Author: jones.7121

Text Review – My Big Fat Greek Wedding

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The 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, highlights an encounter between people of different cultures. The movie focuses on Toula Portokalos, a young Greek woman who falls in love with Ian Miller. Ian is not Greek, which is surprising to Toula’s family. Throughout the movie, Ian learns more about Greek culture through the family and even becomes a member of the Greek Orthodox Church in order to marry Taoula. Many ideals and practices in Greek culture are shown in the movie. Ian experiences these events and learns about them with the intention of implementing them into his life, as he becomes a part of Taoula’s big family. This film highlights interactions between people of different nationalities and religions. 

Many aspects of Greek culture are showcased in the film. For example, the food and strong family relationships. Taoula’s family owns a restaurant together, which illustrates Greek food and the family dynamic. Food is a major part of the family and Greek culture. In Ian’s case, he only ate Greek food when he visited the family’s restaurant for a meal. But after meeting Taoula, he enjoyed it for almost every meal. As far as family relationships go, in the movie they demonstrate strong family values. These values included seeing each other almost every day, spending holidays together and playing big roles in their children’s future. The biggest difference between average American families and Taoula’s family is that the extended family is almost considered immediate. 

As illustrated in the movie, religion also plays a big role in Greek culture. After Ian proposed to Taoula, her father did not like the fact that Ian was not a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. Due to the fact that it was such a big deal to Taoula’s father and that they were planning on getting married in an Orthodox church, Ian became a member of the church.

Taoula’s identity is also a big part of the movie’s storyline. When it came time to introduce Ian to her family, she felt embarrassed and nervous. Taoula wanted more for her life than what her parents had planned. Her parents’ expectations included finding a Greek husband for their daughter and helping her raise her children. On the other hand, Taoula wanted a career and a chance to meet someone she could be truly happy with. By the end of the movie, Taoula comes to accept her family and the woman has become with their help.

Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase – Ashley Jones

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A specific area in the United States that needs immediate reform is the prison system. Injustice runs through the justice system systemically and continues through the jails and prisons. Shortly after Biden took over as President, on January 26th, he signed an executive order that ordered the Department of Justice to nullify any future contracts with private prisons. The order will end all agreements with the 12 prisons that are contracted by the Department of Justice. Since 1971, the War on Drugs, the presence of federal drug control agencies in Black and Latino neighborhoods increased dramatically. This is one factor that goes into the overwhelming population of minorities in our prisons. In 1970, the population of our prison system was holding around 350,000 inmates. Today, over 2.3 million Americans are incarcerated. Based on a 2018 report by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Black and Hispanic Americans accounted for 56% of the prison population even though they only represent 32% of the entire United States population. “This means that African Americans and Latinx are five times more likely than white individuals to spend time behind bars” (Castleton Spartan). This issue is largely systemic due to the connections in the justice system from the police, courts and prisons. A product of predictive policing, a policing model that many departments have been using, is this dramatic influx in the minority population in prisons. Predictive policing gives departments information about what crimes are taking place in specific areas of their city. They are able to find patterns, then dispatch officers into that area to patrol in hopes they will prevent crime. Instead, they end up making arrests. The majority of the time, these areas have a majority Black or Latinx population, which increased the number of minority arrests and incarcerations.

 

This systemic issue comes from the increased amount of police presence in areas of high crime that tend to have high minority populations. As time goes on, police focus their attention on these areas of high crime in hopes of lowering the crime rate. However, this creates the high number of minorities in the American prisons.

http://www.castletonspartan.com/2021/02/17/prison-reform-curbs-systematic-injustice/https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race.jsp

Context Presentation – Women of Color and Societal Expectations – Ashley Jones

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In her writing, Judith Ortiz Cofer describes how we see our bodies “through the lens of social values and beliefs” (Ortiz Cofer 433). This statement is still very true today, especially among men and women of color in the United States. As Ortiz Cofer describes, in different social interactions the perception of beauty changes. This is demonstrated in her writing throughout the section in which she discusses how her looks and people’s opinions of them affected her life. She describes her experience in a public high school in New Jersey where the “hierarchy for popularity was as follows: pretty white girl, pretty Jewish girl, pretty Puerto Rican girl, pretty black girl” (Ortiz Cofer 439). This standard was much different than what she experienced as a little girl, in public with her mother. 

 

In recent years, researchers have found that the standards of beauty have not changed from what Ortiz Cofer described. In many parts of the world, including the U.S., the standard of beauty comes from the features of white women, such as lighter skin and hair type (Harper and Choma 735). This ideal may be an unconscious thought for many people because of how long the media has illustrated white women as the standard of beauty. The author of the article “Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender and the Politics of Beauty” describes her discussion with her mixed daughter where she expresses her desire for blonde hair like the girls on TV. Kathy Deliovsky said “Given that the images on TV are predominantly of Europeans, I realized ‘blonde’ to my nine-year-old daughter signified not just the color of hair but a white aesthetic represented by straight hair” (Deliovsky 49). Women of color are under a lot of pressure from societal norms to conform to what has historically represented the standard of beauty. Social media can be a positive place where people support each other, but it can also have negative consequences. Author Virgie Tovar writes that one’s body is their own business and nobody else can tell you who you are (Tovar). This positivity coaching has been very influential in women’s mental health and body perception.

Works Cited

Black, Elaine Baran. “TOVAR, Virgie. The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color.” School Library Journal, no. 5, 2020, p. 78. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgbe&AN=edsgcl.622369414&site=eds-live&scope=site.

Deliovsky, Kathy. “Normative White Femininity: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Beauty.” Atlantis, vol. 33, no. 1, 2008 2008, pp. 48–58. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=apn&AN=ALTP758014&site=ehost-live.

Harper, Kathryn, and Becky L. Choma. “Internalised White Ideal, Skin Tone Surveillance, and Hair Surveillance Predict Skin and Hair Dissatisfaction and Skin Bleaching among African American and Indian Women.” Sex Roles, vol. 80, no. 11/12, June 2019, pp. 735–744. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11199-018-0966-9.

Ortiz Cofer, Judith. “The Story of My Body.” True Women and Real Men.