Learning about postmodernism in class has helped me become aware in my own life of how I usually don't see things as they are. I think we can all agree that we sometimes, or a lot of the time, view our experiences in high school like we're in a movie about high school. We stereotype people, we dramatize things, we act awkward about things and it's all because of the impressions that the media has made on us since we were small little pea children.
In my Health class, we're learning about sex, sexually transmitted diseases, penises and vaginas. We've seen this scene before in plenty of movies since we were little kids. The student are tense...this is so awkward!!!! But not really. There comes a point when you realize that we are all human, we all have genitals of some sort and most likely, we're all going to have sex at some point in our lives. My Health class was nothing like in the movies. We were all very open, interested and pretty liberal with our words. We asked questions about anything we wanted and the teacher wasn't awkward about it at all.
I think it's safe to say that most of our judgments are formed by media exposure throughout our lives. We never see the world as it is. We form our views on the places we go, the way people act, our interactions and our feelings by relating them to some sort of generalization that we've been fed through the media throughout our lives.
I have definitely been noticing the assumptions and judgments I make about our world due to media exposure. I believe this media exposure can create closed-mindedness and perpetuates stereotyping and categorizing.
I think your experience in Health Class is actually a fantastic example. I mean, we aren't born thinking that nudity is always sexual - when we were three, we all ran around naked without thinking anything of it. The idea that a naked body is inherently sexual is something that is imposed upon us and must be overcome by reverting to our initial ideas about the topic.
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