Essay --

The documentary titled Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat is a documentary shedding some light on the growing trend of America and its expanding waistlines. The documentary is geared to unmask the epidemic of obesity in our country. The film sheds some light to our society is how our society is fixated with living and unhealthy lifestyle. The film goes on to inform you on how bad the situation really is, where two-thirds of the American population qualifies as obese or overweight. The documentary tried to uncover the root and causes of how this epidemic came to be and how it can be reversed. This documentary shows great examples on how obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic as important as terrorism according to Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. He stated, â€Å"Obesity is a terror within. It destroys our society from within†¦.† If we don’t take responsibility and change our horrible eating patter we are going to be doomed. One of the main reasons for obesity other than the lack of a healthy diet is the modernization of our world. In the years when our parents... Essay -- The documentary titled Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America’s Greatest Threat is a documentary shedding some light on the growing trend of America and its expanding waistlines. The documentary is geared to unmask the epidemic of obesity in our country. The film sheds some light to our society is how our society is fixated with living and unhealthy lifestyle. The film goes on to inform you on how bad the situation really is, where two-thirds of the American population qualifies as obese or overweight. The documentary tried to uncover the root and causes of how this epidemic came to be and how it can be reversed. This documentary shows great examples on how obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic as important as terrorism according to Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. He stated, â€Å"Obesity is a terror within. It destroys our society from within†¦.† If we don’t take responsibility and change our horrible eating patter we are going to be doomed. One of the main reasons for obesity other than the lack of a healthy diet is the modernization of our world. In the years when our parents...

Discuss how fashion and appearance are central to the construction of social identities

