Class Wed 11/4
2009 November 4
II. Video: Girls Like Us (1997) -
Post your response/reaction to the film here…click on “COMMENT” ABOVE this entry, right under “Class Wed 11/4″
What was important to these young women? How did they make decisions? How did they understand their relationships? Their sexuality?
Sample comment
This video is different because it is talking about a girl but no girl comes out in the video. It’s mostly just him singing and getting undressed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztc4V3ttlso&feature=PlayList&p=17B0C60496362A0B&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=24
The video to me was really interesting. Just how the young women were taking their own lives into their own hands and doing what they pleased. I thought it was expected that the young women without a parent model were the ones that in the end got pregnant it was sad because I think that they could have done something better of themselves. Also, I think what played a role in their decision making was their environment, like where they lived and it seemed to me like all they wanted was to just leave from there. Anyway that’s just how somethings turn out for some people. But I’m glad that at least two of them went to college :). It would be really interesting to know what they are doing today and how their lives turned out.
Jessica
Well the video to me was very interesting. It was interesting to see how the young girls were already thinking about having a family like the girl that already had a baby. She did not like to go school because she wanted to have kids and have a family. I notice that she had the picture in her mind to be a housewife only. I notice that they think that having a child is very easy to have and to handle in the world. They made decisions thinking what is best for them and ignoring what their parents told them. I wonder how their life are now especially the girl that when missing .
I like this Video a lot… i see a lot of girls perspectives of their lives and how they managed it.. i still feel that those decisions that Raelene did are coused because she didnt have strict parents to tellher about the sex life and just overall to disipline her. but in the other side we have Anna, that her parents are over the top strict and she feels in a nut shell of a little bit untill still started to have unprotected sex with her boyfriend. i think that here as to be a mid disciplinary rule were parents have to have to control of their kids and not to be so soft to them nor not to strict.
I love the film, this film would be pefect to be shown at middle schools so that airheaded teenager girls as well as boys can see this and learn not to do this mistakes.
I thought this video was interesting. All four girls were brought up in different homes and their family dynamics were very different. This could be one of the reason about how they thought of relationships and their sexuality. I could especially tell how their view on sex changed as they grew older and how much it impacted them in their lives. One of the girls that stood out to me was Raelene because even at such a young age she had another life to take care of. She was very young and careless, when she was 14, but as she grew older she matured a bit and was able to be a wife and take on that role. It was amazing to see how much her life changed in four years.
The video was great to watch because it’s something we can all relate to. The four girls in the video grew up with different views on sexuality due to their backgrounds. I think they mostly saw how the people around them reacted to sex, mostly parents and friends. Anna had extremely strict parents, and so she felt guilty when she expressed her sexuality. I still don’t understand why she wouldn’t use protection. I was also really dissapointed to watch De’Yona get pregnant at the end, I thought her the most mature, but you couldn’t really tell as the time passed. The girls seemed to get more and more careless as time passed. Lisa was perhaps the best thinker. She continued her studies. I think her mom had alot to do with this, being a single mom and all. Very interesting how Raelene made alot of mistakes when she was younger. I thought Raelene was going to turn out homeless, a drug addict or even worse, but she turned out ok in the end.
The documentary we watched I found really interesting, and yet very frustrating at the same time. It seemed like what was most important to these women was doing what “they wanted to do,” and not thinking of the consequences later down the road. It seemed like they were all living for that moment, and didn’t think about the long run. I think some of their decisions were probably widely influenced by the friends they were hanging out with, and what they were doing at the time as well, because that’s how a lot of people that age make their decisions. I think a lot of them thought or felt that they were a lot older than they were, so they tried to handle their relationships the same way, along with their sexuality, but I don’t think it was the right way they should have handled it. It really bothered me that Raelene was pregnant at 14, and then two years later, not learning from her mistakes the first time, was pregnant again. You’d think that when someone goes through something like that, they’d learn from it, take something from it, and possibly prevent it from happening again. It just really bothers me that she was so careless with her second child, even though she did have a miscarriage. I also would have liked to have known what happened to the girl who went missing. (I don’t remember her name.) For one, it was really sad that she lost touch with her family, but the documentary just kind of left it at that, and never did touch on her subject again. It makes the viewer worry about what may have happened to her.
What seemed important to these young women were having boyfriends, like it was the thing to do, a social pressure. Three of the five girls understood the importance of getting an education, however, education wasn’t the only factor that influenced their decisions. For the girl who got pregnant at a young age, her main goal was to fill a void that her mom left inside her; she wanted a family the way she believed a family should be (without the substance abuse) and although she went about it the wrong way, in the end she finally found a partner that wanted the same thing. As for the other girl who dropped out of school and lost all contact with her family, what seemed important to her was having a boyfriend at any cost and it cost her everything. The decisions that each of these girls made was influenced by their education, social circle, and home life. For the two girls that went off to college, their home life instilled the belief that education was the most important aspect of their life and boys/boyfriends were last on the list. For the other girls, it seemed like there was a lack of support within the home to go to school. For these girls, their personal life was less structured and more chaotic, allowing them to follow their own path and at such an immature age, the path they took wasn’t based on good judgment. Overall, it seemed like all the girls were socially pressured, maybe not by their close friends, but by society that since they are in high school their now old enough to have boyfriends and therefore should have one. It wasn’t until they got older, that you could see the transformation on their point of view on having boyfriends and having sex; from an immature adolescent of not caring what anyone else thought to being in control of their life.
The video was very interesting; it transmitted a powerful message to girls about empowerment. In the video, I was able to see 4 different perspectives from girls of different backgrounds. It showed the reality of teenage girls and the things they confront in their daily life; things such as pressures, problems and interest that girls have during their adolescent years. The video made me reflect about the importance of having a good guidance and a good role model during these teenage years, especially for girls. The girls in the video presented real life situations of peer pressured, self-discovery and decision making that influenced their future choices forever. This video showed how important it is for teens to have someone who can listen to them and provide them with understanding, trust and motivation to make the right choices in their own life.
-Gricel