Africa’s growing concern Essay Example for Free

Africa’s growing concern Essay Whoever ignites the flames of hate has succeeded considerably. Hatred has become a way of life for many people around the world. People envy other people and create hatred to those of better lives. But no human being is prepared for what the African continent actually reveals. The persecution of unwanted individuals is prevalent in this part of the earth. Poverty hounds Africa no end. The life there is very hard and disturbing. The place is filled with chaos and turmoil. No stability is in sight. The entire world is currently alarmed over the high incidence of death within its population. Countries over the years have pledged support to the stagnant economy of the African nation. All means of contribution have been given to the poor continent. But in spite of the continued aid, there seems to be no hope of rising within the nation. Africa has shoved itself into a hole so deep that the possibility of becoming buried is never a remote idea in the future. Men, women and children agonize over their situations. Food and resources are hard to come by. Thousands die of starvation annually. But more than that, countless people become victims of unnecessary violence. World leaders and governments around the globe have, time and again, met and discuss the events in Africa numerous times. Like a disease, the social demise of its population has been a primary concern for many nationalities worldwide. People are dying every minute. The media has played a vital role in revealing the abuses and brutalities of people. All eyes are focused on this place where individuals have disregarded the value of human life. The carnage continues, and will continue unless a swift and effective solution will be unveiled. There is a sense of urgency for the world’s leading governments to address the destruction of human dignity in Africa. However, in spite of the launching of countless humanitarian missions to solve the nation’s woes, death and suffering lingers on. Billions have been spent on relief operations but the social problem remains undefeated. The casualty toll piles up. The killing spree goes unsuppressed. And the rest of the world watches dumbfounded. It only shows that governments and its people are not doing enough to find answers to the African problem. Although food and the lack of basic needs is the primary concern among the African people, it is violence that must be silenced. Several decades of gun running and smuggling within the continent have only brought death to many citizens. As long as the armaments keep on coming, peace will remain to be an elusive and distant dream. The social instability in the African nation is about power. Individuals and their clans grapple for control. Gaining that momentum to hold every move in the tumultuous society means having the arms and weapons to subject everyone to their every word. The world is stretching its influence into every corner of the continent. But sadly, the troubled nation drives off the chance and rare opportunity to rebuild its communities. It is ironic that a very poor place can summon the strength to annihilate all intervening parties out of their motherland. Events are bleak. The panic button has been set. But with all the dangers and the deaths, Africans have little regard for the needs of their nation. Women and children go elsewhere to find peace. War escalates and the streets are stained with blood. If the world is keen on finding the answers to the growing social menace in Africa, analysts should dig deeper to gain a full and total understanding of the situation among its people. The United Nations must be aware to the motives and intentions of the African people. All along, the entire globe has only addressed the needs of the poor continent. The real reason for the chaos remains undetermined, and therefore, unsolved. Turmoil will continue to rob the African nation of its dream of peace and stability. With a disorganized crowd and a selfish government, senseless killings and looting will be around for a long time.

The Search for Language in The Awakening Essay -- Chopin Awakening Es

The Search for Language in The Awakening  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚   Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, tells the story of a late nineteenth century woman trying to break away from the male-dominated society to find an identity of her own.   Edna Pontellier is trying to find herself when only two personas are available to her: the ‘true woman,’ the classic wife and mother, or the ‘new woman,’ the radical women demanding equality with men.   Patricia S. Yaeger, in her essay â€Å"‘A Language Which Nobody Understood’: Emancipatory Strategies in The Awakening,† argues that what Edna is really searching for is a female language of her own.   Edna is prevented from finding her own language and ideal and therefore is trapped until she discovers that suicide is her only way out.   The ending of the novel has been considered Edna’s final step in her search for freedom from the restrictive society she lives in.   Elaine Showalter, in her essay â€Å"Tradition and the Female Talent : The Awakening as a Solitary Book,† and others say that it is Edna’s last move towards female liberation, but is it really?   Suicide hardly seems liberating.   Edna lives in a phallocentric world where women have no identities apart from their relationships with men.   Leslies W. Rabine, in her essay â€Å"No Lost Paradise: Social Gender and Symbolic Gender in the Writings of Maxine Hong Kingston,† says that â€Å"traditional male narratives† are based â€Å"on a linear and circular quest to return to a lost paradise† (Rabine 90), however, female narratives do not have this lost paradise.   The world in which Edna lives traps her so that the paradise she is seeking cannot exist.   The paradise Edna is looking for is nothing more than a situation in which she can be truly happy.   The fundamentally phallocentric... ...Awakening.   1993: Bedford Books, New York. Griggers, Cody.   â€Å"Next Stop – Paradise: An Analysis of Setting in The Awakening.† Domestic Goddess.   Editor, Kim Wells. August 23, 1999.   Online.   Internet.   5-10-00.   http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/griggers.htm Rabine, Leslie W.   â€Å"No Lost Paradise: Social and Symbolic Gender in the Writings of   Maxine Hong Kingston.†Ã‚   As it appears   Ã‚  Ã‚   in: Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia.   Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: A Casebook.   1999: Oxford University Press, New York. Showalter, Elaine.   â€Å"Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awaking as a Solitary Book.†Ã‚   As it appears in: Chopin, Kate.   The   Ã‚  Ã‚   Awakening.   1993: Bedford Books, New York. Yaeger, Patricia S.   â€Å"‘A Language Which Nobody Understood’: Emancipatory Language in The Awakening.   As it appears in: Chopin, Kate.   The Awakening.   1993: Bedford Books, New York.

