All posts by Aleya Padilla

MW 12:45 class

Can Kesha help us see the change that needs to be made?

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“The music Industry can make you feel like a prostitute.” Says Jonathan Davis, the lead vocalist of metal group Korn.

The music industry has a habit of taking talented artists and morphing them into a money making machine. The majority of the world revolves around money and everyone knows this, it is a given. However, when it comes to the music industry what makes the money is the people and who gets majority of the money is the record label. So it is a trend that is seen where talented young women are put in provocative clothing, wearing two pounds of makeup, and told to go on stage and sing a song that has been changed to suit what will sell the best.

Things have become less and less about the talent and the lyrics than about the money that the artist will be bringing in.

The film Beyond the Lights came out in 2014 and besides the love story aspect, it really hit home on this topic. The film stared Minnie Driver and Star Wars actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, the movie covers the life of a suffering British Pop-star and how she has changed since she first discovered her love of music. It shows her as a young curly haired girl singing Nina Simone’s Blackbird. She goes from a talented to young woman with an incredible voice and a passion for singing to a 23-year-old woman with lingerie and leather hair extensions singing a provocative and highly auto tuned song. Feeling unseen, unloved, and exploited she tries to committing suicide. From this point on she realizes that she doesn’t want to be everything that her producer and record label want her to be. So she removes her hair extensions, fake nails and changes her clothing and she becomes happy again. This movie was all too real for anyone who has undergone the game sort of realization. This is not uncommon, producers have a habit of changing a celebrity to suit what will make the most money and this film was a prime example of how this affects someone’s life.

It may have been a dramatization but the situation still exists in the real world we just don’t see it. We are extremely blinded by fun music and cute outfits we fail to see the what could be going on behind the scenes.

When evaluating the success of musicians in popular outlets like the Billboard Top 100 Artists lists, seven of the top ten artists of the month are female. This is something that is constant throughout the year, that women musicians are at the top of their game. Jennifer Lopez, one of the many women in Billboards list recently spoke out about the dynamic of the music industry. She has been working in the music industry since she was very young and says that to this day the industry professionals value women less than they do men. Which is not surprising because this is a trend throughout the world. However, when you look at the statistics it is hard to believe that the industries top money makers are still respected less and undervalued.

We all know that wage gap between men and women are just one of the many things that set women apart from the rest. Jennifer Lopez recently spoke with W Magazine about her career and is quoted saying “…It’s a man’s world, and, truly, people in a business setting do not value a woman as much as they do a man. I feel like I am constantly having to prove myself. If a man does one thing well, people immediately say he is a genius. Women have to do something remarkable over and over and over. And, even then, they get questions about their love life.” Being an important woman in the industry for more than a decade she knows this sort of misogyny for herself, even if it isn’t realized the workplace is male oriented. After releasing this statement J Lo was scrutinized because later on that week she released a song that was produced by Dr. Luke.

Luke’s name may sound extremely familiar due to the fact that his court case with Kesha is plastered all over the news. Almost everyone knows who Kesha is when they think of Tik Tok and the very memorable line of brushing her teeth with a bottle of jack. However other than this court case many non-music aficionados wouldn’t recognize Dr. Luke’s name or real name Lukasz Gottwald.  And no he is most definitely not a real doctor. He is a guitarist and music producer for many large Billboard artists such as Kesha, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, Ciara, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez and many more talented women. Many of these women, such as Jennifer Lopez and Ciara were scrutinized for releasing music recently that was produced by Dr. Luke and Kemosabe.

When talking about the inequality in the workplace for women the music industry is a prime example. The Kesha Vs. Dr. Luke scandal is a sexual assault case that is pretty much a prime example of the misogyny in the music industry. What J Lo said was correct; we live in man’s world.  A world where we question a young girl’s accusation of sexual assault against someone who holds power in the music industry and where accusations of rape are not taken seriously.

Sexual assault in the workplace has been recognized as a problem since the 1970’s, over the years it has been recorded that sexual assault is the most frequent cause of death among women. It is hard to record due to underreporting but the estimated prevalence rate of rape and sexual assault is 30% among adult women. Kesha recently created a blog called “The Industry Ain’t Safe” for women to anonymously share their stories of sexual assault and harassment in the music industry.

So why is it that he is currently winning the case? Is it because he is one of the biggest producers in the industry? Is it because Kemosabe needs him? Or is it because he is owned by SONY?

Kesha’s legal battle has been rough, trying to win a case against a label as big as Kemosabe which is owned by SONY is not an easy case to win. Kesha Serbert is suing Dr. Luke and the record label associated to break free from her contract. She signed a six album contract with Kemosabe Records when she was round 16 years old and is accusing Dr. Luke of drugging and sexually assaulting her over the past 8 years.  As well as controlling and psychologically abusing her. However, this case is geared more towards escaping her contract rather than incriminating Lukasz.

