Dylan in London

With 459 women faculty at UNT, it is easy to see that the future is most definitely female. To see such a dynamic of gender inclusivity  at UNT is remarkable, and to see an overwhelming number of female professors in the Mayborn School of Journalism just makes me proud to be a journalism student at UNT. To see that there are 4 female deans-- in business, international studies, hospitality, and library studies shows UNTs push for progression in our classroom. In the panel, the figure 83 cents came up to a lot; as in, women make 83 cents to every mans dollar. However, that figure isn't very racially representative. Women of color make significantly less than that, and still receive significantly less media coverage than white women, or almost any other demographic of people to exist ever. This gap in wage, however, is not the only disadvantage women of color face today. Women of color are less likely to be represented in the job market than white women, due to systemic white privileg...

I spent my summer in London on the Mayborn In London trip and learned about what culture is like across the pond. In my time there,  I saw some of the greatest political turmoils of the decades. One of which, was an intersection of class and race and how the city failed the two. In this circumstance, the city of London and the city-developer of South Kensington is responsible for the death of over 100 underclass balck and brown people in the Grenfell Tower. The city developer took London's section-8 housing and, because the estate was so inexpensive, they were basically denied the proper fireproof cladding and the city failed to install working smoke detectors and fire alarms in the residency. Because of this, when a refrigerator spark started a fire, the whole tower was destroyed and the people inside were left to the flames. The residents of the tower were poor people of color with low voter turnout and so the city planner and political constituents never really cared about thei...

In the past 24 seasons of America's Next Top Model, Tyra Banks has given a reimagining to the face of commercial and runway models. But recently, in its current season, Tyra Banks has lifted the age limit of 26-years-old and has now made an emphasis on utilizing body positivity and body activism when casting her show. This season features women with different races, sizes, facial structures, and character narratives. Rio Summers, a mixed race young woman suffered from a head injury resulting in a comatose state. Years ago, a scar on the back of your head would make you unbookable to certain modeling agencies. However, Tyra embraces Rio's struggles and encourages the contestant to use that uniqueness to fuel her modeling career. Jeanna Turner, another contestant, suffers from aggressive alopecia, an autoimmune disease that attacks ones' hair follicles. Jeanna struggled with her makeup transformation of going bald on live television but Tyra tells her to use it to her advan...

Oftentimes in media, women are portrayed in the same regards or fall into the stereotypical tropes of female characters. See: the virgin, the wide eyed ingenue, and so on and so forth. For the most part-- and when I say the most part, I quite literally mean the most part -- women are written seen as vapid characters in television and movies. However, the same cannot be said for the way women are written in literature. In Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Amy Dunne is the calculated and clever "cool girl" that broke grounds for what it meant to be an enigmatic woman in literature. Never before had I read a character so strategic in her methods and so dedicated to her plight. I admire Amy for her brilliance, her vision, and the amount of details she meticulously puts in orchestrating her whole disappearance and return. Amy's thoughts and actions are the primary driver in each characters plotline-- Nick especially. Amy is also clever at predicting how most of the events would...

This season marks the 10-yeaar-anniversary for the prime-time show and cultural phenomenon-- Rupaul's Drag Race. Yes, I've talked about this in class before-- and yes, I've done research in other classes about this topic, but that's only because it's so important. For the past 10 years, over 147 drag queens have blasted their way into super-stardom, using the show as a platform. Over 147 queer narratives have been shared on one competition show exclusively for queer individuals. Now, obviously this isn't the firs reality show to cast queer people, see: The Real World and Big Brother on CBS, but this is the first competition show to highlight the subculture of drag and show all of the different personality types of queer people. Which, as we've heard in class, is a typically marginalized subculture. The show carries the narratives and history of the LGBTQ+ resilience, like stonewall, pulse nightclub, trans marches, and the AIDS epidemic. And, b...