Barbie: Should The Doll Be Modified? Essay

Since Barbie was first launched by Mattel in 1959 over 10 million have been sold. â€Å"Somewhere in the world, a Barbie is sold ever half-second†(Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive). Out of all Mattel profits, Barbie makes up approximately 80% of them. Barbie brings in such a high profit because she has always been seen as the ‘perfect woman’: perfect house, boyfriend, wardrobe, but most importantly a perfect body. However stated by Sakima Laksimi in ‘The Barbie Effect’, â€Å"the problem is little girls are growing up admiring this unrealistic icon. Barbie shows girls that to be perfect you need to be skinny. In today’s media being skinny is favored, but are these little girls any less because they don’t resemble this unrealistic doll? Of course not, but when skinny is all they see, that is what they want to be. The effects of being self conscious and unsatisfied with their body can follow a little girl even after childhood†. Many people do not see the underlying problem with Barbies, so it is important to bring awareness to her true message because it is extremely unhealthy for girls to follow. While young girls should be able to freely play with Barbie-dolls, it is sometimes necessary to make sure those dolls aren’t harmful to their self views. Barbie provides young girls with stereotypical gender roles. Abramason says,â€Å"Significant results would mean that exposure to Barbie could lower self-perceived ability and makes female stereotypes more salient†. This put the idea in girls heads that they will never achieve the same status of knowledge as boys, and if they do it is not â€Å"cool†, and if you aren’t â€Å"cool† you certainly can’t be â€Å"perfect† like Barbie. Many girls look at Barbie as an idol, so seeing her lack the brains in math makes them want to pursue the same. Girls should not count themselves out of school because a doll teaches them otherwise. If parents don’t believe Barbies have a negative impact on their daughters academic skills they need to make sure they try their hardest in school rather than reciting after a Barbie, that was released in 1992, â€Å"Math is tough†, shown in ‘The Pros and Cons of Barbie’. If a girl is told that math is though she will live it. It is understood that Barbie provides a role model for young girls to express their beauty; however parents must realize that along with her horrifying stereotypical attributes she shows girls that prioritizing surface beauty is the only thing that matters. Yes, if the dolls were modified girls might turn away, but once they realize it is still Barbie they will indulge it due to the strong bond girls have developed with her. Urla and Swedlund in ‘Barbie Blues’ discovered, â€Å"If Barbie were full size, her measurements would be 32-17-28, typical of a woman suffering from anorexia. Add to this anorexic frame her large gravity-defying breasts and you have a body ideal that is virtually impossible for a healthy, non-surgically altered woman to attain†. If young girls want to â€Å"grow up to be look like Barbie† there is a huge problem. There are so many anti-anorexia campaigns, yet we continue to sell a disproportionate doll for little girls to idolize. Gathered from The Pros and Cons of Barbie,â€Å"If Barbie were a real woman she would have a waistline 39 percent smaller than the average anorexic patient. Her fat-to-body-weight ratio would be below 17 percent, which is required for a woman to menstruate†.. Anorexia, the starving of oneself, forces the body to conserve energy because it lacks the energy it receives from food. Due to this, many  systems in the body are slowed down, and one of these systems is the reproductive system, because without energy your body systems can not function properly. Also a result from the energy conservation and the size of Barbies waist, wouldn’t provide a structure that could be humanly possible to live in. In, ‘The Pros and Cons of Barbie’, â€Å"Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions, for example, found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel. A real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhea and eventually die from malnutrition†. This means a women with these measurements simply could not exist, but girls are still trying to achieve â€Å"Barbies look† because she is portrayed as â€Å"perfect†. Barbies should not continue to be sold with the current structure, as it is dwindling to a girls health. Many mothers argue that they turned out just fine playing with Barbie, so why wouldn’t there daughters? However, many mothers were born into a time where media advertised how to gain weight rather than lose it, for example â€Å"Wate-On†, which was advertised in newspapers during the 1960s! This caused them to be indirectly taught the idea of â€Å"more meat than bones†, so by the time they played with Barbies they dropped them when it was time to eat what was on the dinner table but even then, girls began to look at themselves negatively when Mattel came out with â€Å"the 1965 Slumber Party Barbie. She came with a book titled ‘How to Lose Weight’ which advised, ‘Don’t eat.’† (â€Å"The Pros and Cons†), this introduced the idea of wanting to look like Barbie. So, as these mothers who argue against modifying Barbies figure may not have become anorexic, they still suffered from negative body image when they were younger because of the barbies which were produce during their times. Girls now a days are surrounded by teeny women in spotlights, so they indirectly taught the importance of being thin, so with two sources of media hypnotizing them into becoming unhealthy and skinny these girls are at risk for a much higher chance for anorexia.  While television, music, newspapers, and other types of â€Å"adult† media can not be regulated to be in favor of young girls, Barbies can be. Adding on to young girls becoming more and more self conscious of their bodies, in 2006 research was conducted by The American Physiological Association comparing the Barbie-doll to the Emme-doll, which is a British toy that has realistic body measurements. It was discovered that the girls who played with Barbie had more body dissatisfaction. Dittmar, Halliwell, and Ive’s research explained: This demonstrates that it is not body-related information conveyed by dolls per se that has a direct impact on young girls’ body image, but by Barbie dolls specifically, which represent a distortedly thin body ideal. These ultra thin images not only lowered young girls’ body esteem but also decreased their satisfaction with their actual body size, making them desire a thinner body. This detrimental effect was evident already for girls from age 5  ½ to age 6  ½ but was more pronounced among 6  ½- to 7  ½- year-olds. At such a young age girls should not be worrying about what they look like, if at all. The bond that little girls have with Barbie is the cause of their low self-esteem. In conclusion, it is understood that little girls are expected to play with dolls, but they do not need to be exposed to a toy that takes a toll on their health in the long run. Girls should not base their body on a disproportionate doll, and if Barbie is going to continue to be the doll girls idolize it should be made into a realistic structured doll that promotes good health. Works Cited Abramson, Elise. Barbie Brains: The Effect of Barbie Dolls on Girls’ Perception of Male and Female Jobs. Oregon State University, 2009. Oregon State University Library. Web. 25 January 2014. Dittmar, Helga, Emma Halliwell, and Suzanne Ive. â€Å"Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin? The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year-Old Girls.† Developmental Psychology 47.2, 2006. Web. 25 January 2014. Sakina Laksimi.†The Barbie Effect.†Media Ecology. Mercy College, 2012. Web. 20 January 2014. Urla and Swedlund.â€Å"The Barbie Blues?† The Body Project. Bradley University, 2001.Web. 20 January 2014. â€Å"The Pros and Cons of Barbie and their Extreme Effect on Society .† Body Image, 2011. Web. 22 January 2014.

