach just didn’t’ turn me on like I would imagine a girl flashing her breasts or messing around with another girl would do for a guy.  Then it hit me.  I realized that women may not be the real target of this advertisement; rather gay men might be the real target.  I am just curious to see if anyone else has seen these ads and what their impression was of them because I just for one reason or another found them weird, yet funny.

This past Sunday in between checking my email and vegging, I began to watch a VH1 show all about people who have tried to extort money out of celebrities by using many different methods of extortion.  The one story I found I thought was a good topic to write about for this class.  It involved Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis and Paris Hilton.  One night upon entering his residence, Francis was attacked, held at gun point, bound with duct tape, and forced to repeat the words “I’m from Boys Gone Wild and I like it in the ass,” all of which was being caught on tape with the purpose of using it later to extort Francis.  He was then thrown into the back of his Bentley, driven to town, and left under the threat that if he got the police involved, he would be killed.  After freeing himself he went straight to the police.  Phone taps were placed on his phone lines and captured the extortionist’s attempts to extort over $3 million out of the millionaire.  Some time later, Paris Hilton’s apartment was broken into with various tapes of her doing sexual things with former boyfriend Nick Carter.  It was later that Paris Hilton told Francis that she had overheard a man named Darnell Riley, an ex-con who did time for murder and had somehow penetrated the Hollywood celebrity scene, discussing how he and an accomplice were responsible for the attack on Francis’s Bel Air mansion.  Francis went to the police and Riley was arrested.  Riley copped to one count of robbery and one count of attempted extortion.  He was sentenced to 10 years and eight months in state prison.  I am not sure if I just wasn’t paying attention to the news, or that I just missed this story, but when I heard it I found it interesting and something that was related to porn and this class.

While watching the lectures, when the statistic of the number of children who saw porn in the year 2002 came on the screen I was shocked and disgusted.  I guess I always knew that it was probably a large number since a lot of the time you can end up on a porn site just by clicking on something on accident, but still I think that it is disgusting.  According to our lecture, in 2002, 16% of visitors to adult websites were children with ¾ of those websites containing sexual material on their first page.  Like professor Halavais said, there really isn’t anyone who would agree that children viewing porn is a good thing.  I know if I had children I would not want them to be viewing pornography, especially if it was just popping up on the screen when they aren’t even looking for it.  At the same time I understand the concerns for not violating the first amendment for adults while trying to protect children, but I still believe something has to be done in order to prevent children from viewing porn.  Of course there will always be those children who are curious and seek out such things as porn, but at the same time I believe that it shouldn’t just be popping up in popups all the time.  After thinking about it for a while, I think the best possible solution is to make as many security check stops as possible to stop those who are not old enough to be viewing that material, along with not allowing sites to post porn on their first, second, or maybe even third page.  By doing this even if a child did happen to stumble upon a site on accident, they wouldn’t be bombarded with pornographic images  Another thing that I would change is that porn popups would not be allowed so that children didn’t have them popping up on their computer when trying to do a school project, and those who were underage would have to go through a lot just to view anything and hopefully not want to be bothered.  I definitely feel that something needs to be done, but I can see why making a decision about what exactly to do is such a difficult decision to make. 

I am currently taking a sociology class called Introduction to Social Change. The one topic that we discussed was the writer Focult. He believed that we are fashioned people. He believed that even our sexuality is fashioned. In other words, we do not really have for ourselves any idea of what we find sexy, it has been fashioned to what is the normal standard in today’s society. In some respects I think that this is true. Most guys are attracted to boobs and butts, but on the other hand I disagree with it. I think that maybe it isn’t that everyone is fashioned to like the same thing. In reality it is just our human nature and something that has been built into us for a long time. If you take a look at animals in nature, they tend to find the same things attractive. Males use the same techniques trying to show off the same things. Maybe this is the same with humans. Some people do find things that may be termed a fetish, such as feet, to be a turn on, but for the most part people find the same things attractive. I just found this to be an interesting topic and wanted to explore it a little more in a setting outside of that classroom and thought that this might be a good place to do so.

After watching last weeks lectures about what constitutes sex and how would you feel if your partner was having phone sex or some other form of interactive sex and whether or not that would be cheating, I began to think about how I would feel if something like this was happening in my relationship.  I think if I found out that my boyfriend was having phone sex with someone behind my back I would be upset.  I agree with what the one girl said during the lecture, if it something that you feel the need to hide, it probably is wrong. I would feel like even though there is no physical contact, I would feel like he cheated on me.  When you are in a committed relationship I believe that anything sexual is something that should only be shared between the two of us.  That is one of the reasons why you become involved in a committed relationship, to have that amount of intimacy between the two of you.  I think it would be the fact that the other person is able to respond to his actions or what he says is what makes it so different form porn.  At least when someone is watching porn that has been recorded, it is a one way communication.  The television or computer has no response to the person’s actions; it is only the person who has a response.  If someone is having phone sex or cyber sex there is that interaction on both ends.  Both people are able to respond and communicate what exactly that it is that they want the other to do, in other words, there is some sort of intimacy.  I don’t know if I am just old fashioned or up with the times with things of this nature, but what I do know is that if this was happening to me, I would feel hurt and cheated on. 

