Who I Think I Am

Marina being her satirical self

One of my all time favorite artist Marina and The Diamonds said in her hit song Oh! No! "TV taught me how to feel, now real life has no appeal." When I first heard this song I was immediately hooked. Other quotes include "I feel like I'm the worst so I always act like I'm the best" and "don't do love, don't do friends, I'm only after success." These words at the time fit into who I was, and I loved that I was able to find something which represented my thoughts and interest. Due to this I kept buying her music and I have gone to see her a grand total of 4 times and will continue to until the end of her career. This is the media's influence, there is a consumer, a product and then a method to make the two meet. Being born in a post pop world means that the media rules everything around me, and that everything around me shapes the media we consume. By doing so the media feeds into the culture it is in. The media shapes our views, roles and societal behavior. We are all media consumers and we are all media creators.

The Queen and her husband consuming media (they are subject to it too!)

The media is white washed. As a an gender non-conforming queer afro-latino (a mouth full which just keeps getting longer) it's hard to find images and people in the media who fully or even partially represents me. Sure I can find myself in a gay character, or a black or latino character, but the merging of all these cultures would be considered too complex for white media. White media has condemned me too complex or too confusing for "normal viewers" therefore I am excluded from popular media. This makes it so that TV is directed towards the very white and very straight and very skinny. Growing up this affected me the most. I kept seeing people who weren't like me and instead of looking past popular media, I seeked to imitate it. I wanted to straighten and whiten my hair because that's all I saw in the shows I was watching. People like me make up such a small percentage of the population that we are not considered a priority. Representation is important because it allows people to feel like they are part of society and don't feel the need to hide the things that make us different.

Problematic Queen Lana Del Rey

Media can also be hindering because it can perpetuate what's wrong in a society. Today when I watch things like Anaconda by Nicki Minaj and listen to music like Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd, I am in a constant battle with myself. Now that I have embraced both my cultural background as well as my sexuality and gender identity, and have read up on my bell hooks, I feel bad listening to music and watching videos which still have the same imagery as the videos I’ve watched before. This imagery not only reinforces misogyny but it also makes a lot of young girls body conscious and warps the view young boys have on the female body. Still I like to think of myself as a novice feminist, because even though I enjoy singing along to Ultraviolence, and I find beauty in the drop dead gorgeous trope in fashion and there are times when I think Rihanna can do no wrong, I am still critical and aware of their harm. I am aware of how the media can shape the way you think and as soon as the song ends I am cramming my unsuspecting peers about the harm it just did to all of us.