Real World Colonial South Gender Relationships - 1169 Words

Real World Colonial South: Gender Relationships in the Colonial South William Byrd: plantation owner, financier, cheater and the main character in his own mind. Just like the MTV show â€Å"The Real World,† consequences are thrown out the window and extreme freedom is given. From parties, to cheating on your wife in front of her, William Byrd gives insights of what it was like to be a man in the Colonial South. In selections from William Byrd’s journals, he writes how he treated others-women, slaves and anyone he thought was socially under him. Gender relationships in the Colonial South were relationships built on disrespect and dehumanization. Women in the Colonial South were poorly respected. William Byrd treated his wife with extreme disrespect. Throughout his journal, his wife goes unnamed, but he mentions his slaves by name and also his mistresses along with other female companions and male friends. Just by doing so he seems to not value his wife as a human. His attitude towards his wife seems to be one of disregard and disrespect. Along with Byrd not naming his wife in his journals, there is also insight through his entries that he thought of her as submissive and lacking of any power. He and his wife would get into fights, and she would not lose easily. Even though she would put up a great fight, he would then write in his journal how he overtook her with his power. When she would loose she would throw tantrums. He wrote in his journal entry dated September 3, 1709,Show MoreRelatedEncountering Development1547 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World † Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development : the making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press. Goal: â€Å"That the essential trait of the Third World was its poverty and that the solution was economic growth and development became self-evident, necessary, and universal truths. 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