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In her most recent court ruling Kesha was denied a primary injunction which would have allowed her to record her own music outside her contract. She was denied freedom from someone who drugged her and sexually assaulted her for years, someone who is 20 years her senior and someone who turns to twitter to preach his plea (shown above.)

This is not the only time Kesha has spoken out about her abuse, in 2005 when Kesha was 18 he drugged and raped her at her hotel room after a Nicki Hilton’s birthday party. Because she was intoxicated and because it was 11 years ago makes this invalid even when her mother has proof.

As Jennifer Lopez said women aren’t valued the same as men, in any industry. Clearly we can see this, when Kesha has been assaulted for years and has statements on multiple of these instances along with phone call evidence and eye witnesses it is not enough for her to win. It is not even enough for her intentions to be believed. Many sources believe that she is lying and has been lying for 11 years to break out of her contract. Dr. Luke’s attorney spoke to Billboard (who is owned by SONY) and gave them this statement, “Kesha’s court filings are and have always been a transparent business ploy to pressure Luke into a more ­favorable and lucrative contract.”  Why would this young woman invest 11 years of her life to a lie, and why do we feel the need to question her allegations.

There is a stigma about sexual assault and rape that we need to change, we cannot continue to let this happen. Let Kesha inspire you to take a stand as she has done for so many others, she is not the bad guy in this situation. When it comes to sexual assault and rape 8% of all rapes occur in the workplace and eight out of ten times the person is not a stranger. When it comes to the workplace it often occurs between someone of power and someone of lower standing and 91% of the time the victim is a woman.

With these statistics why should we question Kesha’s accusations, she is a woman, he is in a higher position than her, and he raped her multiple times. That is all that we need to know. Women in the world are lacking a sense of credibility when it comes to this topic. We see it time and time again. There was a time when women didn’t have the right to vote it seems like we have come a long way since then but have we really?

Women need to come together, since Kesha’s case was made public female celebrities have come out to speak on their experiences and to show their support. They have donated their money and created #freekesha. Even Kesha herself is helping other women come out about their abuse on her blog.

While there might not be a lot we can do about individual opinions in regards to powerful people (such as Judges) we can come together as a community to support fellow women so they get the respect that they deserve and not tolerate these situations again.

 

Unit III Reflection:

  1. Because my lede isn’t as straight forward as it would be to an essay my title sets the stage for what people are going to be reading. Without the title the reader wouldn’t know till the fourth or fifth paragraph that I am using Kesha to prove my point. My lede gives the basis of what I am trying to say throughout the article.
  2. Using a quote to open my article before the introductory paragraph grabs the readers attention, and sets a precedent for what the next paragraph will be like.  The first paragraph doesn’t give too much a way but also doesn’t read like an introductory to an essay, it gives some small background and to the industry.
  3. My idea that is constant throughout the piece is inequality and sexual assault in the workplace, and with that I bring to light a lot of points that I found in my research that a lot of people wouldn’t normally think of. As well as comparing to things relevant in the world right now.
  4. The sentence structure and word choice found throughout my article are subjective to my unique brand of writing. I thought out my ideas and points before putting them to paper to make sure that the reader would not be confused when interpreting the article.
  5. I brought up unique examples that the regular NYTs reading wouldn’t think of on their own. I avoided cliche ideas on inequality and brought attention to the facts so that they are unable of challenging these ideas.  I organized it in a way that was able to keep the readers attention by adding quotes or examples from current events.
  6. As the writer I definitely had my own point of view towards this controversy and it is evident in my writing, I used the research I found in many ways to not only persuade the reader but also to inform the reader enough to make our decisions.
  7. I did an extensive amount of research on this topic both during this unit and last unit. Finding a way to specifically include it into my article, while they might not be hyperlinked they were all used to help me complete my writing. I used a visual that included text examples of tweets that I referenced in the article.
  8. I used my secondary sources a source of information to fill in the blanks, a way to add context to the article and information for the reader. My primary sources helped me make the connections on sexual assault in the workplace. While I did drop a quote of two in my piece they were quotes that helped my article grow and reach out to both younger (J. Lo) and older ( Jonathan Davis) readers.
  9. I persuaded the audience by informing them and showing them points of view that they might not have otherwise noticed. I didn’t only use my side I utilized the view points of others in the industry.
  10. I chose a visual that pertains directly to the two paragraphs surrounding it, it is a picture of Kesha leaving court and then two of Dr. Luke’s tweets that I briefly mentioned. It is interesting because it is not just a picture it has more to it and it makes you read. It provides the reader with a little bit of a break and an interesting to visual to what I was saying at the time.
  11. The many drafts I did really helped me finalize my piece along with the help of my classmates. The first draft, while small I wasn’t sure how to start or where I was going with my points, it was very choppy and all over the place until the second draft or third draft when everything started to come together. With suggestions and critiques from my peers I was able to finalize my article.
  12.  It was hard to use hyperlinks because it was hard to really reference my sources, however when I did I gave direct links to magazines they could look themselves for the information or similar information.
  13. My word choice, sentence structure and choice of grammar added to my article and I believe gained credibility with use of my many sources.
MW 12:45 class

