Is #notcool cool?

The other day a friend tweeted me with a link to a new blog, with a hash-tagged title of #notcool. What's the deal? This is description provided:

SEE IT, SNAP IT, SHARE IT!
See something #notcool? 
Snap a photo, and post it here!
It's easy: take a picture of the ad or poster and show us that it's #notcool (hold up a sheet of paper with Not Cool written on it or use your favorite photo editor). Then post your pictures here. 
Fight discriminatory, sexist, racist, misogynistic, overtly-sexualized and offensive images in the media by showing them for what they are: not cool.
Speak out and spread the word.

When I first read the "mission" of this blog, I was amped. Finding advertisements that perpetuate stereotypes through hypersexualized and hyperracialized images of (mostly) women and people of color is one of the most fascinating and "fun" activities (I say fun because there are so many and some of them are so incredibly ridiculous that it really does start to feel like you're playing a game of "I Spy"). 

So the premise of the site is for people to find digital copies of magazine advertisements, presumably open Microsoft Paint (or a comparable basic art/editing program) and spray paint "NOT COOL" across the image. At first I thought, HELL YEA! People are doing media literacy and they don't even know it! I was pumped that people were seeing these images, and not just flipping through the pages of a magazine.

But as I started scrolling through readers' posts, I recognized many of the advertisements (I used a number of them for my thesis), I realized that there is something MAJOR missing here. Besides the graffitied photo, the only other text was who had submitted the image. Where is the analysis?? Readers are not critically engaging with these media texts, and explaining why the images and messages are noteworthy (and in the case problematic).

I would really like to see the 5 Critical Questions being asked:
1. Who is the author and what is the purpose of the message?
2. What techniques are used to attract your attention?
3. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented?
4. How might different people interpret the message differently? 
5. What is omitted from the message?

Accompanying the images with answers to these questions has two benefits:
1. Participants are engaging in critical thinking and analysis with the type of media texts that they are bombarded with on a daily basis. My hope is that they start to ask these questions of all kinds of media texts (newspaper articles, songs and music videos, tv shows, blogs) more often. 
2. Although these analyses and critiques may be happening on a small scale, participants are taking a stand against these kinds of images and messages by being active participants, not passive recipients, in the media saturated world they live in. 

So what would #becool is if we push back a little and use our voices to start a new kind of conversation.

Let's try this again...

A year ago, no wait, two years ago, I attempted to start my first blog. I was two weeks into my master's program and had been encouraged by one of my professors to take 15 minutes a week to just write. It didn't matter what, didn't matter how much or how long; it just mattered that you put a pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard, detached yourself from reality for a few minutes, and reflected. Inspired, I created a blog not to be advertised on Facebook or shared with friends or family...I just thought it'd be faster to type than write (Gen X-ers, I'm sorry, but it's true. Dry those "I long for the ink-and-parchment-days eyes"). This sounds like it'd be totally doable, right? I was going to be a blogger.

Over the next six weeks, I accumulated a total of four posts, three of which were cliched melancholy introspections about my move from Manhattan to Philadelphia and the big "what am I doing with my life questions." Needless to say, the four posts have remained stagnant for the past 24 months, and I have just decided that today, on the first day of my doctoral program, I'm gonna give this another go.

I love looking back at old journal entries, emails sent and received, even class notes--reminiscing about where I was in my life at the time, but even more so acknowledging where I am now and how I've gotten from point A to B. I am a big into "everything happens for a reason"; I love "small world" stories, situations, and occurrences; and will believe until the day I die that "if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life". My decision to go back to school again is the most recent example of these three things. The final entry of my last blog concluded with, "I've been toying with the idea of applying to Ph.D programs for next year...am I insane?? Quite possibly...more to come on that." 

Although I made the decision to apply to doctoral programs after application deadlines had passed that year, I did indeed decide that I wanted to go back to school for my doctorate...and here I am, almost two years later (almost to the day), and I have my first class of my second round of grad school this evening. 

I'm starting this blog for a few reasons:

1. I have utterly failed at keeping a journal in my mid-twenties and am determined to prove myself capable of somewhat consistently documenting what has so far fulfilled the cliched "best years of my life"

2. Being in media literacy education, I think it appropriate, if not mandatory, that I am recording my findings and thoughts about all things popular culture, mass media, new media, social media, 21st century learning, New York City, education policy, technology, hyper-racialized, hyper-sexualized, and just downright striking, somewhere. Whether others read this or not, I want to contribute to the academic/educational/professional field that I want to be a part of and make a difference in

3. After my experiences as a researcher, teacher educator, student educator, and mentor in media literacy last year, as well as a hungry novice-advocate of anti-racism and diversity education, I want to use this space to lay as a type of foundation for my work in the coming years, hopefully informing others as much as I continue informing myself.