SESSION 23: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
2. EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION:
2.1 TOPLESS/NAKED: How O.K or not O.K is topless/naked women/men in:
- newspapers
- movies
- advertising
- the Internet
- paintings
- sculptures
- on beaches
2.2 UNACCEPTABLE: What is most unacceptable for you in a newspaper? Rank them and give reasons:
- (semi-)nudity
- lies
- bloody images/photos
- sex advertisements
- celebrity gossip
- political propaganda
2.3 DISCUSSION: HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS WHICH YOU CAN THINK ABOUT AND TRY ASKING YOURSELF BEFORE YOU COME TO OUR DISCUSSION ON WEDNESDAY:
a) What did you think when you read the headline?
b) What do you think of a newspaper regularly featuring photos of topless women?
c) What do you think of Bild’s recent change?d) Is having a photo of a topless woman on page three just as bad as having it on the front cover?
e) How degrading is it to women to have women naked or semi-naked in newspapers or magazines?
f) Many women buy the newspaper Bild – do you think they should boycott the publication?
g) Should all companies mark International Women’s Day by giving their female workers the day off?
h) Why is ending the “page-one girl” a “big step” for men?
i) How is moving the “page-one girl” to page three in any way “more modern”?
j) Did you like reading this article?
k) Could Bild boost its sales by ending sexist photos altogether?
l) There is a lot of exposure of the female body in advertising. Why? What does this say about our society?
m) If Bild has half-naked women in its pages, shouldn’t it also have photos of half-naked men?
n) Can a newspaper call itself a newspaper if it has photos of topless women in it?
o) How can the newspaper attract more, younger women?
p) How sexist are the newspapers in your country? Do you have similar cases to Bild in your country?
q) Are photos of topless women something from the past?
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
THIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT IN THE ORAL SESSION.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 23, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions. Choose one of these two options:
- Write a letter to the director of BILD saying what you think about having topless women on the frontpage of his newspaper.
- What does the exposure of the female body in the mass media say about our society? Express your opinion.
Dear Sr.
ReplyDeleteI’m writing in response to the recent article I’ve read about your determination to scrap the Bild’s 28-year tradition of topless women from the front page and replace them on page three.
I regret to inform you that I do not believe a single word of all that stuff you tell about the tabloid renewal. Since 1984 thousand of attractive bare-breasted women have been printed on the front page and I consider that nobody has forced them to show their breasts as being sexually attractive, in fact, it is not degrading but a lovely image, so they did it because they had the right to do it, and it is undeniable that your newspaper has been using these girls to boost sales too.
I would dare to say that surely the ‘Bild’ has not made this decision because of the reason they stated but for propaganda purposes, I mean, as pure strategy to increase the tabloid circulation to female readership as well as to be taken as a more serious newspaper.
It seems, we are forgetting that this kind of newspaper has never been characterized by printing serious news as a whole, but to emphasize topics such as gossip columns about glamorous celebrities, and sport symbols, although it also dedicate a few pages to give the public further information about what is happening worldwide.
Personally, I reckon that despite the fact that there is no need of placing images of women baring their breast on the covering page; however it is much better than watching the picture of a baby killed by a bomb or a village demolished by an earthquake, because the main target of any kind of newspaper is to attract the individual from the very front page.
Please, accept my apologies for any inconvenience I might have cause you for my daring of writing this letter.
Yours Faithfully,
RTM
We live in a society in where nowadays the exposition of a female body causes a stir between many people, A naked body is something natural independently if this body is from a man or a woman.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true to say that althought there is not anything bad in a naked body there are many situation in which is not very polite this exposition, such as at work or in the school.
However, sometimes photos or pictures of a body are considered something artistic, and most of them are master pieces of our culture, we can not forget "la maja desnuda" painted by Goya or "La Venus" by Botticelli.
Moreover, we are witness how in our society many times some advertisment are forbidden by women association or even by the Church, a example of this was a very beautiful advertisment of a vey famous baby branch, in which, in the foreground you can see a beautiful baby face and in the background there is a naked woman chest, well, but this advertisement was severely criticized.
To put it briefly, the big problem in our society is the impossibility of see the nature of our bodies like something beautiful an normal, and not only like something sexual.
WHAT DOES THE EXPOSURE OF THE FEMALE BODY IN THE MASS MEDIA SAY ABOUT OUR SOCIETY?
ReplyDeleteGiving an objective opinion about this is very difficult because this sort of newspapers do not exist in Spain. Furthermore, as far as I know German people normally take care to do things correctly. However, this newspaper’s attitude shows many things about our society.
Firstly, exposing a female body on the Bild´s front page for 28 years is not a problem. The real problem is that this newspaper has been showing only half-naked female bodies. What happened with men? Women also have right to see a semi-clad man. Obviously, we live in a sexist world.
Secondly, mixing breaking news with sex photos is a strange way to make press. Indeed, this kind of newspapers lose credibility using sex images. In my view If you want to see naked bodies is better to buy an specific magazine like Playboy.
Finally, we live in a materialistic world where the body is one of most important thing and the perfect figures are admired for millions of people. How many times have we seen a weight naked woman or man on a magazine? It is well known that the real beauty is inside on us but, a lot of people prefer the wrapper.
To sum up, we must be more open minded than we are and to understand that there is no problem about a half-naked body. However, we have to get equally options for men and women .
ANGEL MOLINA