What Have I Learned??

In doing this blog and attending my Pop Culture Theory class I have learned a lot about theory and how to put identify it in my daily life. I guess that is the point. But this class more so than any other this semester helped me to identify more of who I am and who I want to be. It helped me to be a wiser consumer of goods as well as media. For a couple of years now I have told people that I am a feminist, but then I would watch the Bad Girls Club, or feel bad about my body because it didn't look the ones in the magazine or worst of all I would portray myself in a certain way to get a man (and then read Cosmo as a means to keep my man, forget about him keeping me). After looking at advertisements through Jameson's eyes and daily myths through Barthes, I truly feel that I am a better woman because of my new knowledge.
I no longer wish to watch shows that degrade women and put women against women in order to keep them under the "man's" thumb. I don't feel that I it is necessary to obtain the "perfect body" in order to obtain self-esteem. I'm not saying that keeping my new found perspective in perspective will be easy especially with the mass media telling me that I am wrong or that I hate women because I don't believe in their choices. But I will just have to know that I love women and that is why I don't want them to be subjected to any longer. Women need to stop worrying about such trivial things so that big things can be accomplished, and accomplished together.