MTV

As a journalist, I understand the need for public relations, but as a field I'm completely opposed to ever joining it because I feel like it's fundamentally dishonest. After reading about Bernays' writings, I think even less of the field because it was founded upon making sure the aristocracy could still rule the masses they just had to make sure the masses understood what was for the common good. "The public claiming the birthright of democratic citizenship and social justice increasingly called upon institutions and people in power to justify themselves and their privileges."

This passage makes it seem like Bernays was actually opposed to a more justice and democratic world, which as an advocate of social justice I strongly disagree.

There's a friendly competition between the public relations and journalism majors. (At least between the chairs of the departments when it comes to recruiting students.) I don't have much interaction with many public relations majors because I'm so involved in journalism field. I think it's important for everyone to know how to market themselves to future employers, but I feel public relations just teaches you to frame whatever product, idea or person in a positive way because you are paid to do so.

If I were forced to go into public relations to pay off my insane student loans, I would have to do PR for a non-profit that had a mission that I actually believed in so that I wouldn't hate myself for selling out.

The PR people I've talked to actually seem to believe what they're telling me even when I can tell they're full of it, but that's their job I suppose.

The midriff section of the video was actually really depressing. I'm not that much older than a teenager and I still remember having to have this type of outfit and do these type of things to be cool, but I went school with the same 200 kids for seven years so all that kind of faded once we were sophomores in high school.

However, I do think that the public perception of young women and women's perceptions of what they should look like dramatically effect the extraordinary rate of eating disorders in this country. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, as many as 10 million women suffer from eating disorders. I can personally attest to an outrageous rate of eating disorders among my college friends.

Yet we are still celebrating the fabricated ideal image that is Barbie 50 years later. This idea has been packaged to women our entire lives. According to this CNN report, Barbie was originally based on a German doll that was a gag gift for men. The Lilli doll was a cartoon character who used sex to get what she wanted so the ideal image of a woman is actually based on a prostitute.

If I ever have children they won't play with Barbies because of the vast disparity between what woman actually look like and what marketing tells us they should look like. If Barbie were a real women, she'd be 7 feet tall, have FF breasts, and she would probably die from malnutrition because her waist is too small to fit the appropriate intestines needed to survive.