For my second artifact I showed the class a clip from the movie, “Meet the Fockers.” In this movie, Greg and his new fiancé, Pam, come back to Greg’s hometown to meet his parents. His fiancés parents tag along for the trip. Pam’s parents can be looked at as a very traditional, clean cut, “by the book” elder American couple. This shouldn’t be a problem. However, it turns out to be the prime problem in this movie because Greg’s parents are also around the same age that Pam’s parents are, but they are sex therapists. The clip I showed the class opened with Greg finally returning home and his mother coaching a sex therapy class showing elder people different sexual positions they can engage in. Greg then becomes very embarrassed and asks his parents to dial the way they normally act down so that Pam and her parents don’t become too embarrassed by his parents. This can be related to the article, “Feeling old and ugly, look again” because it relates to how the author says that many people who aren’t considered “old” relate the “ew” factor to elder people and expressing their sexuality. It also relates to how the author is proud of her sexuality and her aging body. Greg’s parents show that as well. They aren’t ashamed of their sexuality and they embrace becoming older as something positive rather than negative.
In today’s world, social media is more prevalent than ever. Teens, college students, and even children wake up on an average day and the first thing they do is reach to their nightstand and grab their phone to check their Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook before getting out of bed. I’m guilty of this myself. Just this morning the first thing I did was check my twitter feed before forcing myself to get ready for class. Something we unconsciously do while looking through these social media sites is compare ourselves. People post the best parts of their lives on their timelines. As Brian Hanley writes in his article “Why Social Media Makes You Feel Ugly,” newsfeed people are perfect. Pictures are edited, stories fabricated, really our social media are our own personal life highlight reels. The myth that comes about through these highlight reels is that everyone else is doing better than us, or looks better than us. For example, as I’m walking to work after class I run into a friend and she stops me and says, “How are you and your girlfriend? You guys are seriously perfect!” as a result of me posting a professional picture that we had taken a few weeks back. Despite the fact that I have conflict within my relationship just as much as everyone else does, a picture of us smiling with some great editing tells a different story. The perception that everyone else has it ‘perfect’ is what causes us to feel ugly ourselves. Brian Hanley uses the Kardashian family as an example of the fact that someone else always has it better. On Instagram, Kendall Jenner has 35.6 million followers, which for the average person seems like a lot, and would lead you to believe that Kendall would be happy about that. But, sister Kim Kardashian has 45.7 million followers, and yet even Kim doesn’t have the most Instagram followers. Taylor Swift has over 300,000 more followers than Kim. Moral of the story, somebody else will always look better, have more followers, get more likes, etc. What we need to remember is that just because someone looks like they have it all on Instagram, they are just as human as the rest of us.