Girls
The Psychology of Mean Girls: Group Dynamics and Psychology
Everyone remembers the anxiety of high school. Group dynamics play a huge role in defining our selves and our behavior in those crucial developmental years. As we continue to gain autonomy and independence from our parents, peer groups become that much more influential, thus making social structures and relationships a crucial part to adolescence. The film Mean Girls takes this concept to an extreme, comically illustrating the complexity of group dynamics in American high schools, and how these intensely braided social structures affect self-worth and behavior in vulnerable adolescents.
Most of the psychology in the film is geared towards group dynamics and how those social structures impact the development of the teen characters. Essentially, "the protagonist is 16-year-old Cady, a newcomer to American high school after years of being taught by her parents in Africa -- i.e., a clean slate" (Edelstein 2004).…...
Paulina SarpongPaulina is actually a very funny characterone part authoritative, one part completely ignorant, and all-driven. She has prioritiesand although they may not be in the best order (the overall goal is to be popular, as she puts it in the opening scene when she is telling Nana to choose between being fat-fat or fit and popular (7)there is a logic and consistency to her character, and a kind of innocent charm. The opening scene provides a great way to analyze her character.It starts off at the Girls School, with Paulina reading Nana the riot act about what she is eating. She gets Nana to buy in to Paulinas vision of which values are the correct ones. But she relies on her Frick/Frack companions to assist in helping her make the point. Mercy and Gifty are like Paulinas echo chambers, and they quickly apologize to Nana once Paulina walks away…...
This skilled use of ironic prose is also observable in "A Jury of her Peers" by Susan Glaspell, as when the woman who has just committed murder tells the investigators: "after a minute...'I sleep sound.'" the tale depicts how a group of women gradually deduce, through small and simple clues, how Mrs. right killed her husband, and why. The women's observations are more astute than the male investigator's analysis, according to police protocols. The point of the story is not murder, but the fact that the murder's quiet wifely desperation has gone ignored for so long, and that only fellow female sufferers can see this sorrow after the fact. Likewise, the point of O'Connor's story, more than the lurid aspects, are the ways that families and human beings fail to connect and communicate with one another, before it is too late.
A naysayer might sniff and ask why use murder…...
oys and Girls Clubs of America as a Resource to Aid in the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency
oys and Girls Clubs of America
This research describes the tremendous need for nonprofit human services organizations by youth who: use drugs, commit crimes or are victims of crime, drop out of high school, and become pregnant at an early age. There are a variety of nonprofit organizations such as oys and Girls Clubs of America, ig rothers ig Sisters and Children's Aid Society that step in to try to compensate for a breakdown in modern social infrastructures. This paper summarized how each makes their own unique contributions and describes in detail the many successes of programs offered by the oys and Girls Clubs of America, proven by formalized studies. ecause human services have made such a difference in the lives of children, recommendations include additional outreach and increased funding for their activities.
Table of…...
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Bibliography
'2003 Survey National Survey on Drug Use and Health." U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 8 Jan. 2005. .
"About CAS." The Children's Aid Society. 8 Jan. 2005. .
Alston, Frances Kemper. "Latch Key Children." NYU Child Study Center. 9 Jan. 2005. .
Anderson-Butcher, Dawn, Newsome, W. Sean, and Ferrari, Theresa M. "Participation in Boys and Girls Clubs and Relationships to Youth Outcomes." Journal of Community Psychology. 12 Dec. 2002. Wiley InterScience. 9 Jan. 2005. .
Boys and Girls Learn Differently! -- Michael Gurian and Patricia Henley
Michael Gurian's book has been a best seller and a much-discussed, respected handbook on the topic of boys vs. girls in a learning milieu since it was published in 2001. But more than its popularity and success in the market, Gurian's book has made a positive impact on parents, teachers, counselors and others interested in education and human development because it delves into the neurological, chemical and hormonal disparities between boys and girls. Gurian's book is a well-presented narrative and moreover it is based on the author's vast experience as a teacher, family therapist and researcher -- and his ability to relate those experiences well.
There are many significant points in the book that make it valuable in today's educational setting. For one, the author offers believable, reader-friendly narrative on why boys and girls process information differently. For another, when Gurian…...