Unit 1- Huffington Post Article

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Joel Salatin, author of “Folks, This Aint Normal”,  farmer, and consultant for Food Inc. once said, “I think it’s one of the most important battles for consumers to fight: the right to know what’s in their food, and how it was grown.” Do you know the food you eat is what is getting you sick? Or that just one of the thousands of cows mixed in your small package of ground beef could be contaminated and thus contaminate every piece around it eventually sickening you? Why should you have to sit around while these major companies in the production industry do nothing to help the consumer?

Food politics has slowly become more and more important in the media. In 2008 filmmaker Robert Kenner directed a documentary called Food Inc. It immediately blew up and caught everyone’s attention. It was first time people were seeing the reality of the foods they’re eating, organic or not. Good or bad people were interested and wanted to know more. It was refreshing to see the point of view from farmers who know the methods are wrong but get paid to do it.  Farmers and activists alike began to write several articles on this topic. At the end of almost every article on food politics there is a section on how we as consumers can and need to make a change. Without the consumers there will be no change in the industry, an industry that has become corrupt and unhealthy.

All the articles agree that the way we have been farming has changed drastically from 20 – 30 years ago, and not for the better. Farmers or major companies have turned their minds from making the best produce they can to feed the world, to making the cheapest and quickest produce they can to make money. Our methods have become purely based off profit, while this may seem good for the government and for major producers; this has proven to be bad for the consumer. Why would we eat food that wasn’t produced with our satisfaction in mind.  “Nestlé’s “Resisting Food Safety,” and Consumer Reports “You are What They Eat,” both provide a number of facts and sources to help prove their case that the industry is becoming unsafe. More than 2 of the articles have said that there is a way to fix these problems, but with the government and large corporations running most of the industry there I sonly so little that can be done. “… The top four cattle – slaughtering firms increased their share form 30% in 1972 to 79% by 1998.” (Resisting Food Safety, 44) Of course by now this number has only increased. While we know what to do about the problems in the food industry it is not up to us to make the decision, it has been shown that our food is not always safe and we now know the causes however, large corporations take over almost 79% of the food industry making it extremely difficult to implement a change in regulation. While not impossible, there are still some ways that we could try to make an impact, which is what Food Inc., and Consumer Reports is trying to do. On the Food Inc. website there is a tab called “Take Action” where you can sign a petition that is trying to put and end to laws that don’t allow journalist to report the truth. Without journalists and documentaries we would be uninformed about the dangers of the industry.

Thanks to Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, and Consumer Reports, we are all more aware and more knowledgeable about our food situation. According to “You Are What They Eat” and “Resisting Food Safety” our main problem in production is the growth of E. coli and other health concerns. Food Inc. shared a terrible story of a young boy who died of E. coli while on a trip with his family. They did however drag the story out and used it story to draw on peoples love for children to get a greater reaction from the viewers. But after reading numerous articles on E. Coli and other bacterial outbreaks it is very obvious that it is a major problem. . It has been a continuing problem in the United States, even this month Chipotle had to close down because of an E. Coli outbreak. Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal  said in his book,“The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat.” This is now a known fact and what has been done about it, not a lot. Even Blake Hurst’s “Organic Illusions” said that we need to change the way we are farming. While this article may not be the most credible that point is something that cannot be argued against.

Food Inc. was able to do what these articles were not able to do, they allowed for the viewers/readers to get an inside look at what they are consuming. “You Are What You Eat” and “Resisting Food Safety” could not, however they both provide a number of reliable sources and statistics to provide the reader with without being opinionated as to allow the reader to make their own decisions.  Based one these sources the main source of the problem in our food industry  is the conditions in which they are keeping the animals and what they are being fed. Three sources agree that keeping animals in such closed in tight quarters is unhealthy, since the animals can barely move there is fecal matter everywhere which could carry E. coli and then get transferred to all the other animals. One sick chicken or cow could contaminate and entire farm in a situation like that, even just by drinking water. The main reason that these diseases grow is because of what they feed the animals. The animals are fed whatever will make them fatter quicker, which is usually corn or waste feed. The problems with this are that it makes it easier for bacteria to grow inside of them when this is what they are being fed. Major companies know this as does the FDA however, feeding chicken and cattle corn is an easier way to increase their weight and happens to be much cheaper which in this industry seems to be the only thing that matters. Considering the fact that 79% of the industry is run by major corporations  every time we go shopping we are purchasing an item from a powerful corporation. So we are giving money to the very corporation that has poor living conditions for animals that lead to a deterioration of their well being which in the end affects us. So it seems as they get richer we get sicker.

