The impact of visuals on my life –
Visuals have a huge impact on our lives. The things we see
and the images we choose to fill our heads with can change what we believe as
well as what we do. I wanted to explore how visuals communicate information to
us and impact our lives by persuading us to think and act differently.
I want to take a look at how media portrayal can impact our
perception of a certain subject. One of my all-time favorite things in life is
getting to know and spend time with the junior high girls in my church youth
group. Junior highers get a pretty bad rap in general, though, and I think
media portrayal can influence this.
When we think of junior high girls, we probably picture
everything awkward – a little too much glitter, pink, purple, braces, pigtail
braids, etc.
I think of the Jimmy Fallon show where he and a guest
pretend to be junior high girls like in the pictures above. They look weird and
they say “ew” to basically everything including things they love. (PS – I’m not
dissing this show, I don’t watch it but I do have lots of friends who think it
is funny.)
The images created of junior high girls that we are shown
often influence what we think about them a lot – and most of us don’t actually
interact with the real people all that much to get a different opinion. When I
started volunteering with the youth group, I did not want to work with the
junior high girls because I had such a bad impression (and personal experience
when I was in middle school). However, that’s where they needed me. And now,
they are one of my all-time passions in life!
The images on Jimmy Fallon give a huge sense of awkward (a
lot because grown men are trying to be young girls), immature, out of place.
However, what I have learned is that junior highers (though there is plenty of
awkwardness) are actually at this interesting crossroads in life. They are
young enough to have hopes, dreams, and whimsical desires, they are young
enough to have fun and dare to think big, yet old enough that the world is
starting to crush them. They are starting to be presented with more lies,
deception, and pressure than ever before. They are beginning to think
critically and desperately need someone to believe in them. I wonder if our
image of junior highers changed a little, maybe we would actually impact them
and help them see their potential instead of just being scared of them.
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