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Works Cited
Gurian, Michael, Henley, Patricia, and Trueman, Terry. (2001). Boys and Girls Learn
Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003)
Introduction / Background History
Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street environment of poverty, racism, and street crime took its toll and he served seven years of nightmarish incarceration at hard labor. But, with the knowledge that he had not been born a criminal, he rose above his violent background of drugs and gang warfare, and he vowed to use his street and prison know-how to reach hard-core youth and turn them away from a life of crime.
Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of…...
Sally Mann's portfolio abounds of photographs of little girls, including here photographs such as the New Mothers and Sorry Game. All these, as the Easter Dress, are in black and white. In my opinion, the choice for black and white is an attempt by this modern artist to move the viewer's attention away from coloration and into the game of shapes and forms. If we compare this photograph with Dine's painting, the latter puts all emphasis on color (red in that particular case), while Mann insists exactly on everything that is not color: shapes, forms, movements.
The photograph depicts a little girl in a white dress playing/dancing in the foreground, while other characters, most likely members of her family (probably her grandparents, among others) are also present in the framework. As a modern art, photography has a characteristic that many other visual arts, including painting, do not: the ability of capturing…...
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Bibliography
1. Gilmore, Richard. Philosophical Beauty: The Sublime in the Beautiful in Kant's Third Critique and Aristotle's Poetics. World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts from August 10-15, 1998. On the Internet at retrieved on October 9, 2006http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Aest/AestGilm.htm.Last
Infamous bathtub girls were sisters who killed their mother in their own home. The crime took place on January 23, 2003 in Mississauga, Ontario. The identities of the murderers cannot be named, as they are protected under provisions of the Young Offenders Act that preclude the public naming of young offenders unless allowed by the judge. In this crime, the sisters fed their mother a mixture of alcohol and codeine, and then helped her into the bathtub. They held their mother's head under water until she drowned. There is strong evidence of premeditation. The sisters had researched online for ways to kill their mother, and planned details of how they would live after their mother's death. They made a specific decision not only to kill their mother but with respect to the method of killing.
The offenders did not have a criminal history at the time of the crime. There was…...
However, in the film directed by Tina Fey that depicts the cruelty of an exclusive group of "Mean Girls," ordinary things for which there is already descriptive language is rendered into slang so adults do not understand the full cruelty of what is being said. Some adults may know that Regina and company are 'mean' but not to the extent which they rule the school and use exclusion as a way of enforcing their own mini-regime of terror. One of the strengths of the teacher played by Fey, Ms. Norbury, is that she is 'hip' to the language used by the mean girls, like when she tells them to stop using slang like "sluts" and "skanks."
The exclusive nature of the language of adolescents is underlined by the fact that the main character, named Cady Heron, in "Mean Girls" has grown up in South Africa, so she is initially uninitiated…...
Thus, the television shows, or their producers would have us think, do not actually promote violence and sexual promiscuity, they simply depict it as part of the reality of the particular people they chose to show on their programs.
The problem, however, comes with what such depictions teach those people for whom identity is yet to be determined - our youngest boys and girls. Before MTV's the Real orld, popular culture's images of boys and girls was managed through a scripted experience - a lens that showed only what the writers, directors, producers, and television executives wanted you to see. Therefore, shows gave people what other people thought they should and would like, and nothing else. hat reality shows have capitalized on is a hunger for the non-scripted, for the spontaneous, for the unpredictable. and, as society is still managed by people who were brought up by people who generally believed…...
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Works Cited
Adams, N.G. (2005, Spring). Growing Up Female. NWSA Journal, 206(6).
Clark, T. (2008, March 24). Let's Misbehave. Multichannel News, p. 14.
Mantilla, K. (2003, Aug-Sept). Boys Girls will be Boys. Off Our Backs, 48(8).
Moss, L. (2007, June 25). The Good Fight. Multichannel News, 28 (26), p. 20.
307).