Social identity has become an ever increasing state of uncertainity, we are constantly presenting ourselves to others through everyday interactions, by the way we speak and how we dress ourselves. We constantly mark ourselves as the same as those with whom we share an identity and diffrentiate with those, we do not. We visualize or imagine ourselves using various symbols or representations. We use these symbols in order to make sense of ourselves in relation to the world we inhabit. Symbols and representations have now increasingly become a feature in the production of identities.This way we signal our identities to others and how we know which people we identify with and why other people are different. How we speak, dress, wear uniforms or carry flags all offer symbols of identity. â€Å"When I rummage through my wardrobe in the morning I am not merely faced with the choice of what to wear. I am faced with the choice of images: the difference between a smart suit and a pair of over alls, a leather skirt and a cotton skirt, is not one fabric and style, but one of identity.You know perfectly well that you will be seen differently for the whole day, depending on what you put on; you will appear as a particular kind of woman with one particular identity which excludes others. The black leather skirt rather rules out girlish innocence, oily overalls tend to exclude sophistication †¦ often I have wished I could put them all on together- just to say, ‘how dare you think any of these is me. But also, see, I can be all of them. † (Williamson,1986, p. 91).Appearance and clothes have become crucial in the presentation of self, the information being projected inadvertently reveal more about a person than the information directly or intentionally given. However, with the growing awareness surrounding fashion identity, the clothes we wear has become a statement in itself. â€Å"In the case of the sociological interest in clothing and fashion, we know that through clothing people communicate some things about their persons, and at the collective level this results typically in locating them symbolically in some structured universe of status claims and life-style attachments. † (Davis.F. 1992. p. 4)Fashion and appearance has become a visual language, with its own structure as well as vocabulary. With a growing amount of other material artifacts to complement the clothing statement, this type of social identity has taken a new form of clichà ©.The need to appear in a certain way has propelled media hype to levels never imagined in modern societies across the globe. There are various media through which fashion and appearance has been propelled in the structures of social identity; television, magazines, journals, videos, mostly the internet has been a vital source of information. The culture of fashion draws upon the collective identity of individuals through mass advert campaign with the help of celebrity hype. This has aided th e transmission of new social constructions of appearances in relation to fashion.â€Å"Celebrity endorsement of luxury fashion is hardly a new phenomenon, as it has been around for several centuries. Charles Worth, the man who invented haute couture in Paris in the nineteenth century, understood the importance of linking celebrities to brands, even before this was recognized as an important marketing communications tool. To promote his fashion house La Maison Worth, he sought a high society lady and an influencer of the court fashions, Princess Von Metternich, wife of the then Austria’s ambassador to France and close friend of Napoleon’s wife Empress Eugenie.This celebrity’s patronage and connection with La Maison Worth contributed immensely to the success and status of this couture house as the most influential in the world at its time. †(Uche. O, 2006). The impact of celebrities, fashions and appearance in the new formations of social identity, has shap ed the way one views self. No endorsement is complete these days without a celebrity promoting its content. From designer clothings, to a particular look, from body sizes to particular diets.The list has included material artifacts like perfumes to jewelleries, and everything in between. Self-presentation has become a complex process, propelling various elements of new fashion structures, the dialectic relationship between fashion contigencies and market branding. Social identities drawn from a social/structure level as well as drawing from a combination of modern technological factors, makes communication a vital factor in shaping personal and individual appearances.Style is then modified to suit a collective, thereby enabling a presentation of an image or appearance to identitfy a social culture. Appearances are shaped by different factors. Biological factors such as the forms that bodies and social factors such as experiences that are not independent. Identity is a complex interw eaving of a variety of different influences:biological factors that are affected by the environment, like the cultural perceptions of biology and social factors that are influenced through the understanding of biology.Social identity is strongly influenced by feminine and masculine characteristics associated with the gender categories, men and women appearances. Individuals can choose which aspects of gender identity to take up, but choices are constrained by a variety of factors including cultural perceptions of masculinity and femininity. â€Å"For men to adopt feminine symbols in dress would be to trangress, in the realm of appearance, the very essence of modern masculine identity.We have not reached that point, and no sign of the times leads us to anticipate any shift in that direction. Despite the multiple forms of its democratization, fashion remains essentially inegalitarian, at least where gender is concerned. † (Lipovetsky,G. p. 111). The increasing flexibility accom odates a diversity of masculinities and femininities in appearances. Gender identities are not fixed, often stereotypical, essentialist way, social identities tend to shift and change across time and between cultures.However, social identities are not something that can be choosen according to individuals, they are shaped by society, the culture that individuals live in, by experiences as well as understandings. The appearances of particular groups of males and females may be constrained or liberated when pitched against historical agendas and social structures such as education and economy. Although there is a freedom surrounding the ability to choose one’s identity, social and cultural factors, which include class and ethnicity as well as gender, contributies to the sorts of identites that one holds.

Religious Art During The Renaissance - 1200 Words

Religious artwork has been prevalent throughout all of history. Christian artwork has been ever changing and evolving based on what it going on during the time period in which the work was created. In Romanesque artwork, art was imaginative and involved mysticism along with themes that represented their fears of the end of the world. In Gothic artwork, the art turned away from evoking fear and instead had the goal of bringing people into the church. In the fourteenth century, the religious art responded to the crises of the time period. During the Renaissance, artwork shifted to an interest in realism, which can be seen in Raphael’s Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John. The medium for this work of art is oil paint. it was painted in 1500 and is 47 inches in diameter. Raphael was a painter during the Italian Renaissance. He is known for his paintings of the Madonna, each one a little different. He was born on April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy (Bio.com). His most famous pai nting was finished in 1507 called La belle jardinià ¨re (Bio.com). La belle jardinià ¨re is also known as Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist (Bio.com). It is different compared to the painting I will be examining but the concept and figures are still the same. Raphael died on April 6, 1520, his 37th birthday, of â€Å"unexpectedly of mysterious causes† (Bio.com). The painting focuses on the Virgin Mary and two children; one we know is Saint John the Baptist from the title. We can assume that theShow MoreRelatedHow Humanism Affected Art in the Renaissance764 Words   |  3 Pagesaffected the art of the Renaissance because of how Renaissance artists became increasingly interested with humanist concepts, and because of how they tried to incorporate humanist beliefs into their art. Artists conveyed their humanist beliefs by using new techniques such as perspective, and by painting more realistic figures. 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