While browsing through the class blogs I came across these two which I believe have a similar theme with which I agree with.  The first blog had to do with what age children first experience porn and how that age is become younger and younger.  With the age of first time viewers becoming increasingly younger, the writer suggested that schools need to put some thought into lowering the age at which students receive sexual education classes.  The second article had to do with the fact that most women believe the average penis size is much larger than it is in reality.  The writer suggests that this could be caused by the fact that many women have seen more penis’s in porn than in real life, suggesting that porn has led to this misconception.   Both articles are discussing the large role pornography plays on society and how it leads to many misconceptions.  As for the first article, I agree that the sexual education classes should be given at a younger age.  If children are seeing porn before they receive sex ed, they will not know all the facts and could potentially engage in sexual acts risking pregnancy and STDs.  I understand many parents may think that teaching kids about sex at such young ages somehow makes them less of a child (don’t know if that is exactly how I wanted to word that but that is the best I can do for now) but I believe that having them know such facts at a young age is a much better option than being faced with the other consequences.  As for the second article, I also agree that if a woman has seen more penis’s in porn than in real life, it is easy for her to get the misconception about what constitutes average size.  If you are continually seeing pictures of large penises, what reason is there for you to believe that that is not the norm?  I jus thought that both of these blogs brought up very good points both relating to the great impact pornography can have on how someone views the way things are, when in reality they can be something very different. 

Yesterday while out of town, on one of the news stations I saw
an interesting topic come up during the show. 
The two reporters were debating their thoughts on the topic of whether
it was okay to conduct business meetings at strip clubs, which has apparently
become a common business practice of many different types of firms.  The one reporter was male and the other was
female.  The male took the stance that it
was okay if it was with the idea of “sealing the deal,” and if the deal was
sealed, then the objective was accomplished and the business meeting was a success
no matter where it was being conducted. 
The woman on the other had found it totally inappropriate.  She did not agree with mixing business and
strip clubs.  Right away my ears perked
up when I heard them having this debate because I found it interesting and a
type of current even that I could bring into my blog for this class.  I do not know if it is because I am a woman ,
but I tended to agree more with the woman reporter than with the male.  I do not think it is appropriate to conduct a
business meeting at a strip club.  I
would think that the focus would be less on the reason why the meeting is being
held, and more on the naked girls dancing. 
If the idea is to make the customer more comfortable, I do not
understand how this could be more beneficial than taking the customer out to a
nice dinner to talk over the reasons why the meeting is held.  I would have to imagine it would depend on
the client, but I would think that there would be the possibility of loosing
clients by suggesting such a meeting place to conduct business because some businesses
might not want to be linked to such places. 
They might be worried if word got out that they were conducting such
meetings they themselves could endure losses with their customers.  I do think though overall that the main
reason why if I was a business person I would not want to have meetings in
strip clubs would be not for the reason that I do not find them enjoyable, but
more so because I would want the focus of our meeting to me more on the topic
at hand, than having distractions dancing around us.  Business and pleasure usually do not mix
well.

I feel that this class has allowed me to look at things all around me that I normally would not have paid much attention to before in a whole new light.  I think this is a good thing.  Like today while sitting in my room I looked at one of my posters with a whole new set of eyes.  I still live at home so my room still has some things up from when I was in high school.  For instance the poster that I was looking at today is actually an old Abercrombie bag.  We all know that Abercrombie is well known for it’s use of selling things by using sexual pictures, their annual 18 and older catalog that comes out along with their Christmas time male models that stand in the entrances of the stores in nothing but Abercrombie brand underwear and a Santa hat.  However, for some reason when I put this poster/bag on my wall I wasn’t really thinking of it like that.  At the time when I put it up I just thought if it as a hot guy to put on my wall, just something nice to look at.  Today while looking at it, it looked very different.  I had never really noticed the fact that the shirtless man’s pants are actually unbuttoned and beginning to be unzipped.  Not only this but his hand is casually lingering in the top of these pants while he leisurely lays with his hand under his head looking off into the distance.  Even though his hand is just barely down his pants, I still see this as a pretty sexual picture.  I believe that I did not really notice this before because for one, the part with his pants is all the way at the end of the picture.  Two, because I never really paid that much attention to things of this nature, I had never really analyzed pictures in this way before.  Simple things like this make me glad that I decided to take this course. I believe that it has opened my eyes to a whole new world and a whole new way of looking things which I believe is a very good thing.

For some reason I have not felt very inspired to write something that I believe to be interesting enough to put in here.  I am not sure if it is because it is the middle of the semester, or because of my finals and other obligations with my other classes.  However I have decided to attempt to write something as to not fall behind in this class.  After watching this weeks lectures the one thing that I found extremely interesting was the idea of what exactly determines what we find sexy.  The idea that it is something that is it something that we see on television and in the media that says this is what you should think is sexy.  Like Dr. Halavais said, the idea that the ideal for a man is to have a blonde not very intelligent woman on his arm as so many things lead us to believe.  Do we ever really make a decision for ourselves of what turns us on?  I think it is interesting to imagine what one would determine to be sexy if they had never had any contact with the media.  Would it still be the stereotypical lingerie from Victoria’s Secret, or would it be something different?  This is just another example of what a large impact the media has on today’s world on how we view and think about different things.  It was just something I found interesting and had been thinking about since I viewed the lecture.

So this week we are to do a self-evaluation.  Like I read in another students blog, these are very hard to do.  You do not want to be overly confident and seem cocky, but yet at the same time you do not want to undervalue your blog which could reflect poorly on your grades.  So I guess I will just stick to the facts.  I have thirteen entries (fourteen including this one) all containing 250 words at least, some containing as many as 550 when talking about something that I found very interesting.  I have a total of 12 comments from others and every week I tried to respond to at least one person’s blog (even though I am still working on the linking it to their blog).  I usually include an interesting news article that I read and relate it to the class.  Overall I believe that I am on track with the class.  This is something that is easy to do when it is a class that you find very interesting, which I certainly do with this one.  I do not want to give myself an actual grade because I do not want to jinx myself, but overall, like I said, I believe that I am on track in this class.