Yet American Girl dolls, perhaps because of their expense but also because of their reliability seldom provoke such mutilation. "I have to confess -- I have an emotional connection to this brand," admitted one adult, female NPR commentator, reviewing the film, stating that it was impossible for her to give an objective review of "Kit Kittredge, American Girl" because of her own love of the Kristen doll, as a girl, a doll that had traveled far from Sweden to settle in colonial America (Baker 2008). "She has the same name as me...I like playing with them [better than Barbies] because they're more like me," said an eleven-year-old interviewed by the NPR reporter, explaining why she adored the brand and couldn't wait to see the film
Even while some might be cynical about the fact that "a Kit doll, complete with book and accessories, will currently run you $105" and the spin-off…...
Brian De Palma's teen thriller Carrie is an unusual example of the horror genre. Unlike most horror films in which the viewer finds himself rooting for a protagonist faced with horrific evil supernatural forces, in Carrie, the most evil actions are perpetrated by 'normal' humans while the title character is highly sympathetic, even when she goes on her murderous rampage at the end of the film. The film narrates the story of Carrie White, a shy high school senior who is an outcast because of her social awkwardness and her religious fanatic of a mother. The first scene of the film depicts Carrie getting her period for the first time in the girls' gym shower: she does not realize what is happening to her and the girls react by throwing sanitary napkins and tampons at her, oblivious to her tears.
If Carrie was an ordinary girl, the film would be…...
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." -Thomas Jefferson
I disagree very strongly with the idea that the government that governs best, governs least. Government can and should perform some valuable roles, such as providing social support for the poor, unemployed, and elderly. Government can provide its citizens with an education to better themselves, regardless of citizens' income, race, or location. However I do agree to some extent that disciplining one's self is important. Take, for example, the current obesity crisis. Clearly federal, state, and local governments have a role to play in curtailing obesity: requiring companies place nutritional labels on food, improving the school lunch program, cutting subsidizes to farmers that provide crops made into unhealthy processed foods, and expanding physical education programs and access to parks are all appropriate roles for government. But ultimately the individual alone can control how he or she…...
As he himself admits, "I have a very grim perspective. I do feel that it's a grim, painful, nightmarish meaningless existence, and the only way to be happy is if you tell yourself some lies. One must have some delusions to live" ("Cannes 2010: oody Allen on Death -- 'I'm Strongly Against It'"). hat Midnight in Paris is for him (and us), therefore, is a kind of distraction from the reality that at some point the final credits will roll.
Malick's Tree of Life, then, is a kind of answer to Allen's melancholy. It is, of course, a religious answer told through an impressionistic and indirect medium. Nonetheless, unlike Allen, Malick is willing to embrace the spiritual side of man and explore its meanings and possibilities. For Malick, life is a spiritual journey that can lead one either upwards to the good or downwards to the bad. Allen's film may…...
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Works Cited
Allen, Woody, dir. Midnight in Paris. Los Angeles: Sony Pictures Classics, 2011.
Film.
Augustine. City of God. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1888. Print.
Augustine. The City of God against the Pagans. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Teenage Bullying
Chink, Spic, Terrorist, Whore, Nerd. These words seem to be just the beginning sparks of what most people characterize as bullying. The words and phrases are familiar enough; high school students across the country hear these insults being thrown out just as commonly as a larger student with his gang picking on a smaller and weaker student. The essence of teenage bullying has not changed; rather, with the amount of digital media and social platforms created today, there seems to be more reason to expect bullying -- both at school and online.
Bullying itself comes in many forms and sizes. It can be one hulking, leader-like personality with the aim at a Machiavellian increase in status in the school's social standing (Hamarus). Another can be the result of a racial slur and the violent actions taken against a differently ethnic individual -- perhaps even using an entire gang to beat…...
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Resources
Hamarus, Paivi, and Pauli Kaikkonen. "School bullying as a creator of pupil peer pressure." Educational Research 50.4 (2008): 333-345. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Kennedy, Helen. "Phoebe Prince, South Hadley High School's 'new Girl,' Driven to Suicide by Teenage Cyber Bullies." NY Daily News. 29 Mar. 2010. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .
Pierce, Tamora. "Don't Let Bullies Win." Dare to Be Stupid. 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 26 Feb. 2011. .
Rivero, Victor. "The Politicization of Bullying." District Administration 47.1 (2011): 54. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
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