The article “Profiles from Alter Ego:  Avatars and their Creators” and Mark Stephen Meadows article “Auto Portraits” discuss avatars and the importance of their role in our society.  Meadows’s article compares avatars to the portraits of Royal families in Europe by saying that portraits are used to provide a large deal of information on a person and how they lived, which is similar to how an avatar reflects the personality of its creator.  This shows that the role of an avatar is to display the type of person that the creator wants to be viewed as.  The “Profiles from Alter Ego:  Avatars and their Creators” article shows this role because it displays an image of the creator next to that of their avatar, and then allows them to explain why they choose that avatar.  The main consensus from the three different creators featured in this article is that the creators want people to see them for the type of person they are and not what they physically look like. They use these avatars to escape the physical limitations that cause people to have a certain beliefs about a person before finding out what the person is like on the inside.  The avatar removes the barrier between how a person actually physically looks and focuses on how an individual acts such that you see the true person before you pass judgment.    Avatars would be useful in a classroom setting for those students that are timid, shy, or have a negative self image when assigning group projects.  The students’ avatars could be placed in a social setting and meet one another allowing them to explore each others personalities without the peer pressure of being chosen in group for how you physically look.  Avatars could play a major role in breaking down negative social barriers created by societies vision of the perfect person if the avatars are used in a positive way.

Danah Boyd’s article “Social Network Site Taste Test:  MySpace or Facebook?” addresses the major difference that attract people, teens specifically to that site.  The difference that is the main discrepancy between the two sites is the personalization of someone’s profile.  MySpace allows the user total freedom in choosing their background, layout and even the addition of music.  Facebook, on the other hand, does not.  It gives users minimum control of their profile only letting them choose images and other information to share on the designated background that every user is given.  This difference affects the different groups of friends or people that are drawn to each site.  The preference all depends on taste as the article’s title says, because not everyone wants the crazy colors and flashing letters that MySpace offers, or the boring white and blue that Facebook provides.  However, the article does not address other reasons why someone would prefer one site over the other.  Some prefer Facebook because of the different features, like setting images and videos to be viewed by a select group of people rather than your entire “friends” list.  This makes Facebook easier to use and provides the user with more privacy.  In the end whether someone uses MySpace or Facebook is a choice based solely off of personal preference.

The day I was given the assignment to write a visual rhetoric essay my first thought was oh great an essay.  Writing essays is one of my least favorite things and then to be told I have to write a 1500 word essay did not help.  I dreaded the thought of writing this essay.  However, once I started writing the essay it wasn’t too bad.  I was able to just write about the point that I was trying to make.  Even though the essay wasn’t too bad after I got started, when I came to finishing the essay it was a challenge.  I like that we were given freedom with writing the essay, but I just don’t like writing essays in general.

Susie Orbach’s article “Fat Is an Advertising Issue” addresses the concerns that the Dove brand has had with the way companies go about advertising products, especially when those products are intended for use by young girls and women.  She explains how the ads that we see on a daily basis affect the views we have of ourselves, whether we think we’re tall enough or skinny enough to be accepted by the society that we live in. Many companies advertise their products with models that are tall, skinny, and have perfect bodies stating that all women should look like them.  By Dove going through and reinventing how they advertise their products through the “campaign for real beauty” has allowed women and young girls to look up to real people.  I believe this advertising campaign is an excellent way to show the world what real people actually look like because not everybody looks like the people they see in magazines or on television.  Sometimes even the actresses that are in those other ads cannot recognize themselves due to the retouching that has been done to make them look perfect.  This campaign is an excellent program to provide young girls and women with positive role models that are real people accepting who they are and not trying to be the perfect image driven by the brain washing of other advertising campaign.  

In Chapter 14 Skenazy and Pogue discuss photos and the process that many of us face in sharing them.  Skenazy’s article “Don’t Smile for the Camera” consists of defining the “Kodak moments” in life that many refer too.  However, she addresses the fact that these moments are really myths that we use to portray what we want our family and ourselves to look like to the other people who view them.  She also goes on to include that since we focus on the picture perfect moments that we have “lost the story of our lives” by not recording the images that have shaped who we are and how we have become the people that we are today.  Pogue’s article “Photo Sharing Even the Folks Can Handle” concentrates on the issues that people have with sharing photos over the internet due to the different technology uses between generations, and the limits and restrictions that the different websites have.  He goes through and explains the different features, benefits, and limitations of each website to attempt to bring the reader to the same conclusion as his for which site is the best and simplest to use.  Between these two articles the readers are able to see things in a different way, by being conscious of the “Kodak moments” that they capture and how they go about sharing them.

Photography and how images represent reality play a large role in the society that we live in today.  Whether it is a photograph of the latest celebrity out on a shopping spree, an average person taking a walk down the street, or the tragic aftermath of a natural disaster, these images show the world the reality of whoever is taking the photo.  How this image is taken whether it is via cell phone, digital camera, or through the lens of a professional photographer also plays into the depiction the viewer has of the situation.  The device that the image is recorded on furthermore determines whether or not the image has been distorted from its original form or context.  However, it is the captions that provide an even deeper meaning and understanding to the images that we may view on a daily basis.  These captions provide the viewer with the background information that one may not necessarily receive from just glancing at an image.  It is the captions that allow us today to look back on pictures from the civil war or when America was still the thirteen colonies and be able to comprehend what is happening within that particular image.  This brings me to the conclusion that when people say a picture is worth a thousand words, that we don’t necessarily know what those words are or should be without the thoughts provoked by the caption.  The caption of the image stimulates our thoughts about the reality the image represents.