In Nestle’s “Resisting Food Safety”, table 3 shows that in 1999 there were 2,000,000 illness, 10,500 hospitalizations, and 99 deaths due to a bacteria called Campylobacter which is a the most common cause of food poising, it is most often found in chicken and in the worst cases causes paralysis. Along with Campylobacter, there have been 62,500 reported illness, 1,800 hospitalizations, and 52 death from Escherichia Coli (E. Coli). These numbers haven’t shifted in a positive direction, in fact they have increased in the past 16 years. The numbers provided above may not be 100% accurate because those are only reported cases, there are hundreds of cases that go unreported. Due to neglect in our government little action has been taken to fix these problems. While very few laws have been placed there is still little being done. Food safety is illogically divided between USDA and the FDA regulations. With the industry continuously growing as our population grows it becoming harder and harder for inspectors to examine every animal carcass that goes through to slaughter. They have been given the reputation of “poke and sniff”, there is little trust in the system and it should be changed. It is said in Food Inc.  that, “It’s incredible to me that the federal government can order the recall of a stuffed animal with a glass eye that could come off and choke a child, but that the federal government cannot order the recall of thousands of pounds of contaminated ground beef that could kill a child,” says Eric Schlosser. It is clear that a change has to be made, the government cannot continue to allow people to get sick off of contaminated food when it can be fixed.

 

Reflection Questions:

  1. It seems to me that the writers “project” is the authors main focus, it is their purpose for writing their piece and what they want reader to take from it. I was able to identify the texts projects by pulling out their main points or topics and how I felt after I read each article. My project in this article was not to give people pages of facts but to give them just enough information to make their own decision about the food industry and to make a change.
  2. I was absent on the day we did the “Sorting it out workshop” however the next day in class I did look over it and try to fill in what  I could. If i would’ve been able to fully complete it I’m sure it would’ve helped me organize my thoughts and information and give me a basis to write on. It works as an outline for the article to help pull it all together.
  3. It took me a while to understand synthesizing, I finally ended up understanding it about three days before I had to finish writing my article. But from what I understand synthesizing is drawing connections and comparing and contracting the similarities and differences in two pieces of writing. It is important because it allows you to really analyze different points of view to come up with you own. To be honest I’m not confident in the amount of synthesizing I did in my article. I did use all the articles I read and a few outside sources to help me decide where I stand on this issue. I did however compare some of the works.
  4. I am slightly proud of myself for trying to write in an article format and not being overwhelmed by my lack of experience in this area. I tried extremely hard not to make it a research paper so I’m hoping it doesn’t read that way. Another accomplishment would be never giving up when it comes to understanding how and what synthesis is.
  5. My main idea started when I had to write my 500 word reading response for Nestle’s Resisting Food Safety. The article really resonated with me because food poising is something that happens to me far too often. My claim or “project” began there and hasn’t really changed since I first started writing. Only towards my last draft did I start to talk about how people could implement a change.
  6. I am  not really a planner so I didn’t really strategize. I used my reading response as a basis for the article. Then I started to look back at the articles we read and the chart we made in class and began pulling ideas, quotes, and people out. But otherwise not much has changed since I first began writing.
  7. In the second paragraph where I said “All the articles agree that the way we have been farming has changed drastically from 20 – 30 years ago, and not for the better. Farmers or major companies have turned their minds from making the best produce they can to feed the world, to making the cheapest and quickest produce they can to make money. Our methods have become purely based off profit, while this may seem good for the government and for major producers; this has proven to be bad for the consumer. Why would we eat food that wasn’t produced with our satisfaction in mind.  “Nestlé’s “Resisting Food Safety,” and Consumer Reports “You are What They Eat,” both provide a number of facts and sources to help prove their case that the industry is becoming unsafe”  It may not be the best synthesizing but it is an example of how it evolved. My first and second draft on had the first sentence and the last two. Which didn’t really synthesize much. So after getting feedback from peer review I added to it changed it a bit to get more analysis in it.
  8. When I first wrote it it had no lede, it ended up sounding kind of like an essay because of my introduction. However after working with lede’s in class and looking at examples in other articles I began to understand why it was necessary and how it changed writing to sound better for an article. Once I began writing my lede I started out with just a quote which stood out to me and really grabbed the idea behind my article. Trying to keep it short was the hard part and since the quote said most of what I wanted to say, I added a few questions that I will be answering in the text in the hopes of grabbing the readers attention.
  9. Writing is not my strong suit, it takes me a very long time to get my thoughts on paper. So this unit my goal is to start everything earlier and give myself enough time to get my words out without being stressed out. I would also overall just become a stronger writer.